Madbum

Bart Y said:

lkrupp said:

Okay, so this article from 12/27/2022 says Apple is GAINING marketshare in China.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/12/27/iphone-gains-china-market-share-in-declining-smartphone-market

Now this article says it is losing marketshare in China less than two weeks later.

SO WHICH THE HELL IS IT, AppleInsider?

I swear these goddamn analysts are so full of bull excrement their eyes are dark brown and bulging out of their skulls. 

It’s relatively straightforward - the 12/27/22 report discusses JB Morgan / CAICT aggregated data for Sept. and October. 2022 data, showing the entire China smartphone market declined heavily, while Apple’s share, due to intro and good supply of iPhone 14’s of all models, declined less than the general market, thereby gaining market share in those months.  This isn’t particularly surprising as worldwide, low and midrange smartphone tiers are seeing declines and sales contractions while premium phones, and particularly iPhones saw good to great demand, probably iPhone 14 Plus excluded but more than made up by Pro & Pro Max models.

The current article Jan 6, 2023 covers November China data only specifically.  IF Apple had full and normal Pro/Pro Max supply for China and worldwide, we would have seen more of the same, increased market share of iPhones vs entire (still shrinking) smartphone markets, and likely even to increased total iPhone shipments.  But because of the Chinese Covid shutdowns and related labor issues at the Zhengzhou Foxconn iPhone City factory, production and iPhone Pro/Pro Max supplies were rapidly depleted and constrained both for China and worldwide markets, leading to missed deliveries and lengthened delivery times.  This affected Apple’s relative market share in China leading to a slight 2% drop in market share because the rest of the China market dropped a whopping 34%, far outpacing iPhone declines.  

As mentioned, the China market has a demand problem for Android’s low to Mid tiers (and probably premium tier too) in the face of good to too much inventory (can’t sell enough), while Apple has consistent to very good demand in China held back by supply disruption.  As many investors suggest, iPhone sales interrupted due to supply and delivery waiting tend not to be sales lost but sales delayed into next month (December assuming factory restart and ramp up to almost full capacity, which has happened) or into the Jan-Mar quarter.

Hope this helps.

avon b7 said:

danox said:

avon b7 said:

"Or just possibly, the industry is again simply going wherever Apple leads. Considering that Android phones have so many features before theiPhone does, that seems peculiar -- but Apple did beat everyone to emergency messaging via satellite."

Technically speaking, Apple didn't beat everyone.

Huawei beat them to it with a phone (Mate 50 Pro) that had been delayed by a year due to sanctions. It was originally scheduled for release in September 2021. It was also technically more challenging as the Huawei phone connects to high orbit satellites. 

Samsung beat Apple to a folding phone but so what being first doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t work very well, speaking of which I think that Microsoft and one of their clone makers, beat Apple to a tablet (publicly shown prototype @ CES) 10 years before the iPad, what happened with that, it’s not being first it’s who can design/engineer something that actually works something that most people can use without a propeller head.

The failure of Xerox research labs is also another example of that, they had the entire future (or at least a big part of it) of computing in their research labs, but management didn’t want to step on their existing copying empire, so therefore, nothing got done in the end at least by Xerox.

My point was that the claim made wasn't technically correct. Albeit minor point.

As for folding phones, they have hit the ground running. With the exception of a few Samsung review units, no big manufacturer of folding phones has suffered from any of the problems that many forecast for them. They have been a massive success, selling far more than even manufacturers anticipated. The only sour (but logical) point has been the brake on sales as a result of price. As expected, that brake is coming off fast as new players release phones and each new generation reduces the overhead costs resulting from development. A lot of folding phones have been limited to China but that is changing now. 

Apple has been in the same situation with less than stellar results. Even the original iPhone was an extremely expensive and limited device. Mac OS X was in no way ready for prime time on release. The first MacBook Air overhead easily. The first MacBook shipped underpowered and underported. The butterfly keyboard had design issues. The cylinder Mac Pro also had design related problems. The original iMac one button mouse was an exercise in stubbornness. As was not moving to larger phone screens. As was not moving to 'sticky' menus. As was sticking with a 5W charger for 10 years. As was front mounted ports. As was USB 2. The TouchBar is no more. Force Touch is no more. 

I'm sure you get what I'm saying. Apple has a long history of not getting things right and for many reasons. 'Waiting' or 'being first' is irrelevant except in some very limited cases. 

If we look at the smartphone market over the last 6 years Apple has basically been playing catch up to key features on Android devices. 

In a punch for punch trade off of features, Apple wasn't able to push everything that Android was bringing to market into a few iPhone models. It was always going to be on the back foot in that regard but Apple could drip feed those features to users as it basically has a captive (locked in audience) so iPhone users had to sit back and wait for features to arrive. The one big technical exception was the CPU situation (along with the video area maybe) but can you remember the last time you heard an Android user say they needed more raw speed on their flagship phones or better video? You'd have to go back many, many years to find an example. Not even iPhone users with old iPhones were needing more raw speed. What they really needed with regards to Android phones were things Apple was dragging its feet on. Wireless charging, reverse wireless charging, fast wired charging, low noise photography, low light photography, high screen refresh rates. More biometric options. Although no Android manufacturer has suffered in the slightest from not adopting 3D sensing for things like authentication, Apple even dragged its feet on that. Huawei made it far more useful out the gate (horizontal unlock, 3D small object modeling, eyes on AOD, better privacy with the phone unlocked...). Ah! and the second iteration reduced the notch size. Apple didn't. Ditto bezels. 

Is there any valid reason for Apple not bringing horizontal unlock to the iPhone until now? Nope. It simply decided to hold it back. It should have been there right from the beginning. It's a classic example of why what you are claiming is incorrect. Apple didn't see a need for it in the development phase. How is that possible? But now they do? What changed? 

The reality is that everyone gets things right sometimes and everyone gets things wrong sometimes. Apple is no different. 

The satellite functionality was ready, yes on an 'Android' phone a full year before it appeared on iPhone. The problem was that that phone was subjected to sanctions and couldn't be brought to market on schedule due to geopolitical issues but even a year late it still brought competitive flagship class features to market ahead of others. And for the technical challenges (and they were) that Apple spoke of with regards to getting a signal from a smartphone up into a low orbit satellite, imagine what it must have entailed getting it into a high orbit satellite. 

DAalseth said:

lkrupp said:

DAalseth said:

Mostly it’s just hype and vague hand waving. But we are working toward actual satellite cell service. No more worrying about coverage, or if the blackout shut down your close towers, (that happened to us in December). Actual any time anywhere cell coverage. It won’t be in ‘23 or even ‘24. I’m thinking the early ‘30s, but you can see the first bits now. 

I’m thinking this will be more hype than anything, just like 5G has turned out to be. Just like fusion power generation has promised cheap, clean, non polluting energy for fifty years now. And it will be very expensive too.

Yeah 5G turned out for a lot of us to be a big nothing. But this would be a bigger shift. I remember when cell phones first came out in the ‘80s. they were expensive, and heavy, and only a very few had or could justify them. But nearly forty years later they are, for most people, what phones are, and landlines are rare. We likely are looking at a similer time scale. So maybe not the ‘30s, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see them fairly widespread by the ‘40s. 

As far as fusion, yeah that seems to be on a slow track. As a couple of people pointed out, with the vast improvements in solar and wind generation, both getting their energy from the sun, we ARE using fusion power. Just the reactor is 93 million miles away.