Smartphone sales down 22 percent in Q2, the worst performance in a decade::North American sales are bad for everyone, except, miraculously, Google.
That’s what happens when you keep increasing the price without adding value.
And coming out with a new one every year despite it being the same as last year’s
They should really stop over saturating the market by releasing new models every year with little to no meaningful upgrades.
Even mid-range phones nowadays are good enough to last long after they stop receiving updates, it therefore makes little financial sense (for the average consumer) to buy the newest model every year, not even touching on the environmental impact.
They could try innovating, I couldn’t give a shite about the cameras really. If I want to take proper photos I’ll get a DSLR. I’ll never want their smart processing of pics either.
Give me cool features again.
Like what, though? What is a need you have that your smartphone does not currently serve?
I want my phone to be usable with a dock where I can put in a keyboard, mouse and screen to use as a PC like the steam deck.
My Huawei Mate 10 pro (2017) was the last phone that felt like an upgrade. Everything since then has been better in some respects, worse in others. Just a replacement for a phone that is physically too broken to be used any longer.
I don’t think I’ll ever spend €1000 or more for a phone anymore, even though I could afford it. I’m just not willing to spend that much money on a phone that offers hardly anything new. Maybe if they finally make a fairphone with a decent camera, I would pay a premium for repairability so I can use it for more than 3 years before it inevitably falls apart…
Maybe they should bring back some form-factor diversity that niche consumer segments could gravitate toward, instead of every manufacturer targeting only the largest (and blandest) portion of the pie and ignoring the rest of it. If it’s not clear, I am holding out for some decent “mini-sized” Android option.
I understand ‘worst sales’ but ‘worst performance’ doesn’t really fit. It’s in my opinion this is a fantastic performance on the market. With right to repair, longer software support, some models with replaceable batteries, we can use the phones longer and make the industry more sustainable and consumer friendly. For the last years already, the model feature upgrades were marginal and it’s fine that way.
In the future, I’d hope for further technical and regulatory development in that direction, resulting in further reduced annual sales numbers.
