When will the smartphone market shake-out?

[mammador]

Given the new prominence of Samsung, and of course Apple being around, why do LG, Motorola, Sony, even Nokia still make smartphones?

People may say "well their build quality is awesome!!" but so what? It's an issue of revenue and market share. A well-built product is nothing without good sales or market share, so there must be a time when the smartphone market is similar to the IBM clone market (,i.e. HP, Acer, Lenovo, etc. dominating it).

 

[notposting]

Things change far faster in the mobile market. WP8 could be exploding by the end of next year. Apple may release a dud of a phone, or the new iOS may just pale next to Android/WP. People may get sick of plasticky phones with barfable skins from Samsung. Then again with all the reality shows that still survive, maybe not.

 

[Oyeve]

I'm thinking around now. It's just not exciting anymore.

 

[shortylickens]

opcorn:

 

[3chordcharlie]

Umm...

Smartphones are just barely getting beyond a 3-month shelf-life for the latest and greatest.

No-one has entirely figured out what smartphones should do, precisely, and there are as many as 5 or 6 OS's that are decently common in various markets.

The market will, at some point stabilize, maybe even in the next 18mths, but it's not there yet. iOS is fairly mature, but Android is barely out of beta, WP8 is largely unknown, and BB10 will have something to say, particularly on the 'professional' side (either because it flops, or is excellent).

Once we see the fallout from new versions over the next 6 months, all the current 'pretenders' will have most of their cards on the table for the 3-5 year time-frame. That's when you might see stability.

Small-share manufacturers will give up when they believe the market cannot be swayed by one 'killer-feature'. With very good reason, no one thinks this is the case, yet.

 

[MrX8503]

Given the new prominence of Samsung, and of course Apple being around, why do LG, Motorola, Sony, even Nokia still make smartphones?

It doesn't matter how powerful a phone company becomes, they can always be overtaken.

MS, RIM, and Nokia used to be the big players and people thought it would always be like that. Now it's the complete reverse.

 

[psych2]

Actually I'm excited to see the bezel-less phone motorola is set to reveal in two weeks. There's always cool stuff coming down in the pipeline!

 

[dguy6789]

Actually I'm excited to see the bezel-less phone motorola is set to reveal in two weeks. There's always cool stuff coming down in the pipeline!

They already did http://www.anandtech.com/show/6242/motorola-droid-razr-m-performance-preview

 

[OBLAMA2009]

i wish carriers would allow phone makers to sell the phones directly.wed see much more competition and much lower prices. people would buy phones more often and there would be room for all those makers. nexus 7=$199 and yet droid razr =$699 (?)???? ridiculous

 

[OBLAMA2009]

Actually I'm excited to see the bezel-less phone motorola is set to reveal in two weeks. There's always cool stuff coming down in the pipeline!

i dont like bezel less how are they going to make otterbox for it

 

[podspi]

Given the new prominence of Samsung, and of course Apple being around, why do LG, Motorola, Sony, even Nokia still make smartphones?

People may say "well their build quality is awesome!!" but so what? It's an issue of revenue and market share. A well-built product is nothing without good sales or market share, so there must be a time when the smartphone market is similar to the IBM clone market (,i.e. HP, Acer, Lenovo, etc. dominating it).

Well how many manufacturers do you expect to survive? Look at the auto industry, or the PC industry that you yourself referenced. Those are both mature markets with tons of old, established players, as well as new upstarts.

They already did http://www.anandtech.com/show/6242/motorola-droid-razr-m-performance-preview

I think there is another one as well, with Intel. There was an announcement to the effect of "Let Motorola and Intel take you to the edge!" or something... Excited to see what they got, though I think Intel's Atom isn't quite ready for mobile yet. I'm hoping the next-gen Atom is powerful enough to run full-on Win8 reasonably.

Think Motorola's lapdock, except instead of some weird Android/GNU hybrid, it is a Win8 desktop. We're so close...

 

[BenSkywalker]

Think Motorola's lapdock, except instead of some weird Android/GNU hybrid, it is a Win8 desktop.

Would be even better if instead of Windows 8 they had something like Windows 7, you know, a usable OS instead of Microsoft Bob 2.0.

I'd say we have a window of two more years before we start to see stabilization in the smartphone sector. There is clearly still a window there for someone else to come in and get a foothold, but once the portable OSs reach 'good enough' for most people the opportunity for startups to make headway falls off a cliff. It is looking like we are going to end up with close to a repeat of the PC market, although there is still time for that to take a swing around.

 

[bearxor]

i wish carriers would allow phone makers to sell the phones directly.wed see much more competition and much lower prices. people would buy phones more often and there would be room for all those makers. nexus 7=$199 and yet droid razr =$699 (?)???? ridiculous

A lot of people won't spend money on a phone. There's a ton of cheap, unsubsidized phones. The 3GS is $349, the Galaxy Nexus is $349, the Lumia 800 is $300. These are all good phones, but the problem is there's not a price break on the carrier side for bringing your own device. Why would I spend $350 on a Galaxy Nexus when I can spend $200 on a Galaxy S3 when I'm probably going to keep my service for two years or more anyways?

The only way what you want to happen to happen is if the devices were compatible across the carriers (will hopefully happen in a couple of years) and the carriers really have to compete on price. Right now, AT&T are practically carbon copies of each other and Sprint and TMobile are cheaper, but not SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper.

 

[BladeVenom]

Considering the prominence of Motorola and Nokia, why did Apple and Samsung even try to get into the phone market.

 

[Oyeve]

Considering the prominence of Motorola and Nokia, why did Apple and Samsung even try to get into the phone market.

Apple because they had the iphone in the works and samsung made cellphones before motorola and nokia was dominant. Samsung took a chance in the late 90s making phones. That was long before vzw when sprint was king.

 

[Ravynmagi]

The Nokia 920 looks pretty amazing. I'm kinda jealous that it isn't running Android.

I'm not terribly impressed with Motorola Razer Maxx HD, but they seem to be moving in the right direction. And hopefully because they are owned by Google now, they'll do a better job with updates that most others have.

HTC still has some work to do.

Not sure what LG and Sony are doing. Fortunately for them they do so many other things that they can release crappy phones forever if they wanted.

 

[ImDonly1]

A lot of people won't spend money on a phone. There's a ton of cheap, unsubsidized phones. The 3GS is $349, the Galaxy Nexus is $349, the Lumia 800 is $300. These are all good phones, but the problem is there's not a price break on the carrier side for bringing your own device. Why would I spend $350 on a Galaxy Nexus when I can spend $200 on a Galaxy S3 when I'm probably going to keep my service for two years or more anyways?

The only way what you want to happen to happen is if the devices were compatible across the carriers (will hopefully happen in a couple of years) and the carriers really have to compete on price. Right now, AT&T are practically carbon copies of each other and Sprint and TMobile are cheaper, but not SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper.

There is a price discount on prepaid. Unfortunately, most people won't consider anything called prepaid even if service was the same. T-mobile does discounts on postpaid if you bring your own phone.

And T-mobile is significantly cheaper than ATT and Verizon. Sprint used to be, but raised rates after rolling out WiMax and then again when getting the iPhone.

 

[Sureshot324]

I think the smart phone market will cool off because for most people there isn't much need to improve on phones like the Galaxy S3 we have now. The Galaxy Note already has a bigger screen than most people want and there isn't much need for more performance unless you game on your phone.

We'll get 1080p screens and eventually there'll be something faster than LTE, but what else would you want out of a smart phone?

Prices are going to start coming down. If google can sell the Nexus 7 at $200, which hardware wise is basically a high end smart phone minus the cell phone radio, than competition is going push prices well below the $600 or so they're at now.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

I think the smart phone market will cool off because for most people there isn't much need to improve on phones like the Galaxy S3 we have now. The Galaxy Note already has a bigger screen than most people want and there isn't much need for more performance unless you game on your phone.

We'll get 1080p screens and eventually there'll be something faster than LTE, but what else would you want out of a smart phone?

Prices are going to start coming down. If google can sell the Nexus 7 at $200, which hardware wise is basically a high end smart phone minus the cell phone radio, than competition is going push prices well below the $600 or so they're at now.

the problem is that there is no competition when the phone market is controlled by the carriers. phones should already be $300-400 retail

 

[cl-scott]

RIM/BB seems to be circling the drain, as does Nokia, so that's two phone makers likely to be exiting the market very soon. From what I've seen, HTC might well also not be long for this world unless there's a sudden reversal of fortunes within a pretty short time frame. The rest will probably exit as it stops being profitable for them to be in the business of cell phones.

But along the lines of what has been said, right now what we really need is some kind of revolutionary new battery tech. Performance wise, we've largely plateaued on everything short of gaming. Higher resolution screens will just suck batteries dry even faster... What we need is a battery that is the same size, or smaller, than current batteries that has several times the capacity of current batteries. Until you can manage something like that, there's kind of a limit to whatever else can be done.

 

[Red Storm]

I think the smart phone market will cool off because for most people there isn't much need to improve on phones like the Galaxy S3 we have now. The Galaxy Note already has a bigger screen than most people want and there isn't much need for more performance unless you game on your phone.

We'll get 1080p screens and eventually there'll be something faster than LTE, but what else would you want out of a smart phone?

Prices are going to start coming down. If google can sell the Nexus 7 at $200, which hardware wise is basically a high end smart phone minus the cell phone radio, than competition is going push prices well below the $600 or so they're at now.

Until my smartphone does everything I want it to do instantaneously, there is room for improvement. As long as I have to hold the thing in my hands, there is room for improvement. As long as I have to plug it in to charge, there is room for improvement. Etc.

In other words, we're no where near "done."

 

[Sureshot324]

Until my smartphone does everything I want it to do instantaneously, there is room for improvement. As long as I have to hold the thing in my hands, there is room for improvement. As long as I have to plug it in to charge, there is room for improvement. Etc.

In other words, we're no where near "done."

Absolutely, I'm just saying if you get a Galaxy S3 now, you're not going to feel as strong an urge to upgrade over the next few years than if you had bought an original iphone in 2007. Wireless charging isn't a huge advantage and an S3 already does everything most people want to do near instantly unless it's network bound.

 

[Red Storm]

Absolutely, I'm just saying if you get a Galaxy S3 now, you're not going to feel as strong an urge to upgrade over the next few years than if you had bought an original iphone in 2007. Wireless charging isn't a huge advantage and an S3 already does everything most people want to do near instantly unless it's network bound.

Well it's easy to say that now, but we don't know where we'll be in two years. Smart phones have a long ways to go to even match yesterday's desktop performance.

 

[Anubis]

im still waiting for a smartphone that can replace my mp3 player, seeing as that hasent happened yet we are years away from any finish line

 

[Deeko]

Given the new prominence of Samsung, and of course Apple being around, why do LG, Motorola, Sony, even Nokia still make smartphones?

People may say "well their build quality is awesome!!" but so what? It's an issue of revenue and market share. A well-built product is nothing without good sales or market share, so there must be a time when the smartphone market is similar to the IBM clone market (,i.e. HP, Acer, Lenovo, etc. dominating it).

Is this a serious question? Its a big market with a lot of profit potential - any company that can will try to get a piece of it, they aren't going to avoid the market just because Apple and Samsung are doing well there. I mean, five years ago the market was dominated by RIM and Nokia, that didn't stop Apple for stepping in, and similarly, Motorola and HTC were the kings of Android before the Galaxy S. Things change.

Even your latter example of what you think is a more "stable" market you think smartphones should emulate still changes frequently enough. For a long time there were huge players like Packard Bell and Gateway that are largely gone, then it was all Dell, HP, and Compaq, and its only in the last few years that companies like Acer and Asus got involved. Technology changes fast, new players come and go all the time. Of course the Nokias and Sonys of the world are going to try as long as they can.