Smartphone Thunderdome (Samsung vs. Apple vs. Google etc.)

[photon]

Samsung Galaxy Y is pretty crappy!

Found these which seemed interesting, but totals data on what devices are out there would be more interesting.

http://www.developereconomics.com/re...device-nation/

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/...elling-for-215

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by Red-Mile-DJ

Please explain "crap no name phones" and "low end garbage."

Please give specific examples.

I'm not talking about mainstream top of the line phones - they are all at a high level of quality, to the point where it's really not worth arguing about. I'm talking about the prepaid Samsung my daughter has for her emergency phone - total POS. I would guess most prepaid phones would fall into that category - and there are a lot of them.

Android continues to dominate the global smartphone market, with over 255 million units shipped and nearly 85% of the market share in the second quarter of 2014. Most of Android's strength this quarter was fueled by gains in the low (US$100<US$200) and ultra low-end (<US$100) of the market, seeing those categories grow 16.5% sequentially since the first quarter.

http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-market-share.jsp

[Looch City]

Sales of 'crap no name phones' have been increasing due to the emergence of new (and huge) markets such as India, China and practically the rest of Asia.

Android makers saw an opportunity to provide low quality/low cost phones and gain a giant market easily.....why wouldn't they take that opportunity?

If anything, Apple is totally dropping the ball on creating an awesome but cheap iPhone for emerging markets.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by Iggy City

Sales of 'crap no name phones' have been increasing due to the emergence of new (and huge) markets such as India, China and practically the rest of Asia.

Android makers saw an opportunity to provide low quality/low cost phones and gain a giant market easily.....why wouldn't they take that opportunity?

If anything, Apple is totally dropping the ball on creating an awesome but cheap iPhone for emerging markets.

But then that would totally ruin the Toyota vs. Mercedes comparison that Apple fans love to make

[photon]

I don't think that's a market they even want, look how well the 5C / China experiment went.

A friend and I would always have this conversation, would you rather sell Dells to grandmas, or $20,000 crystal encrusted PCs to rich people? The fewer people to deal with the better I say.

[RedMileDJ]

Originally Posted by edslunch

I'm not talking about mainstream top of the line phones - they are all at a high level of quality, to the point where it's really not worth arguing about. I'm talking about the prepaid Samsung my daughter has for her emergency phone - total POS. I would guess most prepaid phones would fall into that category - and there are a lot of them.

You should have said so. I agree.

Your initial post was painting almost all of them with a very big brush.

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by Iggy City

Sales of 'crap no name phones' have been increasing due to the emergence of new (and huge) markets such as India, China and practically the rest of Asia.

Android makers saw an opportunity to provide low quality/low cost phones and gain a giant market easily.....why wouldn't they take that opportunity?

If anything, Apple is totally dropping the ball on creating an awesome but cheap iPhone for emerging markets.

Apple is quite happy making profits:

Apple has a relatively tiny slice of the smartphone market, measured by phones shipped to consumers.

According to the latest data from IDC, iPhones were 17.6% of smartphones shipped last quarter. Android-based phones were 78.1% of the phones shipped.

But if you measure the smartphone market by profits, Apple is practically a monopoly.

Analyst Tavis McCourt at Raymond James estimates Apple has 87.4% of smartphone profits.

The next closest is Samsung, with 32.2% of smartphone profits.

Yes, those numbers add up to over 100%. That's because everyone else is losing money, and so McCourt gives the rest of the world's phone makers negative profit share.

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple...#ixzz3EENjIF5C

The article goes on to suggest that this has left a void at the lower end that Android has filled and that ultimately Apple will run out of high end customers. That remains to be seen, but so far their business acumen has been spot on - the goal of a business being to maximize profits.

It's a great situation for Google too, since they make money from the android ecosystem primarily via advertising revenue so are fine giving away the OS. What I don't understand are the other phone manufacturers that seem to be losing a crapload of money - what's in it for them?

[ExiledFlamesFan]

Originally Posted by photon

I don't think that's a market they even want, look how well the 5C / China experiment went.

A friend and I would always have this conversation, would you rather sell Dells to grandmas, or $20,000 crystal encrusted PCs to rich people? The fewer people to deal with the better I say.

This is a poor analogy. China and India are not global gradmas. They are teenagers just coming into their own. Soon China will be the world's biggest economy. Having excellent market penetration in two very rapidly growing economies is never a bad thing

[Finger Cookin]

How come I don't see a Nexus 5 in the graphs in these benchmarking tests? Is my phone already an obsolete brick?

[terminator]

Originally Posted by Finger Cookin

How come I don't see a Nexus 5 in the graphs in these benchmarking tense? Is my phone already an obsolete brick?

It was obsolete with the 1st gen Iphone

[Finger Cookin]

: (

[RedMileDJ]

Originally Posted by Finger Cookin

How come I don't see a Nexus 5 in the graphs in these benchmarking tense? Is my phone already an obsolete brick?

Nope. Still very relevant.

Originally Posted by terminator

It was obsolete with the 1st gen Iphone

Hardly. ###.

[photon]

Originally Posted by ExiledFlamesFan

This is a poor analogy. China and India are not global gradmas. They are teenagers just coming into their own. Soon China will be the world's biggest economy. Having excellent market penetration in two very rapidly growing economies is never a bad thing

That's true, and I guess that's why Apple tried with the 5C. But I still don't think they're interested in the bottom of the market, if they can make most of the profits with only a small portion of the market penetration.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by edslunch

Apple is quite happy making profits:

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple...#ixzz3EENjIF5C

The article goes on to suggest that this has left a void at the lower end that Android has filled and that ultimately Apple will run out of high end customers. That remains to be seen, but so far their business acumen has been spot on - the goal of a business being to maximize profits.

It's a great situation for Google too, since they make money from the android ecosystem primarily via advertising revenue so are fine giving away the OS. What I don't understand are the other phone manufacturers that seem to be losing a crapload of money - what's in it for them?

More and more "mid" range phones are coming with high to flagship level performance. Just some companies still put out super gimped hardware at mid range prices to increase profit margins. Samsung is one of these. Sony, Moto, Oneplus and Google are not. Samsung, LG and HTC are really bad at doing this in past generations. But now there is a huge shift in the marketplace between these highly performant mid range price phones and it'll only be a matter of time before the situation you had with your "pre-paid" experience won't be an issue anymore.

Originally Posted by Finger Cookin

How come I don't see a Nexus 5 in the graphs in these benchmarking tense? Is my phone already an obsolete brick?

Some sites include it, some don't. Not a huge issue since there are more than four comparisons included.

[photon]

How long until Samsung/HTC/Someone makes a 4" phone to try and get those Apple users that don't want a bigger phone? (I mean a top end phone, not stuff with low res screens or ancient processors).

[TheGrimm]

I know a lot of the "Apple" experience boils down to integration and user interface etc. Credit, where credit is due, they make a pretty polished experience and it IS more simple to use than Android. I've never questioned this, I've owned iPhones in the past and enjoyed them. However I bought into android several years ago, and i've never looked back.

YES, I am that guy who rooted my phone and installed cyanogenmod. This sounds intimidating but if anyone has ever tried the cyanogenmod install experience recently it's incredibly easy to do now.

I run an iPad at home and it's great for toilet surfing. I loved that I can stream music to my receiver with Airplay. I thought, hey, would be cool if my Android phone could do this... One quick google search and 5 minutes later I had Airplay running off my Android phone.

Email/Contacts syncing is easier with Gmail/Google than anything I've experienced on an iPhone. I use Google Play Music and love the service, it integrates flawlessly with my Sonos system at home (in fact, MUCH easier than Apple which requires you to plug in an Airport Express if I recall).

The other thing I like about Android is that each successive software release doesn't bring my phone to it's knees. Google is soon to release a new software version (Nexus 6 debut) and one of the big "features" is that it will increase performance by reducing it's overhead. When's the last time your iPhone 4 felt snappy?

At the end of the day though, it's just a phone, it's not an identity for me.

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by photon

How long until Samsung/HTC/Someone makes a 4" phone to try and get those Apple users that don't want a bigger phone? (I mean a top end phone, not stuff with low res screens or ancient processors).

Not sure about the specs, but Samsung makes the Galaxy S4 Mini. It is the same size as the iPhone 5s

[TheGrimm]

Originally Posted by photon

How long until Samsung/HTC/Someone makes a 4" phone to try and get those Apple users that don't want a bigger phone? (I mean a top end phone, not stuff with low res screens or ancient processors).

Xperia Z3 Compact. It actually looks like a pretty nice phone, I am one of those guys who will sacrifice screen size to not look like I'm walking around with a textbook shoved in my pants.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by photon

How long until Samsung/HTC/Someone makes a 4" phone to try and get those Apple users that don't want a bigger phone? (I mean a top end phone, not stuff with low res screens or ancient processors).

Arguably they already have. Sony's Z3 compact is roughly the same size but with larger screen and faster performance with current best in class camera according to Dx0. Top of the line display, top of the line camera, best in class battery life and top of the line processor and performance. It's a winner except for the Sony pricing which is slightly higher than other mid-rangers.

EDIT: Dang, beat by theGrimm

[photon]

Originally Posted by TheGrimm

Email/Contacts syncing is easier with Gmail/Google than anything I've experienced on an iPhone.

This has greatly improved over time, having just done this; I entered in the info and it just worked (all my contacts and calendars showed up, etc). Far cry from the days where I used an external service to do it.

Originally Posted by Burninator

Not sure about the specs, but Samsung makes the Galaxy S4 Mini. It is the same size as the iPhone 5s

Yeah, they're pretty inferior from what I remember.