Apple’s iPhone Is Closing In on Samsung Smartphone Sales

[mrochester]

Of course - that doesn't mean you should support or be happy when a company makes those types of decisions. You seem to be defending Apple - as an investor sure, but as a consumer, why in the world would you be happy with a tradeoff that was purely at the benefit of the company at your expense? Especially in a premium product that has enormous profit margins.

Ichinisan and dainthomas are unhappy with the Safari experience - I'm not sure what reason you have to defend Apple.

I'm not defending Apple, but having only 1GB of RAM and an iPhone is infinitely better than having 3GB of RAM and an Android phone. I'd love for the iPhone to have 10000GB of RAM, but it isn't my decision as to how much RAM the iPhone has. In the absence of being able to decide that, there's absolutely zero point in bitching about it.

 

[Dari]

I bring up Sony to highlight your inability to be honest or objective when it comes to Samsung. One one hand you have a train wreck of a business division that's done nothing but hemorrhage money and signs now point to a sell-off. Yet you seem to think they're on the right track for growth and profits with very little reason to support it.

On the other hand you have a hugely successful business division suffering through profit declines that has been responding to pressure. While you may disagree with what they're doing, their newest products show they can complete and produce best in market devices.

However you refuse to concede that anything they can do can reverse their trend and basically only want to believe that they're doomed. While you're free to have that opinion, trying to pretend you're objective or looking at it as an "investor" is laughable. Honestly your intent with this thread simply seems to be another chance to slag Samsung and not actually have a discussion.

For example - from Qualcomm's earnings report:



There are signs of life at Samsung and weaknesses during the previous year are shaping up to be multiplying strengths in 2015.

Honestly, I'm not as optimistic as the analysts from Jeffries that 2015 will be the "year of Samsung", but I do think we'll see a recovery from them.

http://blogs.barrons.com/asiastocks/2015/01/27/samsung-will-beat-back-xiaomi-in-2015-says-jefferies/

Barrons? Really? They also said 2014 would be the "year of Samsung." It was a disaster...

 

[dawheat]

I'm not defending Apple, but having only 1GB of RAM and an iPhone is infinitely better than having 3GB of RAM and an Android phone. I'd love for the iPhone to have 10000GB of RAM, but it isn't my decision as to how much RAM the iPhone has. In the absence of being able to decide that, there's absolutely zero point in bitching about it.

Ehh if you follow your thinking, since none of us can individually influence corporate decisions, there should never been any bitching about products from any company.

What fun would that be?

But honestly, you can exaggerate about 1000GB of RAM, but Apple adding 2GB to the Air 2 paints a pretty clear sign they're aware of the limitation and that it'll gradually be increased throughout the product line in the future. You'll just have to pay again.

 

[mrochester]

Ehh if you follow your thinking, since none of us can individually influence corporate decisions, there should never been any bitching about products from any company.

What fun would that be?

But honestly, you can exaggerate about 1000GB of RAM, but Apple adding 2GB to the Air 2 paints a pretty clear sign they're aware of the limitation and that it'll gradually be increased throughout the product line in the future. You'll just have to pay again.

Paying again isn't a problem. You'll have to pay again for whatever phone you upgrade to next as well

 

[WelshBloke]

Barrons? Really? They also said 2014 would be the "year of Samsung." It was a disaster...

The kind of disaster that Sony can only dream of having.

If 2014 was a disaster for Samsung it just goes to show how unparalleled their position is in the Android system.
Its one of the reasons I'd like to see a Chinese firm buy out the Sony handsets division. Android needs another successful manufacturer and Sony have proven utterly incompetent at being it, maybe if they get bought out we can get some decent competition going.

Plus it would be amusing to see a Chinese company picking at Sonys rotting, bloated corpse just to see your reaction. The only thing funnier would be if Samsung bought them but I don't think that Sony have anything Samsung want.

 

[Midwayman]

The problem is that for those applications, while you can do them with a mobile app, for professional grade work, a desktop is still going to be used. First the amount of power available is significantly higher.

Second, many of those tasks require a larger screen. Even a rumored 12" iPad screen isn't going to be enough for serious professionals. Start adding in tool bars and other necessary information and that 12" disappears in a hurry.

As much as you might want to be able to do all of those things, there isn't enough of a market to justify the existence of such a product. There aren't enough people like you yet to justify the product on a massive scale and in trying to satisfy the requirements or demands of a niche group of users, you invariably end up with something like this:

Not really. There are already quite a few professional music and art apps out for iOS. They're focused on the iPad of course, but some of those things work better on a touch interface since they can replicate the physical interface creatives are use to using closer.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Paying again isn't a problem. You'll have to pay again for whatever phone you upgrade to next as well

True, but I will pay a heck of a lot less than I would if I was replacing an iPhone.

The problem is that for those applications, while you can do them with a mobile app, for professional grade work, a desktop is still going to be used.

Completely untrue. Apple showed off Pixelmator, a desktop-level app, when they launched the iPad Air 2:

http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-shows-off-third-party-editing-apps-on-the-new-ipad-air-2/

Form factor convenience be damned, these devices have what pretty recently was a "pro" level of compute power, so people are going to use them for that:

http://daringfireball.net/2014/10/ipad_air_2

Apple is obviously complicite given their promotion of desktop-class apps like that or Replay. My issue is that THEY want to chose where these devices are full computers going toe-to-toe with laptops, say image editing, while restricting VERY obvious uses that they don't deem acceptable, like file system access.

Apple wants to continue to walk the line of the benevolent dictator of their platform, and as long as the products are iPad Air 2 quality it is hard to fight them. But when they do OBVIOUS stuff like hold back 2GB for the iPhone 6s I think it is fair to call them on their BS.

Heck I blow through the Air 2's 2GB all the time in Chrome (which then crashes). I wish it had 4GB of RAM or more.

 

[Ichigo]

Well since iPhones hold their resale value I don't actually think the upgrade cost is as bad as for some Android users.

 

[Dari]

The kind of disaster that Sony can only dream of having.

If 2014 was a disaster for Samsung it just goes to show how unparalleled their position is in the Android system.
Its one of the reasons I'd like to see a Chinese firm buy out the Sony handsets division. Android needs another successful manufacturer and Sony have proven utterly incompetent at being it, maybe if they get bought out we can get some decent competition going.

Plus it would be amusing to see a Chinese company picking at Sonys rotting, bloated corpse just to see your reaction. The only thing funnier would be if Samsung bought them but I don't think that Sony have anything Samsung want.

Ehhh, not really. SONY was in the position Samsung is in and they made some smart moves by going into content creation. Selling electronics is hard and Samesong is realizing that now. They've built up this vertical empire that is collapsing before our very eyes. Profits are falling my huge amounts. The next thing to fall will be revenues (if they haven't already) and that will cause economic problems for Samsung and Korea, which is not good. Seriously, Samsung is in the fab business and you have to be making some serious cash in order to finance those upgrades via bond sales. If you can't pay to play in the semiconductor arena then you fall behind and die. With their profits constantly falling in the mobile division, Samsung will have to cut back eventually.

 

[Mopetar]

Completely untrue. Apple showed off Pixelmator, a desktop-level app, when they launched the iPad Air 2:

Which has 2 GB of RAM (and 3x + the screen size) which kind of defeats your original point. One could certainly use such an app on one of the new, larger iPhones, but it won't be nearly as functional as an iPad with the significantly larger screen real estate.

Form factor convenience be damned, these devices have what pretty recently was a "pro" level of compute power, so people are going to use them for that:

Perhaps 2% of the users, which while a reasonably large group of people in terms of raw numbers is still only a minor part of the people buying these devices. They aren't going to specifically target that niche at the expense of everything else.

There's also the rumor that they want to move to using their own CPUs/SoCs in their notebooks as well. If that's their end goal, they might be pushing their chip design for the sake of reaching that, rather than their iDevices needing powerful SoCs. I don't think that's something that they'll do for several years and if it does happen at all it'll be because their notebook and tablet lines converge similar to what Microsoft is doing with the Surface tablets.

Heck I blow through the Air 2's 2GB all the time in Chrome (which then crashes). I wish it had 4GB of RAM or more.

Again, outside of browsing, there isn't a lot of need for 2 GB or more. I don't even think 4 GB would be enough for what it's worth. I've found that as time has gone on and RAM has increased, I just keep more and more tabs open. I've probably got at least 20 open right now, which is on the low side.

Realistically if they wanted to solve the problem they could set aside some space for a cache if people wanted to go that route. We're getting to the point where these devices have 128 GB of storage now. Setting aside 4 GB for a cache wouldn't be anything.

 

[mrochester]

True, but I will pay a heck of a lot less than I would if I was replacing an iPhone.

It wouldn't cost me much either as my existing iPhone will sell for an awful lot more than any other phone of the same age.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Which has 2 GB of RAM (and 3x + the screen size) which kind of defeats your original point. One could certainly use such an app on one of the new, larger iPhones, but it won't be nearly as functional as an iPad with the significantly larger screen real estate.

I bet the exact same apps will be on the iPhone 6s Plus next year when it can take them.

Perhaps 2% of the users, which while a reasonably large group of people in terms of raw numbers is still only a minor part of the people buying these devices. They aren't going to specifically target that niche at the expense of everything else.

They don't have to "target" anyone. Just let a real file manager into the app store. It doesn't even harm anyone- if the normals don't want to mess with files let them avoid the apps. Just like Android. My wife has no clue about her Note 4 file system, everything she uses is library based.

There's also the rumor that they want to move to using their own CPUs/SoCs in their notebooks as well. If that's their end goal, they might be pushing their chip design for the sake of reaching that, rather than their iDevices needing powerful SoCs.

If they don't push the bar Android will and they will be left behind. Apple doesn't get to dictate how the mobile industry works.

Again, outside of browsing, there isn't a lot of need for 2 GB or more.

On my desktop the following things use more than 2GB of RAM:

-Photo editing
-Virtualization
-Gaming
-Video editing
-and a bunch of nerdier things that will hurt my point.

That list is a list of things MANY normals do on computers today, some for a living, and therefore is a list of things people will want to do on computers- whether ARM or x86- in the future. All that separates a phone/tablet from a desktop is a bunch of adaptor cables and preconceptions.

Honestly I don't expect Apple to cater to me 1%. I don't care if they never let in the riff raff like emulators. I do care that we are almost 10 years into the ecosystem and I can't copy a file off of a NAS or USB drive. For now Apple gets to decide where the line of functionality is, but eventually maybe market forces (aka the enterprise market) pushes them to let the platform do more.

 

[Mopetar]

I bet the exact same apps will be on the iPhone 6s Plus next year when it can take them.

Unless there's an absolute need for more than 1 GB or RAM, the iPhone probably can run the apps, but productivity apps tend to work best with more screen space.

I could write code using an ancient 800 x 600 monitor, but I'd much rather have multiple, larger displays.

If they don't push the bar Android will and they will be left behind. Apple doesn't get to dictate how the mobile industry works.

Seems kind of doubtful. If it were going to happen, it probably would have already. Apple drug its feet on a lot of things compared to Android, but none of those caused a large shift.

The recent IBM-Apple partnership almost suggests the opposite, that there's a growing investment in iOS as a platform for productivity and professional apps rather than a shrinking one.

Maybe Android eventually does take over that market, but again if it's only 1-2% of users, will Apple really care so long as long as they're still selling loads of tablets? I doubt it. They only have a finite amount of resources to invest in shaping the platform and I suspect that they'd much rather chase after the broad market rather than a smaller niche.

Perhaps I'm also completely wrong. If the rumored 12" iPad does exist, perhaps it is geared at exactly what you want. Bigger screen for more work space when doing photo/video editing or other productivity work and more RAM to drive the types of applications that need it.

Regardless of how it all pans out, they have the data and have likely done the financial analysis to determine if such a product makes business sense. We can only armchair quarterback using imperfect information and rough heuristics. They can poor over sales data, marketing research, build prototype hardware, and create mock-up concepts to try these things out.

 

[zerogear]

Well since iPhones hold their resale value I don't actually think the upgrade cost is as bad as for some Android users.

Actually, that's not as true as it used to be. The resale difference between flagship Android and iPhone is not as much as it used to be.

 

[Ichinisan]

It wouldn't cost me much either as my existing iPhone will sell for an awful lot more than any other phone of the same age.

I still don't understand why people think the latest iPhone is more expensive than the latest Android phone. Not even considering the high resale value, the cost is pretty much the same between a top-of-the-line iPhone and top-of-the-line Android phone.

 

[Ichinisan]

Actually, that's not as true as it used to be. The resale difference between flagship Android and iPhone is not as much as it used to be.

Kidding, right? I sold my iPhone 5s 64GB black GSM AT&T (unlocked) for $630 right when the 6 was released (same day).

 

[dawheat]

Kidding, right? I sold my iPhone 5s 64GB black GSM AT&T (unlocked) for $630 right when the 6 was released (same day).

No I agree - it's still pretty good and better than Android phones, but the difference isn't as big as it used to be. I sell my wife's iPhone for each generation and you don't get what you used to a couple years ago.

I actually picked up a perfect, mint AT&T 16GB 5S at the beginning of the this year for $315 on swappa. Yes it's 4 months after the release of the 6, but it's not drastically better than an equivalent Samsung phone anymore. 4 months from now when the S5 is the same age as the 5S I purchased, I can see mint S5s going for 280-290. The depreciation curve really slows down once you get below 50% of new price. So not a dramatic difference.

 

[mikegg]

No I agree - it's still pretty good and better than Android phones, but the difference isn't as big as it used to be. I sell my wife's iPhone for each generation and you don't get what you used to a couple years ago.

I actually picked up a perfect, mint AT&T 16GB 5S at the beginning of the this year for $315 on swappa. Yes it's 4 months after the release of the 6, but it's not drastically better than an equivalent Samsung phone anymore. 4 months from now when the S5 is the same age as the 5S I purchased, I can see mint S5s going for 280-290. The depreciation curve really slows down once you get below 50% of new price. So not a dramatic difference.

I can find good condition S5 for $250 shipped on eBay. The iPhone 5s is still hovering at around $315. So the S5 is $75 less and 6 months newer. 6 months from now, maybe it becomes $215? So about a $100 difference in resale. I'd say that's significant.

 

[Bock]

I still don't understand why people think the latest iPhone is more expensive than the latest Android phone. Not even considering the high resale value, the cost is pretty much the same between a top-of-the-line iPhone and top-of-the-line Android phone.

Yup, the exact day the 5s came out, I was able to sell 16g 5 for $500 locked on at&t. I can't see any android phone doing that, even the galaxy series.

Yeah resale value actually matters. If I'd bought the 5 unlocked for $650, it only cost me $150 a year.

 

[dawheat]

I can find good condition S5 for $250 shipped on eBay. The iPhone 5s is still hovering at around $315. So the S5 is $75 less and 6 months newer. 6 months from now, maybe it becomes $215? So about a $100 difference in resale. I'd say that's significant.

Well I won't argue that the secondary market pricing is quite dynamic, but I was comparing mint to mint from reputable sellers on swappa, on the same carrier (AT&T), with the side effect of comparing US pricing.

The 5S I purchased for $315 was mint - one of the best condition phones I've seen. I'm not seeing mint S5s go for that price yet on swappa - it seems to be hovering more in the 320-340 range, though obviously it's going to drop when the S6 comes out.