Global, U.S. Growth in Smartphone Growth Starts to Decline

To summarize this very long article:<p>Essentially smartphones are entering the laptop stages of ubiquity and market saturation and making people wonder whats next. Smartphones are also losing their wow factor and just becoming another &quot;commodity&quot;.<p>People are also finding less reason to replace their smartphones and replace cycles are getting longer.<p>The only double-digit growth is in the lower priced segments in developing nations and whats stopping Apple and other giants is their reluctance to dilute their premium branding.

Really when it comes to smart phones the things I would want are things not offered by most. - Stop being phobic about thickness already and make it durable. Nearly everyone has a case on it anyway which makes it farcical. - Boost battery life. - Easily accessible SD card, include service doors for a change, stop dropping features like headphone jacks. I admit to being niche but I think at this point improvements in the peripheral aspects are what could move people in addition to anything and even if they got every little niche people wanted it probably wouldn&#x27;t keep the market from saturating without adding major new functionality.

Norvig&#x27;s Law:<p>Any technology that surpasses 50% penetration will never double again (in any number of months).<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;norvig.com&#x2F;norvigs-law.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;norvig.com&#x2F;norvigs-law.html</a>

Just a comment on Apple: they might be positioning the Apple Watch as their next ‘big product.’ I bought one for myself, then one for several family members and we all love them.<p>In an age when too many people stare at their phone in social situations, having a watch that handle calls, emails, text messaging, and simple apps - but, is not something you engage with for long periods of time. I usually don;t use my phone on weekends anymore. The Apple Watch keeps me connected but in a way that doesn’t pull at my attention.

I&#x27;m offended by these now $1K iPhone models, I&#x27;m getting off that train.<p>I want a tiny phone to do sms and emails. The only thing I might miss is maps ... but that could even be done on a smaller phone if Google removed all that crap from the screen as we try to use their maps ...

I don&#x27;t think there&#x27;s much reason to upgrade these days. Years ago I would instantly notice the crisper screen resolution, the nicer photos, and overall snappiness of a new phone. Granted my current phone (Pixel 2) is only a year old, but I can&#x27;t imagine what I would upgrade to or for what reason.

Since I got my first HTC EVO, I&#x27;ve eagerly upgraded phones every two years, and frequently every one. Now I&#x27;m 2 years into my pixel one, and don&#x27;t see a phone worth upgrading too. Between rising prices and the way it feels each recent phone has removed features I&#x27;m in no rush.

New fad. Lots of sales. Market saturation. People realizing they don&#x27;t need nor want the latest and greatest so don&#x27;t. Market declines.<p>There&#x27;s nothing new here we&#x27;ve not seen many times before.

I made a commitment 2013 to only buy repairable phones. 5 years later my fairphone finally died (tbh, I had been wanting that for quite some time) and Motorola&#x27;s vow to provide official parts for its phones made me go with them. The reason to buy the latest and greatest has never been smaller.

This is going to causes ripple effect in the industry. Leading Node is getting even more expensive, it used to have an expanding base of Smartphone using leading node for the past 5 years, sharing the cost and making them affordable. Now it is shared by a smaller number, which means we might see slow down on new node introduction. Luckily TSMC already has everything set for up to 5nm in 2020. After that, not only have we reach the end of Single Core IPC improvement, we might also have reached the end of MultiCore Count increase.

Many parts of this article are so disingenuous. There&#x27;s a smartphone decline coming, but it&#x27;s not here yet, and this article is a premature declaration that can&#x27;t substantiate itself. It starts by talking about a &quot;smartphone decline&quot;, then discreetly transitions to a smartphone <i>sales</i> decline — of only -0.3%. And this decline can be explained by, as the article puts it: &quot;there’s no doubt that the replacement cycle for phones is elongating&quot;.<p>&gt; If you bought a new iPhone 3G in 2008, and then a new iPhone 4 in 2010, you were buying markedly different machines. [...] If you bought an iPhone 6 in 2014 and then an iPhone 7 in 2016, that expected improvement was much harder to mark (except, perhaps for that fact the the iPhone 7 didn’t have a 3.5mm headphone jack).<p>Yeah? What if you shifted the years 2014&#x2F;2016 to 2015&#x2F;2017. Suddenly you&#x27;re comparing an iPhone 6s to an iPhone X. Arguably an even bigger leap than iPhone 3G to iPhone 4.

Unfortunately there are no modern smartphones with a removable battery and the Super AMOLED display screen (the screen on the Samsung Galaxy and iPhone).<p>Batteries are always the bottleneck here. My Samsung Galaxy S6 is at a point where the battery lasts maybe an hour. But because the battery can&#x27;t be replaced I need to buy a new phone.<p>I&#x27;d get a LG V20 (most recent phone with removable battery, over 2 years old) if not for the fact that I&#x27;m so used to that sharp AMOLED display screen that I can&#x27;t go back to an LCD screen.<p>I guess I&#x27;ll be reluctantly buying the Samsung Galaxy S9+, but I hope the battery isn&#x27;t useless in 2-3 years forcing me to buy a new phone again like now.

I am not paying 1000 for an iPhone. Period. Well start looking for budget but good enough Chinese phones as replacement, after all 1k can buy me 2 of those

I may be somewhat of an outlier, but I have been purchasing used phones since my first smart phone (a Galaxy S2). That was a manufacturer refurb from my provider. Since then I&#x27;ve branched out in to ebay and amazon purchased phones, and excepting one V10 that arrived in the mail with a boot-loop issue (resolved easily enough) I&#x27;ve had zero problems with them and saved hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

My First lasted 4 years. [2G, VGA Camera]<p>2nd Phone lasted 5 years. [3G, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, Radio, 5MP Camera]<p>3rd Phone 2 Years and counting. [4G, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, Camera + Front Camera]<p>It&#x27;s a simple pattern. Every new phone buy should be a major Technology Upgrade, not just specification upgrade. So Minimum Requirement for my next phone will be [5G]. Hopefully within next 2 years. :)

I&#x27;ve always been surprised that cellular tablets didn&#x27;t experience more marketshare compared to smartphones. No one has exclusively a cellular tablet that I know of, but frankly I&#x27;d probably ditch my smartphone for a cellular tablet that I carry around at all times. For me, communication mostly happens by email&#x2F;text and phone calls have almost entirely been replaced by videocalling, so in the long-run I see myself moving to just a internet-enabled tablet of some kind. I guess the growing ubiquity of WiFi makes it less of an issue for most people

If you bought a new iPhone 3G in 2008, and then a new iPhone 4 in 2010, you were buying markedly different machines...<p>This is true. The first iPhone was a great product but 3G was a huge upgrade. Retina screens, LTE, the increase in screen sizes, OTA updates all well worth a yearly upgrade. Now the 6-8 are basically the same device with tweaks. Even the two versions of iPhone X don&#x27;t make a significant case to upgrade unless you just upgrade because there’s a new phone released.

Loved this presentation from Ben Evans at the a16z conference. Talks about the same thing in more detail.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ben-evans.com&#x2F;benedictevans&#x2F;2018&#x2F;11&#x2F;16&#x2F;the-end-of-the-beginning" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ben-evans.com&#x2F;benedictevans&#x2F;2018&#x2F;11&#x2F;16&#x2F;the-end-o...</a>

I just purchased an iPhone 8 and I plan to keep this for about 4 to 5 years. My iPhone 6 Plus lasted quite well for 3 1&#x2F;2 years, if you take care of it I see no reason to upgrade. Maybe the market will become completely saturated and stagnant, and Apple return to focusing on making computers.

I wonder how much Apple was helped by the battery debacle in the iPhone 6s. I am sure a lot of folks upgraded because their phone was horrendously slow. Now that Apple has fixed that problem and seemed to make iOS 12 faster than 11, upgrade incentives have gone down.

Incorrect title.<p>Also, Growth in Growth? Are we in derivative territory here, or is this a grammatical error?

I&#x27;m on an iPhone 6 plus, have had it for a while and don&#x27;t see any reason to switch except downgrading to a smaller screen. I&#x27;ve grown tires of this behemoth of a screen and miss my tiny Google phon I could manhandle with ease.

I think there is a strong temptation for Apple and other manufacturers to push an iOS update that cripples their older models.<p>Long-term it would destroy their brand but short term they could potentially see an uptick.