Rocwurst

Folio said:

All good. My one critique is: shouldn't you break down market share geographically? Of course most readers here know Apple killing it in US and Japan. Not Europe or China. And insignificant in India, Brasil, etc. Does Huawei woes (and Apple's expanding offerings in services, ecosystem) mean potential leaps serving more rising middle class? But I guess that's a whole set of articles. ;-)

Here are figures from Statcounter that demonstrate Apple dominates the second and third largest markets in the world (USA & Japan] along with many other major developed nations:

Japan: iOS = 72%. Android = 27%
Australia: iOS = 64%. Android = 36%
Canada: iOS = 64%. Android = 36%
Sweden: iOS = 63%. Android = 36%
Denmark: iOS = 62%. Android = 38%
USA: iOS = 58%. Android = 41%
UK: iOS = 55%. Android = 44%
Norway: iOS = 53%. Android = 47%

 And a few other countries where iOS is very close to Android
Singapore: iOS = 45%. Android = 54%
Netherlands: iOS = 44%. Android = 55%

 And China is right on the worldwide average for iOS web share:

 China: iOS = 27%. Android = 70%
 
Which means over a quarter of active devices in China and worldwide are Apple which is astounding considering those Apple devices cost on average 4x more than all those Aid devices.

knowitall said:

Utter nonsense. Siri is at best ‘highly incapable’ at the moment.
Its a really awkward read: investors becoming visionary all of a sudden.
When pigs can fly.

Incorrect. Siri is actually more accurate now than Alexa after recent upgrades by Apple.

LoupVentures reported recently that in their latest annual test of voice assistants, Siri's accuracy rate was 79% compared to Alexa on 61% and Cortana on just 52%.  Siri was only 7% behind the leader, Google Assistant on 86%.

And Siri is improving at a faster rate of 22% compared to only 7% for Google and 9% for Alexa.

avon b7 said:

It has been years since speed was an issue for users. 

I use a Kirin 970 and speed isn't even a consideration.

That is the reality for the vast majority of people but don't take my word for it. Ask and investigate for yourself!

The same applies to Apple. Have you seen anyone clamouring to upgrade older handsets because of speed? People are holding onto their iPhones for longer and one of the reasons is that speed - even.on two year old hardware - is fine.

On the other hand faster WiFi, faster modems, signal stability, batteries and charging etc are still important to many users.

Like I said, look around you. Who is complaining about the speed of the Kirin 980, QC845 etc? 

Do you agree that for the vast majority of users, speed isn't a problem?

Actually, when the Huawei only manages 17 frames per second on the latest 3D game vs 58 fps on an iPhone - yes speed absolutely is a problem.

And yes, I see people complaining about the speed of slower phones all the time.  Slower to multitask, slower to launch, jerkier graphics in games - not as "fluid". It is all far more important than faster modem speeds because no Carrier allows phones to reach the theoretical maximum speeds of "faster" modems thanks to overcrowding the bandwidth.

Also, the iPhone has excellent battery life so no the Huawei doesn't thrash the iPhone there either.

avon b7 said:

You are beam focussing narrowly on one basic and largely irrelevant metric.

CPU and GPU speed is irrelevant?!

Ahem, I think most commentators would agree those metrics are in fact the most important when comparing phone performance and on every single one the iPhone obliterates Huawei (and every other Android OEM).

roundaboutnow said:

I’m wondering if those tap to pay cards are really at least as secure as Apple Pay. 

No, regular tap-to-pay cards do not send one-off tokens so they are not as secure.

However, it is even worse than that as regular cards don't require a pin code to be entered (or biometric authentication) to submit a payment. All a malicious agent needs to do is walk around with an NFC terminal hidden under their jacket and they can bump against people's wallet pockets all day racking up fraudulent purchases completely unbeknownst to the card holders.