Samsung warns of revenue shortfall due to 'weakening overall demand' for smartphones & com...

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Chief Apple rival Samsung Electronics on Tuesday warned investors that it would report disappointing results for the March quarter, foremost blaming "weakening overall demand."

Samsung Galaxy S10 series


The company also cited a "widening price fall among major products," linked to dropping prices for chips and LCDs, according to the New York Times. While best known in the U.S. for smartphones like the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Fold, the company is a major manufacturer in the phone, tablet, and computer industries. Most iPhone OLED panels are made by Samsung.

Samsung has been hit by Chinese competition as well, and in fact saw its overall Chinese sales fall 25 percent in the December quarter to $13.17 billion. The Chinese government has also been fostering local chip production, leading to stockpiling in Japan and South Korea as supply outstrips demand.

Apple made a similar announcement in early January, warning that its Jan. 29 results would fall billions of dollars short of guidance. The company recorded $84.3 billion in revenue, a result of iPhone shipments being down 15 percent year-over-year. The product was hit particularly hard in China, owing to a combination of a weak economy, exchange rates, Apple's decision to hike entry prices, and above all lower-cost alternatives from local brands like Huawei.

Both Apple and Samsung are suffering from a global decline in smartphone demand. The December quarter saw shipments slide 7 percent, a fifth quarterly decline -- this may be in no small part because people are holding onto phones longer, having no special reason to upgrade unless their phone breaks, becomes too slow, or can't hold a charge. Many in the smartphone industry are pinning their hopes on 5G cellular data, which can be up to 10 times faster than high-end 4G, when widely deployed.



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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 29
    Market may indeed be saturated but has anyone even seen what passes for the top of the line Samsung phone? On a rare walk through Best Buy last weekend I saw them and stopped to take a look, as I do once every couple years just to see where they're at. What a POS. It still looks like some confused relic from the palmOS era, and I can't believe they're still pretending like anyone wants a screen with curved edges. As is well known, this was a bad bet Samsung made in the run up to the iPhone 6 release, where the always-wrong rumor mill was flinging around the idea of a screen that curves at the edges...when of course it was just Apple curving the glass on the edges to make it nice to hold and swipe. But Samsung doubled-down on the rumor to try and beat Apple to the punch, and they did...with something no one ever wanted, and Apple never even considered.
    edited March 2019 cornchipflydogRonnnieOSpamSandwichjbdragonolsphilboogiewatto_cobra
  • Reply 2 of 29
    davgregdavgreg Posts: 1,036member
    Smartphones are now a mature product and the days of huge leaps of capability worth paying for are gone.

    It is time for prices to come down- way down.

    Countless millions of us want a high-performance iPhone but do not give a whit about AR and do not play games on them. We do not want a degraded screen or CPU, but do not really care about the camera beyond FaceTime. What would really be nice is an iPhone with a shelf life of more than 2 years that allowed owners to buy and put in a new battery ourselves without taking the thing apart.

    kestralgatorguynetrox
  • Reply 3 of 29
    flydogflydog Posts: 1,123member
    You mean the forum experts were wrong when they claimed soft sales at Apple were due to Tim Cook being greedy and lack of innovation? Shocking, just shocking!
    edited March 2019 MacProStrangeDaysmacseekerwatto_cobrachasm
  • Reply 4 of 29
    flydogflydog Posts: 1,123member
    davgreg said:
    Smartphones are now a mature product and the days of huge leaps of capability worth paying for are gone.

    It is time for prices to come down- way down.

    Countless millions of us want a high-performance iPhone but I do not give a whit about AR and do not play games on them. We I do not want a degraded screen or CPU, but do not really care about the camera beyond FaceTime. What would really be nice is an iPhone with a shelf life of more than 2 years that allowed owners to buy and put in a new battery ourselves without taking the thing apart.

    Fixed a few issues there. 

    shark5150mike1StrangeDayschasmwatto_cobra
  • Reply 5 of 29
    flydogflydog Posts: 1,123member
    davgreg said:
    Smartphones are now a mature product and the days of huge leaps of capability worth paying for are gone.

    It is time for prices to come down- way down.

    Countless millions of us want a high-performance iPhone but do not give a whit about AR and do not play games on them. We do not want a degraded screen or CPU, but do not really care about the camera beyond FaceTime. What would really be nice is an iPhone with a shelf life of more than 2 years that allowed owners to buy and put in a new battery ourselves without taking the thing apart.

    What's "worth paying for" is subjective, and the 1.4 billion people who purchased a new smartphone last year clearly disagree.   And yes, that number is correct.  19% of the Earth's population purchased a new smartphone last year.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 6 of 29
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    flydog said:
    You mean the forum experts were wrong when they claimed soft sales at Apple were due to Tim Cook being greedy and lack of innovation? Shocking, just shocking!
    It looks like Samsung is blaming the revenue warnings on lack of demand and softening prices on components, ie displays, memory, CPU's and the like, more so than on their branded smartphone sales tho no doubt that's also a factor. 
  • Reply 7 of 29
    DAalsethDAalseth Posts: 2,783member
    Apple makes less and Samsung loses money? I could live with that.

    SpamSandwicholsmathteacher
  • Reply 8 of 29
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    flydog said:
    davgreg said:
    Smartphones are now a mature product and the days of huge leaps of capability worth paying for are gone.

    It is time for prices to come down- way down.

    Countless millions of us want a high-performance iPhone but do not give a whit about AR and do not play games on them. We do not want a degraded screen or CPU, but do not really care about the camera beyond FaceTime. What would really be nice is an iPhone with a shelf life of more than 2 years that allowed owners to buy and put in a new battery ourselves without taking the thing apart.

    What's "worth paying for" is subjective, and the 1.4 billion people who purchased a new smartphone last year clearly disagree.   And yes, that number is correct.  19% of the Earth's population purchased a new smartphone last year.
    What was the average price if you don't mind me asking?

    That would go towards answering the "worth paying for" question. If the prices have been falling as I suspect then the overwhelming majority of those 1.4 billion purchasers don't believe it requires a $700+ purchase, and overall smartphones are getting better features and hardware while costing consumers less, and drawing more folks into the market.

    I think expensive smartphones are the exception. The market itself is becoming commoditized, much like HDTV's. They're all decently good.
    edited March 2019
  • Reply 9 of 29
    This should be a surprise to no one. The days of charging obscene prices for smartphones is are over. Apple, Samsung, and the rest of the smartphone manufacturers needs to bring prices down A LOT. Augmented reality and other new technologies are important to have, and they should stay, but it really does not cost as much to add to these new features to phones as the companies make it seem. They are over inflating their prices in order to fleece their customers out of more and more money, and the customers are beginning to push back against those price hikes now. The biggest reason that I upgraded my phone this year was because Apple gave me a trade-in credit for my previous phone. If I had not gotten the trade-in, it may not have made much sense to get a new phone. The prices are simply ridiculous. I hope I can keep this one for several years, longer than the 3 years I had my previous phone. I really want to see the prices of the iPhones that are coming out in the Fall, if they are any more expensive than last year's models, then Apple will have another terrible holiday quarter and beyond.
    kestral
  • Reply 10 of 29
    jbdragonjbdragon Posts: 2,305member
    Well, I'll continue to do what I've always done, dumb phones to Smartphones. I've always upgraded every 4 years. Went from a iPhone 4, to a iPhone 6, to my current iPhone XS. I'll be getting my next iPhone in late 2022.

    Where the iPhone 4 was really pretty SLLLOOWWW in it's 4th year. The iPhone 6 wasn't half bad. I expect the XS to do even better. I know some think the Speed is overkill now. It's not NOW that matters so much as down the road. How well it holds up over time. Every year the next major iOS update comes out and your phone generally takes a hit in speed. The OS grows with more features, but in turn the demands of the OS goes up. This happens with any Operating System.

    As for Samesung and China, Android is a race to the bottom in profits. They have to fight with everyone else making Android phones. China has their own brands that are hard to compete against. Apple has less of that effect as they are the only ones making iOS devices. How big of a Shortfall will Samesung have? Will we be in for a shocker? As in really bad or just a small shortfall?
    StrangeDays
  • Reply 11 of 29
    zoetmbzoetmb Posts: 2,654member
    Market may indeed be saturated but has anyone even seen what passes for the top of the line Samsung phone? On a rare walk through Best Buy last weekend I saw them and stopped to take a look, as I do once every couple years just to see where they're at. What a POS. It still looks like some confused relic from the palmOS era, and I can't believe they're still pretending like anyone wants a screen with curved edges. As is well known, this was a bad bet Samsung made in the run up to the iPhone 6 release, where the always-wrong rumor mill was flinging around the idea of a screen that curves at the edges...when of course it was just Apple curving the glass on the edges to make it nice to hold and swipe. But Samsung doubled-down on the rumor to try and beat Apple to the punch, and they did...with something no one ever wanted, and Apple never even considered.
    I would never use a Samsung phone.  Not because it's Samsung (although I don't like the company), but because I would never use an Android phone.   But the fact is that unless you've done an extensive market survey or a sales analysis, you actually have absolutely no idea whether people perceive a phone with curved edges as a benefit.   Just like unless one has done an extensive market survey, one doesn't know whether the notch at the top of the newer iPhones bothers people or not.   While curved edges sounds like a useless feature, when I've seen other people with such a phone, it actually looks a bit compelling (to me) - not because of the curve so much, but because the image goes completely out to the edge.   

    Furthermore, if you look at the video accompanying this thread, the Samsung blows away the iPhone in performance in most areas.  Now unless one plays games, they don't actually need that performance, but considering that Samsung accomplished it and Apple didn't, I believe that one has to give Samsung some credit.  It seems to me that with the prices Apple wants for its phones these days, they should be superior in absolutely every respect and they're not. 
    kestral
  • Reply 12 of 29
    zoetmbzoetmb Posts: 2,654member

    jbdragon said:


    Where the iPhone 4 was really pretty SLLLOOWWW in it's 4th year. The iPhone 6 wasn't half bad. 
    I'm still using my iPhone 6.  I got the $29 battery upgrade from Apple some months back and they also cleaned the port, which was giving me a lot of trouble and my perception is that even with the latest iOS is that the phone is as fast as it ever was.   And for what I use it for, which is mainly email, messaging, iTunes, news, web searches and an occasional video, I really don't need more, especially at Apple's current pricing.   But I will probably go for a new phone in the Fall when the new models are released.    
  • Reply 13 of 29
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,328member
    If you've been watching the evolution of intelligent personal devices including iPhone, iPad, and all the copycats you've probably noticed that they are all turning into simple flat slabs of glass with an array of integrated sensors. In other words, they are becoming little more than personal service access & delivery portals and point of presence (fusion of all sensor data related to you (incl. health) and the space you occupy) that is bound to an ever-growing services ecosystem in the cloud. At some point the majority of the value of personal devices, and sources of revenue for Apple, will be derived from paid services and the device prices should drop proportionally.

    One could argue that the inflection point from device-centric value to services-centric value has already occurred. If you look at the consumption cost of your iPhone, which is the cost of the phone divided by the hours/days/weeks/months of actual productive usage, it is quite small. If you spent $1200 on an iPhone and it provides 3 years of productive use that's only $33 per month. Compare that to your monthly consumption costs for telephone, internet access, cloud storage, music streaming, TV, gaming,  productivity app subscriptions, online news & magazine subscriptions, etc., and you'll quickly see where the majority of the consumption costs tied to your iPhone are really going - and you'll understand why Apple is all fired up about increasing the revenue it derives from services.

    Staying connected to modern life doesn't come cheap. You pay a big chunk up change up-front so you can pay an even bigger chunk on a monthly basis to keep everything working.  But you have a choice. I don't hear my Amish neighbors complaining and you can always build a cabin in the woods. Just saying...
    kestralgatorguywatto_cobra
  • Reply 14 of 29
    BebeBebe Posts: 145member
    If your phones are expensive just like Apple's, this is really not surprising.
  • Reply 15 of 29
    zoetmb said:
    Market may indeed be saturated but has anyone even seen what passes for the top of the line Samsung phone? On a rare walk through Best Buy last weekend I saw them and stopped to take a look, as I do once every couple years just to see where they're at. What a POS. It still looks like some confused relic from the palmOS era, and I can't believe they're still pretending like anyone wants a screen with curved edges. As is well known, this was a bad bet Samsung made in the run up to the iPhone 6 release, where the always-wrong rumor mill was flinging around the idea of a screen that curves at the edges...when of course it was just Apple curving the glass on the edges to make it nice to hold and swipe. But Samsung doubled-down on the rumor to try and beat Apple to the punch, and they did...with something no one ever wanted, and Apple never even considered.
    I would never use a Samsung phone.  Not because it's Samsung (although I don't like the company), but because I would never use an Android phone.   But the fact is that unless you've done an extensive market survey or a sales analysis, you actually have absolutely no idea whether people perceive a phone with curved edges as a benefit.   Just like unless one has done an extensive market survey, one doesn't know whether the notch at the top of the newer iPhones bothers people or not.   While curved edges sounds like a useless feature, when I've seen other people with such a phone, it actually looks a bit compelling (to me) - not because of the curve so much, but because the image goes completely out to the edge.   

    Furthermore, if you look at the video accompanying this thread, the Samsung blows away the iPhone in performance in most areas.  Now unless one plays games, they don't actually need that performance, but considering that Samsung accomplished it and Apple didn't, I believe that one has to give Samsung some credit.  It seems to me that with the prices Apple wants for its phones these days, they should be superior in absolutely every respect and they're not. 
    GTFO. You don't need extensive market research to know this kind of thing. You sound like some Microsoft suit whose "market analysis" keeps them using a UI from 1990.

    StrangeDayswatto_cobra
  • Reply 16 of 29
    mike1mike1 Posts: 3,275member
    This should be a surprise to no one. The days of charging obscene prices for smartphones is are over. Apple, Samsung, and the rest of the smartphone manufacturers needs to bring prices down A LOT. Augmented reality and other new technologies are important to have, and they should stay, but it really does not cost as much to add to these new features to phones as the companies make it seem. They are over inflating their prices in order to fleece their customers out of more and more money, and the customers are beginning to push back against those price hikes now. The biggest reason that I upgraded my phone this year was because Apple gave me a trade-in credit for my previous phone. If I had not gotten the trade-in, it may not have made much sense to get a new phone. The prices are simply ridiculous. I hope I can keep this one for several years, longer than the 3 years I had my previous phone. I really want to see the prices of the iPhones that are coming out in the Fall, if they are any more expensive than last year's models, then Apple will have another terrible holiday quarter and beyond.
    The days of charging obscene prices for smartphones is are over.
    What's obscene? Everybody's value proposition is different. If I keep my iPhone X ($1,000) for three years, that breaks down to less than a dollar a day. Personally, I'm OK with that.

    smartphone manufacturers needs to bring prices down A LOT.
    Nobody needs to do anything. You buy what you want and spend what you want. There is a phone for every budget. What you want is a premium device at bargain basement prices. Doesn't work like that.

    but it really does not cost as much to add to these new features to phones as the companies make it seem.
    You're basing this on what? Your extensive experience with premium electronic components. You should start your own company and deliver what you're preaching.

    The biggest reason that I upgraded my phone this year was because Apple gave me a trade-in credit for my previous phone.
    Trade-ins have been around forever and have always helped lower the cost somewhat, be it phones, cars or anything in between.



    StrangeDayspscooter63sflocalRonnnieOwatto_cobra
  • Reply 17 of 29
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member
    gatorguy said:
    flydog said:
    You mean the forum experts were wrong when they claimed soft sales at Apple were due to Tim Cook being greedy and lack of innovation? Shocking, just shocking!
    It looks like Samsung is blaming the revenue warnings on lack of demand and softening prices on components, ie displays, memory, CPU's and the like, more so than on their branded smartphone sales tho no doubt that's also a factor. 
    Where did they detail the disappointing revenue split on components vs smartphone sales?
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 18 of 29
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member

    gatorguy said:
    flydog said:
    davgreg said:
    Smartphones are now a mature product and the days of huge leaps of capability worth paying for are gone.

    It is time for prices to come down- way down.

    Countless millions of us want a high-performance iPhone but do not give a whit about AR and do not play games on them. We do not want a degraded screen or CPU, but do not really care about the camera beyond FaceTime. What would really be nice is an iPhone with a shelf life of more than 2 years that allowed owners to buy and put in a new battery ourselves without taking the thing apart.

    What's "worth paying for" is subjective, and the 1.4 billion people who purchased a new smartphone last year clearly disagree.   And yes, that number is correct.  19% of the Earth's population purchased a new smartphone last year.
    What was the average price if you don't mind me asking?

    That would go towards answering the "worth paying for" question. If the prices have been falling as I suspect then the overwhelming majority of those 1.4 billion purchasers don't believe it requires a $700+ purchase, and overall smartphones are getting better features and hardware while costing consumers less, and drawing more folks into the market.

    I think expensive smartphones are the exception. The market itself is becoming commoditized, much like HDTV's. They're all decently good.
    And iPhones are better, which is why the iPhone ASP has gone up while your knockoffs have gone down. As we saw in PCs, where people said the same thing decades ago, the commoditization hurts the also-rans while leaving Apple to suck up the high-end. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 19 of 29
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member

    gatorguy said:
    flydog said:
    davgreg said:
    Smartphones are now a mature product and the days of huge leaps of capability worth paying for are gone.

    It is time for prices to come down- way down.

    Countless millions of us want a high-performance iPhone but do not give a whit about AR and do not play games on them. We do not want a degraded screen or CPU, but do not really care about the camera beyond FaceTime. What would really be nice is an iPhone with a shelf life of more than 2 years that allowed owners to buy and put in a new battery ourselves without taking the thing apart.

    What's "worth paying for" is subjective, and the 1.4 billion people who purchased a new smartphone last year clearly disagree.   And yes, that number is correct.  19% of the Earth's population purchased a new smartphone last year.
    What was the average price if you don't mind me asking?

    That would go towards answering the "worth paying for" question. If the prices have been falling as I suspect then the overwhelming majority of those 1.4 billion purchasers don't believe it requires a $700+ purchase, and overall smartphones are getting better features and hardware while costing consumers less, and drawing more folks into the market.

    I think expensive smartphones are the exception. The market itself is becoming commoditized, much like HDTV's. They're all decently good.
    And iPhones are better, which is why the iPhone ASP has gone up while your knockoffs have gone down. As we saw in PCs, where people said the same thing decades ago, the commoditization hurts the also-rans while leaving Apple to suck up the high-end. 
    Is volume rising on iPhones? Not as far as I know. They may be recycling current Apple users rather than attracting new ones to the platform since folks like you would be the type most willing to accept new iPhone prices as the cost of being one. Would you agree?  

    StrangeDays said:
    gatorguy said:
    flydog said:
    You mean the forum experts were wrong when they claimed soft sales at Apple were due to Tim Cook being greedy and lack of innovation? Shocking, just shocking!
    It looks like Samsung is blaming the revenue warnings on lack of demand and softening prices on components, ie displays, memory, CPU's and the like, more so than on their branded smartphone sales tho no doubt that's also a factor. 
    Where did they detail the disappointing revenue split on components vs smartphone sales?
    You could read the advisory and see for yourself what they said rather than me interpreting it for you. 
    edited March 2019
  • Reply 20 of 29
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member

    zoetmb said:
    Market may indeed be saturated but has anyone even seen what passes for the top of the line Samsung phone? On a rare walk through Best Buy last weekend I saw them and stopped to take a look, as I do once every couple years just to see where they're at. What a POS. It still looks like some confused relic from the palmOS era, and I can't believe they're still pretending like anyone wants a screen with curved edges. As is well known, this was a bad bet Samsung made in the run up to the iPhone 6 release, where the always-wrong rumor mill was flinging around the idea of a screen that curves at the edges...when of course it was just Apple curving the glass on the edges to make it nice to hold and swipe. But Samsung doubled-down on the rumor to try and beat Apple to the punch, and they did...with something no one ever wanted, and Apple never even considered.
    Furthermore, if you look at the video accompanying this thread, the Samsung blows away the iPhone in performance in most areas.  Now unless one plays games, they don't actually need that performance, but considering that Samsung accomplished it and Apple didn't, I believe that one has to give Samsung some credit.  It seems to me that with the prices Apple wants for its phones these days, they should be superior in absolutely every respect and they're not. 
    You watched it wrong. The GeekBench test of simulated real world use — iPhone blew away Samsung in single core, and in multi core the 2019 Samsung only eked past the 2018 iPhone. Most of the others were comparable, with one more big win going to iphone (Octane) and one more to Samsung. When the 2019 iPhone comes out it will likewise smoke the 2019 Samsung. 
    watto_cobra
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