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Two more games heading to iPhone and iPad have opened up for registrations before they launch, with Ubisoft's 'Might & Magic: Elemental Guardians' reviving the RPG franchise in May, while the developers of 'Ark: Survival Evolved' are accepting sign-ups for iOS beta testing.



Ubisoft has commenced pre-registrations for "Might & Magic: Elemental Guardians," a free-to-play mobile role-playing game based on the long-running game series. The new game is said to offer "fast-paced strategic battles" with "Western anime style" graphics.

As players progress through the game, they can collect hundreds of creatures, evolving them and building the ideal team of elemental warriors for combat. A single-player campaign will help with assembling the team, along with a competitive PvP mode allowing players to take each other on in online battles.



While Ubisoft says the game is a "fresh take" on the original, it will still feature some of the characters previously featured in the franchise. Set in the world of Ashan, it will take players to new areas unexplored in previous games, which will apparently provide some familiarity to existing fans of the series, while still making sure new players will be able to take part without needing to know about the lore from earlier releases.

"Might & Magic: Elemental Guardians" is currently being soft-launched in Canada, Australia, the Philippines, Singapore, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, with the worldwide launch slated for May 31. Those pre-registering for the game will receive an in-game reward of a "very specific creature" that will unlock when the game ships.



Studio Wildcard is working with War Drum Studios to port the popular survival sandbox game "Ark: Survival Evolved" to iPhone and iPad. Arriving sometime this spring, the developers are opening up the mobile version to the public in an iOS beta test, requesting interested players to sign up for the trial.

Based in a Jurassic-era world, players find themselves stranded on a mysterious island without tools or resources. To survive, players have to build shelters and hunt for food, improving their living situation and working with other players in tribes.

Aside from interacting with up to 50 players on a server, players will also need to take on the assorted dinosaurs also populating the island. Over 80 species of dinosaur roam the land, which can be tamed and trained for riding, bred with others, and used to attack rival tribes.

The graphically intensive game will need an iPhone 7 or later to run, according to the official Twitter account, and will take up 2 gigabytes of storage. Compatibility with iPads has not been confirmed, but it is advised the game will require 2 gigabytes of RAM to run on iOS, while the Android version will need 3 gigabytes of memory on devices.

While the game is in a closed beta, Studio Wildcard have hinted that there will be "day 1 in-game bonuses" for those who pre-register.

Google's head of Android security David Kleidermacher claimed in an interview that "Android is now as safe as the competition" on the release of the company's 2017 Android Security report, which seeks to reassure users that it is doing everything it can to protect them from malware and exploits. The problem is that Google can't secure the 2 billion Androids it claims as its platform.

Google claims a lot

Kleidermacher's claim, made during a media tour surrounding the release of its Android Security 2017 Year in Review, sounds a lot like one made in 2014 by Google's former chairman Eric Schmidt, who similarly boasted to the media that "our systems are far more secure and encrypted than anyone else, including Apple."

That was not true at the time and remains false today. A large number of Androids don't even support Full Disk Encryption, which has been on by default on iOS for years.

Of course, Schmidt regularly uttered bold pronouncements that turned out to be clear fictions, such as claiming in 2011 that third-party developers would prioritize Android over iOS in 2012 and that the majority of televisions would be running Google TV. Back then, the media uncritically reiterated his claims as if they were factual.

Google is now trying to peddle an alternative reality where Android is super secure, following several years of embarrassing, massive security lapses, wide scale malware outbreaks, malicious spyware and architectural errors that broke Android's Full Disk Encryption among the subset that could even support it in hardware--all exacerbated by Google's negligent security delegation strategy that inherently put Android users at high risk.

Google Play Protect

In fact, many of the security problems of Android come from Google's notion of "openness" in the loading of mobile software from any source. That's a strong point of differentiation from Apple, which curates App Store titles and works to prevent malicious or dangerous titles from even entering circulation. Apple's curation works to prevent toxic sewage from ever entering the water supply, Google's approach for Android is to try to filter out sludge after it notices that it's doing damage

While Apple's curation works to prevent toxic sewage from ever entering the water supply, Google's approach for Android is to try to filter out sludge after it notices that it's doing damage, using automated machine learning.

This retroactive security approach of Google Play Protect requires sewage filtration on the device because Google doesn't effectively control the flow of bad Android apps. But having another filtration task running in the background is more work for devices that are already underpowered and suffering from performance and battery life issues.

Yet as Google's latest security report noted, "we recognized that nearly 35 percent of new PHA [malware risk] installations were occurring when a device was offline or had lost network connectivity. As a result, in October 2017, we enabled offline scanning in Play Protect, and have since prevented 10 million more PHA installs." (PHA is Google's euphemism for viruses, malware, spyware and ransomware).



Google noted that it removed 39 million bad titles automatically, so another ten million filtered out on the device means Google Play Protect managed to strain 49 million sewer downloads out of what it was actively delivering to users on Google Play.

The company also stated that "devices that downloaded apps exclusively from Google Play were nine times less likely" to end up with malware, meaning that users who dabbled outside of Google's store experienced a total of 441 million dirty downloads just last year--and Google Play Protect filtered out just 11 percent of them from Google Play.

The elusive Android Security Update

Google's security report next moved to security updates, stating that "we also partner with device manufacturers to make sure that the version of Android running on users' devices is up-to-date and secure. Throughout the year, we worked to improve the process for releasing security updates, and 30 percent more devices received security patches than in 2016."

Any improvement in security patches is great, but it's noteworthy that Google didn't provide any useful numbers to gauge how many users were actually receiving security updates. Last month, SecurityLab did profile mobile OS providers and the length of time it takes them to distribute software patches and how long they deliver them for their models, and it was not flattering for any of Google's Android licensees.

The rare Android Update

Google and its partners have also been doing a poor job of getting full Android updates to users. Over the first four months since its release, iOS 11 found its way to 65 percent of iOS devices, and only seven percent of Apple's installed base were using something earlier than iOS 10. On Android's side, barely one percent were running Oreo, and only 28 percent were running the iOS 10-era Nougat. Nearly seventy percent of active phones in use were running a version of Android more than two years old.

Google has worked to deliver some feature updates using Google Play Services, a software package it can push to users even on older versions of the Android OS. However, diagnostic testing indicates that this software is unstable and crashed more than any other code on Android devices. There are also a variety of security issues and features that Google Play can't address.

One is encryption. While all iOS devices have shipped with Full Disk Encryption since iOS 8, Google didn't even begin requiring FDE be active by default until Marshmallow (largely because most Androids were not fast enough to support encryption). Further, this requirement was only for manufacturers of new devices, not Over The Air Android updates to existing users, where encryption remained optional.

That means most Android users would need to manually erase and scramble every block on their devices to make sure their data could not be recovered by another user. Most of the people affected by this lapse in security probably don't even know that. On iOS, users can remotely erase a stolen phone or simply do a device reset that securely removes any ability to recover data from it, because the device is encrypted by default.

Another real-world example of the inadequacy of Google's software update policies for Android and the disconnect between supposed updates and real-world impact: graphics. Google added support for OpenGL ES 3.1 in Android 5.0. Today, that should theoretically be available to more than 80 percent of Android users, but Google's figures show that only 18.3 percent of devices actually support it, in large part because Google has no control over the graphics hardware its licensees use, just as it has historically had little control over encryption, the storage of biometric data and other serious aspects of security.

In contrast, Apple has an installed base that is not only automatically encrypted, but fully secured by Touch ID or Face ID, rather than experimenting with cheap fingerprint implementations like Samsung's that stored data insecurely or that featured "face recognition" security theater that didn't work.



In parallel, that also means that rather than weakly pushing ahead on graphics standards for years and making little real progress, Apple could develop its own highly-optimized Metal API and very rapidly make it ubiquitous across virtually all of its iOS and Mac users. Support for iOS 11 means support for Metal.

Google advanced a new architecture for Android O intended to make it easier to deploy new updates to existing hardware. Called "Treble," the feature draws a separation between the low-level drivers related to fragmented hardware and the core OS above it. This modular design makes it easier to update higher level Android software across a wider range of devices. However, this requires support from hardware makers to enable Treble on their hardware.

Notably, Google did not support Treble on its own Nexus 5x, 6P or Pixel C, a hint that indicated that it didn't plan to continue supporting its products, even after building the mechanism to do this. If Google doesn't bother to implement its own Treble on the phones it makes for its fans, will third parties bother to do this when the only real difference it would make is possibly preventing a replacement sale?

4.5M Pixels show how bad the other 2B Androids are

"We've long said it, but it remains truer than ever: Android's openness helps strengthen our security protections," Google's security report stated, seemingly unaware of the fact that Android has been "open" for almost a decade but has also suffered far worse security lapses, architectural flaws and malware infections than iOS.



Google also touted its Android Security Rewards program, which has paid developers millions of dollars to hunt down and report critical vulnerabilities. It then bragged that "at the 2017 Mobile Pwn2Own competition, no exploits successfully compromised the Google Pixel," a phone that has no commercial footprint and no significant user base, and which presumably has already paid for its security vulnerabilities.

What that really indicates is that Google's "Pure Android" Pixel vision of what an Android phone could be--secured and regularly patched by a vendor who cares about its security reputation--is not representative of the other 2 billion Androids that are in actual use around the world.

Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference is just over three months away, but we already have some idea of what the company will likely be showing off in iOS 12 to drive the next generation of our mobile devices. Here's a look at Apple's Siri voice assistant and automation.

An inflated tale of constant political battles among incompetents

According to an emerging media narrative, Apple fumbled its lead in voice assistants with Siri, and has been relegated into a distant third behind the new leaders in talking to cloud-connected microphones: Amazon's Alexa-powered WiFi mics and its ecosystem of connected devices and a platform of third-party Alexa Skills; and Google's me-too efforts tied to its Assistant running on Android, iOS and some Google-branded appliances.

A recent piece by The Information described the entire history of Siri at Apple as being non-stop dramatic infighting over a series of foundational mistakes and fragile code all falling apart while new acquisitions were thrown on top.

The profile sounded a lot like the same site's earlier depictions of infighting between Android frenemies Google and Samsung related to everything from Tizen smartwatches to enterprise goals, or the bumbling changes in strategic direction within Google and its infighting hardware fiefdoms of Android, Chrome and acquisitions including Motorola Mobility and Nest.

Like its previous juicy tell-all depictions of drama in Silicon Valley, The Information largely cited its sources among disgruntled former employees whose stories were contradicted by others. But the main difference between the three portrayals is in final outcomes.

Google and Samsung actually failed to sell smartwatches, whether Android Wear or Tizen, and fumbled their enterprise pitch, while in parallel Google's Android, Chrome, Motorola and Next hardware have also all been huge expensive catastrophes without sales of any real commercial significance. The last several years of Apple's Siri look like a genius home run next to all of that.

Siri is failing all the way to the bank

People love to hate on Siri, but the worst thing Siri ever did was sell lots of iPhone 4s models, draw attention to other Apple introductions (from Apple Watch to CarPlay to Apple TV 4 to HomePod) and, of course, fail to understand a lot of questions from frustrated users. Ask your HomePod how to make a Negroni and it doesn't help at all. But Apple doesn't sell Siri as a voice first platform.Apple doesn't sell Siri as a voice first platform

Apple doesn't sell Siri as a product at all, so the only way to brand Siri as a "failure" would be to establish that rivals were somehow undercutting Apple's business or future potential with their own voice services. Yet even The Information admitted that Apple remains by far the largest supplier of voice requests, and the only one to support more than 20 languages (Alexa supports three). Siri is at worst assisting in profitable sales of Apple hardware.

If Android gets a leadership success trophy just for voluntarily participating in the volume sales of low-end phones that don't make money despite its variety of serious architectural problems, performance issues and security flaws, surely we can throw Siri a bone for riding along as a supporting actor in Apple's massive, global cash machine, even if it can't tell you what's in a drink on demand faster than you can just look it up on your iPhone.



Nobody is passing over Apple Watch (the most popular smartwatch by a vast margin) to get Alexa-connected smartwatches. Buyers are not shrugging off CarPlay--which is so popular it has forced every major carmaker to offer support, even those who once actively resisted it such as Toyota--to instead get car-mounted Alexa hardware. HomePod actually outsold comparably-priced "smart speakers" and much cheaper Amazon Echo devices in its debut, and even Apple TV has no competitors asking a similar price for hardware just because they're powered by Alexa.

For being such a celebrated business, Alexa doesn't seem to exercise much commercial muscle.

Alexa and the 25,000 Skills

The real power of Amazon's Alexa is supposedly the third-party support for its voice action extensions, called "Skills." These allow app developers to expand its voice capabilities to support controlling devices and tasks such as ordering a favorite pizza from Dominos. If you review any listing of "the best 50 Alexa Skills," you mostly get a junkyard of fluff

The Information didn't dwell on the value of these skills. Yet if you review any listing of "the best 50 Alexa Skills," you mostly get a junkyard of fluff. For example, TomsGuide listed a series of 50 Skills that included lots of things Siri already does, such as music playback; dictating messages; asking about stocks prices; asking for news reports from NPR, CNN or the BBC; controlling home lighting automation; listening to podcasts; asking how to spell a word; or requesting a car from Uber or Lyft.

Other "Skills" were odd novelties, such as playing cat noises or thunderstorm sound effects, asking for a word definition of the day or an inspiring quote. Others Skills offered voice assistance for things Siri can look up on your phone, such as how to make a drink or get first aid advice. Other Skills were audio-only versions of apps. The most frequently cited among "top Skills" is a banking app for Capital One that accesses your bank balance and can make a payment. To use it, you have to speak out a security PIN code. That just seems like a bad idea. Alexa integration sometimes uses the same type of "security" to unlock your doors.

Other Skills involved devices, such as telling your (high-end model) Roomba to begin vacuuming or to adjust the temperature on a digital Sous Vide. You can also start your car remotely (if you have one of a few new vehicles) or control future home appliances from Whirlpool. It's almost as hard to see the valuable utility here as it is to discern any proprietary advantage Amazon Skills can wield in the long term.

Apple, Apps, Siri and Automation at WWDC 18

Virtually all of these Skills are tasks you can do from a smartphone app, just triggered by your voice via a speaker instead. How will Apple ever catch up? The answer may lie with Workflow, an app the company acquired nearly a year ago.



Workflow is the graphical (rather than voice) version of what a lot of people seem to imagine as the ideal goal of Siri: it lets you define a set of actions and then trigger them with a touch, from the Home page, from within apps (on the Share Sheet), from the Today widgets page or even from your Apple Watch. Given how turns a trigger into complex action, a Workflow Intent for Siri could enable third parties to craft any sort of skill for users to launch with their voice, or graphically from any iOS device.

The insurmountable Skills advantage of Alexa largely goes away with a way for iOS app developers to add Siri automation via Workflow. The pizza order that Alexa lets you repeat would now be something that any app developer could expose as a voice trigger, much the same way that HomeKit allows devices to respond to a set of controls via Siri, or from direct control in apps or widgets.

Note that Alexa doesn't have to go away for Siri to work well or improve. Users might choose to have both, using an Alexa mic to order products while using HomePod to fill their living room with great sound and provide access to their personal information. However, the narrative that Apple is headed toward oblivion because Amazon has sold tens of millions of Alexa mics over the past few years is really not true by any stretch.

A surprising deficit of the Information

Reinforcing the huge gap in logic that accompanies much of the recent reporting related to Siri, The Information appeared to leave out material facts in order to contrive a tale of "everyone else in the voice universe" muscling into or otherwise disrupting Siri. The piece noted that Apple banned its former Siri employees (who left to launch Viv Lab) from playing basketball on its campus among concerns they'd recruit away the Siri talent Apple supposedly doesn't have.

There was no mention of the fact that those Viv employees (Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham) not only launched a project to compete against Siri (which they publicly demonstrated in early 2016) but also sold themselves to Samsung toward the end of that year to work on what was intended to become Bixby.



The Viv team promoted their product as enabling more conversational, complex voice interactions than Apple's Siri could. But they couldn't ultimately get it to work. According to the Wall Street Journal, Samsung was forced to revert to the existing code of its languishing internal S Voice project.

Last year Samsung had to delay its Bixby voice service from the very flagship that it was supposed to differentiate. And across the next year reviews continued to describe it as "unforgivable," or "the kindest way I can describe it right now is utterly unimpressive."

Rather than shipping Viv's "better than Siri" on an imagined 400 million devices, Bixby ended up as an anti-feature dogging Samsung's flagship Galaxy S8 and doing no favors for the latest S9 this year. "Bixby is, by far, the most frustrating part of the S9," wrote Brian Heater for TechCrunch last week.

Isn't the massive failure of Viv to deliver a "better Siri" across the last three years--despite all the market power afforded by the world's largest shipper of smartphones--more important to understanding the voice assistant market than an anecdote about Apple not wanting Vivi to poach their employees on its own campus?

Selective reporting that portrays Alexa's largely frivolous Skills as mountains of pure gold while brushing off the fact that selling voice appliance devices to the world would require support for more than three languages and at least some presence in both of the world's largest two markets isn't really good information.

Real people on the utility of voice

Responding to dramatic portrayal of Siri woes at Apple, one reader of The Information wrote, "I wish Aaron and Kevin had also looked outside the Bay Bubble to see what motivates buyers of smartphones and 'Smart Speakers' - and find out what they really want out of their Digital Assistants.

"My own home is littered with two Echo 'First Gen' tubes, two Echo Dots, a Google Home and a HomePod--and they're used almost entirely for weather (all roughly equal), timers (advantage HomePod, because it's audible a room away), spelling (advantage Echo dot, because it's cheap and can be placed beside a computer) and music (massive advantage to HomePod, which gives the only acceptable music stream.

"We have an iPhone 7, iPhone X and Samsung s8+, upon which the digital assistants are used to make phone calls, deliver weather forecasts, set timers, set alarms and give driving directions. I'd rank Siri and Google Assistant about equal at these tasks - and Siri is actually a lot more useful to me because she's on Apple Watch, which I use far more often than any of the speaking tubes. Google Maps are probably more reliable in tests than Apple Maps, but I find the latter good enough in Car Play, which I find myself using far more often than Android Auto.

"You'll note I haven't once mentioned IoT. We do have a home theater and thermostats that are Alexa-enabled. I could enable the skills and memorize the commands, buteh. The Android and iOS Apps are simpler, and a Control4 remote appeared spontaneously on my Apple Watch. Both functions are simpler to control WITHOUT voice."

Siri expectations for WWDC 18

So while you can expect Apple to expand Siri with some new Intents and to potentially add third-party task automation support in Workflow, don't expect the company to devote major competitive efforts toward replicating the extremely low-value Amazon Skills ecosystem that offers users little more than a more clumsy way to use apps without looking at them (the way Google has blindly, desperately tried to copy Alexa).



On the other hand, Apple has been enhancing how different Siri devices work together on the same network, an issue that neither Amazon nor Google really have. This is still a work in progress, but HomePod already does a good job of silencing your iPhone when both are listening for "Hey Siri."

What could be improved is Continuity handoff between devices, allowing HomePod to delegate questions to your iPhone or Apple Watch when it can't answer them, potentially even working together to deliver a UI on your phone or watch while listening to you from HomePod.

Similar HomePod integration with Apple TV, enabling you to ask it to play a specific show, also seems likely, enabling third-party tvOS developers to build new types of apps and games that can listen for feedback and commands using HomePod's fancy array of microphones.

HomePod will also likely expand its ability to support new types of requests (Hey Siri, where's my iPhone?), and expand what apps and data it can access under a Family Sharing account. You might also expect Apple to expand upon Type to Siri as a way to discreetly invoke Siri-type searches without using your voice at all.

What do you anticipate WWDC 18 will introduce for Siri, Workflow, HomePod and Continuity? Add your comments below.

In the first of a series of comparison video, AppleInsider pits Samsung's Galaxy S9+ against Apple's iPhone X in a barrage of benchmarking tests. Read on to find out which flagship came out on top.



Last year, we compared the iPhone X's performance to the Note 8 and found the X to be the clear winner. But with fresh internals from Qualcomm, can Apple's handset fend off Samsung's latest attempt at smartphone supremacy?

Both the Galaxy S9 and S9+ models feature the same 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, with four high performance cores and four efficiency cores. The Note 8 from last year had the same CPU layout, but in this year's silicon the high performance cores are clocked higher, and the efficiency cores are clocked slower.

Both S9 models get an identical graphics chip as well, which Qualcomm says is 30 percent faster, 30 percent more efficient and has 2.5 times the display throughput than the graphics chip in the Note 8.

The most significant difference between the two Galaxy models is that the S9+ gets 6GB of RAM compared to only 4GB on the regular S9.



The iPhone X on the other hand, has a 6-core A11 Bionic processor with two high performance cores and four efficiency cores. For graphics, the iPhone X uses an Apple designed three-core GPU, which boasts 30 percent faster performance over the GPU used in the iPhone 7 models.

The main drawback is that iPhone X has 3GB of RAM, only half that of the S9+. Apple's operating system is very efficient, but Samsung definitely has the upper hand in terms of raw capacity.

Starting off with Geekbench 4, the iPhone X completely destroys the S9+, especially in single core performance. The iPhone came in with single- and multi-core scores of 4,243 and 10,433, respectively, while the S9+ managed scores of 2,007 and 8,307.



For the graphics test, the S9+ scored 14,308, very close to iPhone's 15,177. A score like this is big news on the Samsung side.

Moving onto the Antutu benchmark, the S9+ actually beats out the X by a good margin, with respective scores of 263,661 and 211,652. For Samsung, the boosted results are thanks to the massive improvements Qualcomm put into its graphics chip.

Antutu's HTML 5 test crowned the iPhone X as the winner with a score of 37,461, not that far off Samsung's 33,924.

In Basemark OS2, the S9+ came out just slightly ahead with a score of 4,108 compared to iPhone's 4,044, but if you take a look at the detailed test results, you'll see that the iPhone X won in every category except memory. This result makes sense considering the S9+ has double the RAM of the iPhone.



In GFXBench OpenGL's 1080p Manhattan Offscreen test, the iPhone X is slightly ahead with a score of 5,463, compared to 5,106 on the S9+.

The iPhone X completely destroys the S9+ in the Jetstream browser benchmark, but the test is mostly a comparison between each operating system's default browser. For iOS, results won't change using an alternate browser since Apple requires developers to lattice in WebKit, but it is possible that the Galaxy S9+ might fare better with third-party software.

In Octane 2.0, another browser benchmark, the iPhone X yet again floors the S9+ with respective scores of 33,683 and 11,682, so we can see just how good Safari is compared to Samsung's browser.

Since the S9+ boasts improved WiFi connectivity, we decided to test the speed using the Speedtest app. There was basically no difference at all since we are running off of slow business Wi-Fi in a city that doesn't support fiber internet. Other reviewers in big cities that do support fast internet have seen incredible Wi-Fi download speeds on the S9+, though we were unable to confirm these reports.



Looking at the sum of our benchmarking evaluation, it seems Samsung has mostly caught up to the performance of Apple's flagship -- with some notable exceptions.

Performance on both devices has reached a point where it should no longer affect your decision-making process when deciding between an iPhone and a Galaxy device. Most of the extra bandwidth is now used for unique features like 4K 60 frames per second video recording, augmented reality processing and biometric authentication, like Face ID and Intelligent Scan.

If you're trying to figure out which phone to buy, we recommend basing your decision on the features and operating system you like the most, as raw performance is no longer a determining factor.

The fastest growing segment in global smartphones isn't Google's vision for super-cheap, simple Android phones. Instead, according to new market data, it's refurbished high-quality phones that carry a desirable brand but can be sold at a more affordable price, a segment where Apple is "leading by a significant margin."



A report by Counterpoint Research noted that "the global market for refurbished smartphones grew 13 percent year over year in 2017, reaching close to 140 million units," and contrasted this against the larger market for new smartphones, which grew by barely 3 percent during the year, or just 33.8 million units.

Apple's unit sales of new iPhones last year were flat; in the December quarter, the number sold actually slipped slightly (-1 percent), although much less than the 5 percent drop suffered by the industry at large. However, despite shipping fewer boxes, Apple actually earned 13 percent higher revenues by selling more higher-tier products, including "super premium" iPhone 8 and iPhone X models priced starting at $699 and $999, respectively.

Among Android licensees, the retracting volume of unit sales was financially disastrous because most manufacturers were already making very little to nothing selling low-end and middle-tier phones. As sales become harder to sustain, competition among poorly-differentiated, commodity Androids gets increasingly cutthroat.

This has already forced over one hundred discount phone makers out of business in China, after pushing many PC makers such as HP out of the handset business. Analysts expect a further Battle Royale to occur among commodity Android smartphone makers this year.

While cheap commodity phone makers fight over scraps, the strength of Apple's premium devices is allowing them to return to the market to compete again in a second wave, following a trend that occurred among luxury carmakers selling their certified pre-owned vehicles directly in competition with new, entry-level economy cars.

"The Surprising Growth of Used Smartphones"

Counterpoint's report on the refurbished phone business highlighted that "only 25 percent of all pre-owned phones are sold back into the market," and added that "of these, only some are refurbished.""The mid low-end market for new smartphones is being cannibalized by refurbished high-end phones, mostly Apple iPhones"

However, those refurbished models are having a big impact on the market. Counterpoint Research Director Tom Kang stated, "with 13 percent growth, refurbished smartphones are now close to 10 percent of the total global smartphone market."

The extended lifespan and resale cycle of existing iPhones is commonly cited as a potential threat to Apple's future sales growth. However, Kang pointed out that "the low growth of the new smartphone market in 2017 can be partially attributed to the growth of the refurb market. The slowdown in innovation has made two-year-old flagship smartphones comparable in design and features with the most recent mid-range phones.

"Therefore, the mid low-end market for new smartphones is being cannibalized by refurbished high-end phones, mostly Apple iPhones and, to a lesser extent, Samsung Galaxy smartphones."

One factor that gives Apple an advantage in selling refurbished iPhones to users who might not be able to afford a brand new one, and would otherwise likely buy a lower-priced Android, is the fact that it supports its hardware with iOS updates for four or five years, rather than less than a year or two as is common among Android makers--even including Google itself.

New iPhones also ship with fast processors and a modern, efficient iOS. Androids, particularly low-priced models, are sold with underperforming chips and often ship with old versions of an OS that is already bad at managing memory and CPU tasks.

Faster segment growth than India, and "Apple leads by a significant margin"

Counterpoint stated that Apple and Samsung's dominance "is more obvious in the refurb market than in the new smartphone market," noting that the two companies account for "close to three-fourths of the refurbished smartphone market [by unit volume], with Apple leading by a significant margin." "It's a surprise to many that the fastest growing smartphone market in 2017 was not India or any other emerging market, but the refurb market"

By revenue, "the dominance grows further, as the two smartphone giants control more than 80 percent of the revenue in the refurbished smartphone market."

The firm's Research Director Peter Richardson stated, "it's a surprise to many that the fastest growing smartphone market in 2017 was not India or any other emerging market, but the refurb market. With refurb smartphones in play we think the market for new devices will slow further in 2018."

Richardson added, "regions seeing the highest volume include the US and Europe, while the fastest growing markets for refurbs include Africa, SE Asia and India. All have been seeing initiatives from the major operators (e.g. Verizon, Vodafone etc.), OEMs (e.g. Apple) and major distributors (e.g. Brightstar) who are adding full life-cycle services.

"The industry uses data analysis to predict future resale values of devices, which means consumers can be given a guaranteed buy-back value at various points during their ownership. This helps consumers to manage the high cost of the latest flagship smartphones - or at least to obtain a useful contribution to partially offset the cost of their next phone."

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