Please help me understand the phone market better.

[kyrax12]

So how come some companies like Apple and Samsung keep on putting out a new revision of their flagship smartphone every year.

What would happen if they do it every two years instead?

 

[bradly1101]

They want your $ and they get it thanks to envy.

 

[Commodus]

So how come some companies like Apple and Samsung keep on putting out a new revision of their flagship smartphone every year.

What would happen if they do it every two years instead?

It's much like computers and most anything else with a short replacement cycle. The technology advances sufficiently quickly that they can put out improved hardware on a yearly basis, and upgrades are frequent enough that you'll find willing customers.

Besides, hardware drives software a lot of the time. The faster you iterate on a product, the sooner you can get everyone using shiny new features.

 

[Zaap]

I can't imagine technology moving any more glacially than it already does in the mobile world. (And Apple especially. The IP6 is the first major "different enough from the last model to actually be interesting" since the IP5 first came out in 2012. And the 4 was the same long snooze-fest before that.)

If things went any slower, "upgrading" a phone after an average two-year contract would be bleak; there'd be no reason really to upgrade in a lot of cases.

As it is, I see people really questioning the need to upgrade say a SGS4 to an S5. Seems to me that showcases the need for more radical upgrades at an even faster pace, or people will just start to see the new model as a minor update with a new coat of paint slapped on.

I'm hoping the Note 4 will be a worthy update to the N3 by the time I upgrade but I sure wouldn't complain if the equivalent of the generation beyond that were available instead.

 

[Ravynmagi]

So how come some companies like Apple and Samsung keep on putting out a new revision of their flagship smartphone every year.

What would happen if they do it every two years instead?

Imagine Apple upgraded their phone every year and Samsung only did it every two years. They both come out with great phones in 2014.

In 2015 Apple comes out with a better phone and Samsung will have a harder time competing against it with the same boring phone people saw last year. Even if not much has changed during the year and the Samsung phone is still very good, people consider it old news after a year. People want something new, even if it's not that much better.

 

[openwheel]

Because they want your money.

 

[mikeford]

For many the actual value of something like the iphone far exceeds the cost, they just want the best one and the money is maybe not even a secondary consideration vs other factors like ease of use, learning curve on other devices, style, etc.

 

[maxi007]

For many the actual value of something like the iphone far exceeds the cost, they just want the best one and the money is maybe not even a secondary consideration vs other factors like ease of use, learning curve on other devices, style, etc.

i dont think iphone is the best one

 

[Capt Caveman]

So how come some companies like Apple and Samsung keep on putting out a new revision of their flagship smartphone every year.

What would happen if they do it every two years instead?

It's called money. Why delay bringing out new functionality and delaying revenue when there is a demand?

 

[SlitheryDee]

So how come some companies like Apple and Samsung keep on putting out a new revision of their flagship smartphone every year.

What would happen if they do it every two years instead?

Quite simply, they'd sell fewer phones. Every new product iteration is an opportunity to poach users from other brands and to sell another phone to your current user base.

 

[Crono]

So how come some companies like Apple and Samsung keep on putting out a new revision of their flagship smartphone every year.

What would happen if they do it every two years instead?

For Apple it's once a year, but for Samsung it's more like 6 to 12 months, depending on how you look at it. There's a bit of a tick-tock cadence to their iterative cycles because they have more than one flaghsip model, notably the Galaxy and Note series.

At the very least you want a new phone out each year because you want carrier customers who are upgrading on contract that year to go with your device rather than something with newer technology and features from another manufacturer. It's not that different from why car manufacturers have "model years", even if they don't significantly upgrade or change a car from year to year.

The design, manufacturing, and logistics of the smartphone business still takes enough time that even companies the size of Samsung usually don't put out flagships more frequently than every 6 months, or every 3 months when you include mid-range phones. Even most tech enthusiasts would have a hard time keeping up if all the smartphone manufacturers put out flagships at a faster clip - you can even argue that fatigue is already starting to creep in for a lot of consumers, at least for the non-Apple people who already have relative flagships. Most of us are gadget freaks, though. So long as each iteration ships with improved technology and not just subtle design differences, I think it won't put off too many people.

 

[dguy6789]

So how come some companies like Apple and Samsung keep on putting out a new revision of their flagship smartphone every year.

What would happen if they do it every two years instead?

I imagine they make more money the more often they do it. It doesn't matter how small a change the new phone is, as long as they release it people will line up and buy.

 

[KentState]

People are always coming out of contract so you want the newest thing out there. Consume electronics has always had a yearly cycle.

 

[Sable]

So how come some companies like Apple and Samsung keep on putting out a new revision of their flagship smartphone every year.

What would happen if they do it every two years instead?

This is the stupidest question I've ever seen. Ever.

 

[dagamer34]

While companies have come out with new phones every year, the reasons to upgrade every year however have become fewer and fewer. It used to be that there were such great leaps in performance relative to what the OS and apps demanded that keeping a phone longer than a year would be self-inflicting after a year. And when you have jumps like HiDPI displays, LTE, OIS, etc.. which a user can see a *clear* difference between what they have and what new phones offer, upgrading yearly can easily be argued.

But lately, I do have to ask myself if this pace can go on forever. Do you really need a 1440p display on a 5" phone? What about a 4K one which some company with undoubtedly try to push in the next year or two? Does LTE-Advanced really matter if the carrier you are on lacks the fiber capacity to support its fastest speeds? Is a 20MP camera really always better than a 10MP one? Should every phone shoot to cram as much MP as possible? Does your SoC really need to have 8 cores even if 2 or 4 is actually better? Why not a phone with 16 or 32 cores then?

At some point trying to endlessly push the hardware creates some bonkers super phone with a ton of features and 2 hour battery life. That and we will eventually reach the equilibrium that the PC market has where a new hardware release isn't some noteworthy page 1 headline like the iPhone gets. It's a smartphone, not the second coming of Jesus.

 

[ponyo]

While companies have come out with new phones every year, the reasons to upgrade every year however have become fewer and fewer. It used to be that there were such great leaps in performance relative to what the OS and apps demanded that keeping a phone longer than a year would be self-inflicting after a year. And when you have jumps like HiDPI displays, LTE, OIS, etc.. which a user can see a *clear* difference between what they have and what new phones offer, upgrading yearly can easily be argued.

But lately, I do have to ask myself if this pace can go on forever. Do you really need a 1440p display on a 5" phone? What about a 4K one which some company with undoubtedly try to push in the next year or two? Does LTE-Advanced really matter if the carrier you are on lacks the fiber capacity to support its fastest speeds? Is a 20MP camera really always better than a 10MP one? Should every phone shoot to cram as much MP as possible? Does your SoC really need to have 8 cores even if 2 or 4 is actually better? Why not a phone with 16 or 32 cores then?

At some point trying to endlessly push the hardware creates some bonkers super phone with a ton of features and 2 hour battery life. That and we will eventually reach the equilibrium that the PC market has where a new hardware release isn't some noteworthy page 1 headline like the iPhone gets. It's a smartphone, not the second coming of Jesus.

Don't worry. Sealed battery pretty much guarantee people will upgrade after about 2-3 years.

 

[Zaap]

^ Only if its truly sealed, and a person isn't savvy enough to know how to do a battery upgrade themselves.

 

[zephyrprime]

So how come some companies like Apple and Samsung keep on putting out a new revision of their flagship smartphone every year.

What would happen if they do it every two years instead?

They will make way less money obviously. People won't buy year old designs at nearly the same rate. They will get crushed in the marketplace by other companies that release product faster.

 

[zephyrprime]

and a person isn't savvy enough to know how to do a battery upgrade themselves.

Which is 99% of the population so ponyo's contention stands.

 

[zephyrprime]

I imagine they make more money the more often they do it. It doesn't matter how small a change the new phone is, as long as they release it people will line up and buy.

Exactly. Car technology advances extremely slowly yet they release a new model every year. This is despite the fact that they really only make truly new models every 5 years or so and the other yearly model releases are just minor changes.