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Global Mobile Phone Sales Post First Decline Since 2009
One of the fundamental creeds held by the proponents behind every new technology and gizmo market, including cell phones, smart phones, tablets, Sony Walkmen, 8-tracks, VHS tapes, juice extractors, tape rewinders, etc., is that their growth rate (and by implication the consumers' discretionary income), is completely dissociated with gravity and will grow at a far faster pace than global economic growth virtually in perpetuity. This is the case until empirical evidence reminds them, and everyone else, that gravity eventually always wins. Which is precisely what happened with global mobile phone sales, which in 2012 posted their first decline since the cataclysmic 2009. Gartner reports that the global cell phone market declined by 1.7% in 2012, down from 1.78 billion devices sold in 2011 to 1.75 in 2012. "Tough economic conditions, shifting consumer preferences and intense market competition weakened the worldwide mobile phone market this year," the report says.
More on the findings:
Samsung and Apple continued to dominate the market, with the Korean giant selling 385 million phones in 2012, of which 53.5 per cent were smartphones, with Apple selling 130 million smartphones.
Chinese company Huawei was third spot in worldwide smartphone sales for the first time in the fourth quarter, Gartner said, selling 27.2 million smartphones in 2012, an increase of 74 per cent.
Gartner said it expects sales of feature phones – ie any phone that is not a smartphone - to continue falling this year.
...
Another reason for the drop is the weakening demand for feature phones, which possess some smartphone abilities but are limited. While smartphones had record sales and were up 38.3% for the fourth quarter of 2012, feature phone sales fell by 19.3% -- and that decline is expected to continue.
Before smartphone proponents argue this is merely rotation out of a commodity into a premium space, read this:
Gartner said while the demand for iPhones in the fourth quarter, consumer demand favoured the less expensive iPhone 4 and 4S. It added the arrival of the iPad Mini also created a dilemma for some users when deciding if to upgrade an iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S to an iPhone 5, or buy the new tablet.
So while there is an element of conversion into ever more feature rich offerings (aka margin compression), the fundamental gating factor is no longer coolness, or hipness, but the simplest one of all: the bottom line.
This also means that the margin compression that has been haunting firms such as Apple will not only continue but accelerate, as the peak growth phase has passed, and now, just like in the sovereign arena, it is a race to the margin bottom.
Finally, since the preservation of optimism is key, Gartner leave on a slightly bullish note:
As a whole, however, the report predicts the mobile market will do better next year. Gartner says it expects mobile sales to reach 1.9 billion in 2013 -- with a 1 billion coming solely from smartphones.
It also says 2013 will be the year of the third ecosystem, as carriers try to break free from the influence of Apple and Google Android while Microsoft's Windows Phone 8, BlackBerry 10 and others duke it out.
"Alternative operating systems such as Tizen, Firefox, Ubuntu and Jolla will try and carve out an opportunity by positioning themselves as profitable alternatives,” the report says.
Alas, Gartner's forecast is surprisingly reminiscent of what it said a year ago, when it too forecast a continuing growth in sales. Sadly, for both Gartner, and the entire human race, what happens next nobody can see, as whatever will be, will be purely a function of the unintended consequences of the actions of a few select central planners who do everything in their power to convert fiat into wealth (by dilution).
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we're all waiting for that fucking watch
B, B, But that guy on CNBC said the ecomony is all betta.
He said that I should BUY, BUY, BUY everything I can.
I should go -- "All In"
I can get a Casio for about $8 to $10. Why do I need a piece of fruit on my wrist?
Also, AAPL is stealing someone's idea. They had them on CNBC ~3 months ago. CNBC made a big deal about the new innovation (i.e. green spew) that is surrounding the Crapple.
Fuck the central planners, the consumer kulture and their planned obsolecence.
I don't own a "smart phone" or any other consensual tracking device. My quad core IBM Lenovo can do WAY more than a "smart phone" and barely costs any more.
My money is in gold, silver, guns & ammo.
I got my Samsung Note 2 in the mail today. :-)
You know that emaciated little Biafran/Nigerian kid with the flies on his face (like the president's) that you’ve seen in all the "feed the hungry" ads?.
He needs to upgrade from his beaten up iPhone 3.
He needs to die off along with most of the 3rd world so I can live high on the hog and not have to worry about sharing my standard of living with 3rd world fuckers wanting a piece of my living standard.
and I read this from the fucking "Cloud"
The cloud can kiss my ass.
The way to avoid tracking is to buy a PAYG mobile phone with cash and always top it up with cash. Only switch it on when you want to use it. Nobody knows who owns it.
The irony.
The metric system, flyin' cars, more liesure-less work and that fuckin' watch.
Where's my fucking jet pack?
They promised there'd be jet packs...
rut ro - scubby doo
How many Obama Phones were "distributed" recently?
Fuck...this is fucking huge. I better call someone!
No no no. You are supposed to video conference them while calling someone else and texting at the same time... while driving on the freeway and eating nachos. It's called "multi-tasking."
I'm actually quite distraught... Does this mean we're going to see fewer narcissistic nymphs posting naked self pix on themselves on the interwebz? I'm going short the interwebz then... it's all about the content, people!
Figure everyone's 2-year contract is up and they don't want another 2-year rape.
Edit: F.U. AT&T
Republic wireless (not affiliated) http://www.republicwireless.com/ is where its at. $20 a month and no contract. When they have more phones and phones that can be rooted I think their popularity will explode.
Thanks for the tip, amigo.
Well, that was interesting. Thanks. The catch being 3G so it's slow unless ur using wifi. The major carriers push using wifi also, but this should kick'em in the nads.
The honeymoon is over already?
Kind of a bullshit story to use as illustration of phone sales decline. Yes, feature phones are dying but the smartphones are increasing but the price point is higher so selling fewer and people are holding on to them longer.
This is like saying 'Holy shit, television sales are dropping' when people were moving from black&white to color. Yeah..tv sales are dropping but it's not the same technology being bought or discarded.
Personally, I'm waiting for the Oppo Find 5 to be widely available. Time to give a Chinese phone a try.
Or I might just wait for the Samsung Galaxy S4/Note 3.
Free chinese backdoor hack with every device!
Unlike our good, old, Western backdoors.
Or NSA. A hacker proved Android sends all data back, and Wired magazine confirmed it.
I might too if it just had mem card (dealbreaker), replaceable battery (bad) and headphone jack (usb just not the same). I'll pass.
People sre finally figuring out that having food in your fridge is a much more useful status symbol than a piece of shit, slave-labor made government tracking platform...
I'd guess it to be more of weighing the value of the sunk cost already in your hand, vs. the value gained from any upgrade. That fifth row of icons was hardly a game-changer, and nowhere near worth the price.
Take a look at the recent food stamps chart. To me it looks like sheeple want to have both and want someone else to pay for it. The same is holds for other developed countries.
Don't worry - if demand for iphones drops too far, Obama will mandate that all food stamps are distributed via app directly to your iPhone. Then everyone will need an Obama phone to get paid, demand through the roof and APPL to 1000!!!!....
That and the iKiddies that used student loan money to purchase the latest and greatest over the years are now in the real world without a job. No job, no buying.
Phones have reached that same level that PC's have hardware wise - where improvements are made in smaller and smaller increments and the current model is "good enough" to last you several years. No need to buy the newest version every 6 months in order to have the latest bells-and-whistles or sufficient performance to play the hottest new game.
They've reached what I'd call the Windows-XP level - sufficiently stable enough to use for years, upgrade to WIndows 7, 8, or whatever comes along next not especially needed ... Android had a lot to do with that.
If you had said XP->Vista, I would agree. But XP->W7 was a pretty major step up.
Windows 7 is a pretty damn awesome OS.
Agree, it's far superior to Vista (which sucked horribly), but there are still MILLIONS of computers that run XP out there, and will continue to do so for years - expecially in the corporate world.. 600,000 where I work - with plans to transition them to Windows-7 by 2017, because Microsoft is forcing them to do so.
And what does Windows-7 really provide that XP didn't?
I run my company on win/97
Why fix that which works just fine.
native 64-bit, DX11, improved user directory structure, updated desktop, kernel is much improved (which leads to better drivers and improved stability), better security settings (uac), faster boot, aero, improved stability, ...
That sounds like a sales pitch.
To people who know how to use a PC and want to be in control of it, Win7 intentionally makes it more difficult. I use XP-Pro-SP3 on my self-built desktops and Win7 HP on two laptops. XP is far better for me. With XP: I AM IN CONTROL. AND I never use anti-virus bloat or s/w firewalls on any of my systems! Just a NAT router to keep the crap well away.
Win7 intentionally makes it more difficult, as the majority of people out there know very little about PCs. And having spent ages cleaning PCs using Hijackthis and equivalents, I can assure you that's a good thing. In terms of admin control, provided that you know what you're doing, there's very little difference. Under the bonnet, in terms of ring 0 driver requirement and relevant security settings, I can assure you there's a lot.
And stop replacing the 's' in Microsoft for a '$' sign. It really detracts from your argument, as it makes you sound as if you're 14.
XP -> Win7 is not a must have nor compelling. BUT, what MS has done is shut off the upgrade path for MS applications such as IE. IE 9 is not available in XP, IE 8 is the limit. IE 8 is not compatible with many web sites, thus forcing people to either change browsers or upgrade to Win 7. My theory is part of the decline in IE use is due to people choosing to take the path of least resistance and switch browsers rather an going throught the hassle of upgrading their OS.
Or just use Mozilla. Fuck IE.
Sure, for personal use, but still needs to be supported for software development.
Downvote? Guess you never had to develop software for customers that set the requirements, duh.
"And what does Windows-7 really provide that XP didn't?"
Very little from a user-functional pov. Maybe better Wi-Fi connectivity capability. But offset by a lot of other crap.
I had XP IE 7 for years, loved it, I COULD work on it, and control IT, not like Win7.
Which IMHO is a POS.(esp for AT&T users).
Microsoft has a real nasty habit of Changing OS, before they have even worked the bugs out of the one 12-18 mos old.
Vista Sucked, and IE 9 Sucks, 8 was ok, 7 Better.
Now they are (for a change) basically GIVING away Win 8, and few are biting.
Every change (upgrade), is less user friendly, and hides crap from you that was an open book on IE7 XP Svc Pk3.
Any browsers that use Google or I run from.Every Android I have looked at(Samsung & HTC/LG,etc, depend on Google), which is a goobermint info machine.
I agree, I actually rather like windows7. No problems whatsoever. It was a nice move from xp to 7.
"Windows 7 is a pretty damn awesome OS."
ROTFL.
Whereas XP-Pro will be written in history as the peak of Micro$oft's O/S achievements.
I currently own no phone of any kind. Got tired of them half a year ago, but even before then, there was only one time I ever bought a phone in late 90's. After that I kept of finding discarded phones left by the kind of people that tend to upgrade every revision cycle. I never had to spend money on anything other than the airtime and avoided contracts all together.
Most communication I do nowdays is via e-mail, instant messanging or in person. I have an emergency cell phone in my car with an airtime card that's ready to be activated if the vehicle breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Have no use for a phone otherwise. No monthly bills, no telemarketers and no annoyance.
DOH!
Turns out when food gets really expensive there IS something electronic you can do without.
So, you can eat iStuff.
iHave an old crappy Samsung Cricket phone, which iNeed to charge every day. That's how old it is.
iWill not buy a "smart" phone. Never ever ever.
iAm holding on as long as iCan to my current POS phone.
Buy a new battery on ebay, dirt cheap, give the phone another round.
'Intense market competition' does not cause declining sales. If anything, intense market competition lowers the price and stimulates overall sales, while reducing margins.
Thank you! That statement flies in the face of economic reality.
Oh, wait a minute... so does current market.
First think I thought too, reading the article.
Double plus good post for you, sir.
Getting better, makes everything worse.
Phone market is no different than the PC market - once you get a certain level of performance and features, there is no reason to go get a new one every 6 months - the one you have is fine for a few years. I would imagine we are close to the peak on phones in terms of speed/performance. There is only so much you can do with a smartphone, only so much computing power needed. Maybe a higher resolution camera, perhaps speedier graphics. At some point the incrementalism of the improvements makes people put off paying for a new phone since new models don't do much more than existing.
The only thing the phone market has going for it is breakage and loss. People drop their phones all the time or lose them - something that does not happen with PC computers.
I don't have one... don't want one.
Aggregate demand collapse bitchez. In 10 years, the leader of Smartphones will be that Chinese maker. They put out 20 engineers for every 1 we do in the U.S..
This doesn't suprise me -- same thing is happening -- but worse -- in the PC market. 2012 had its worst on-year performance since 1985.
I deal with consumer electronic statistics daily, and it's was pretty obvious in Q3 that were were seeing a 2008-collapse level decline in product sales. This is reflected in most of the major supplier's earnings (Intel, AMD, Dell, HP, etc.)
TPTB did a much better job hiding this second collapse than the first one, but if you dig into the data it's obvious, and clearly some of the macro-level data posted frequently on ZH shows the same thing, that we had another big hit to the economy 2H2012.
I don't think they can hide much more of this, even the slowest people I've talked to are well aware that there's a disconnect between what they're being told (and the stock market) and the reality they're living in.
same thing happened with flexible cables....drove Lucent almost bankrupt when investors realized there were billions of excess cable being cranked out, flooding the market.....
Isn't the drop-off in PC sales largely due to Smartphones and iPads/tablets etc?
Mobile phones sales may have declined. I seriously doubt smartphone sales have though.
Did you even read the article???
"Another reason for the drop is the weakening demand for feature phones, which possess some smartphone abilities but are limited. While smartphones had record sales and were up 38.3% for the fourth quarter of 2012, feature phone sales fell by 19.3% -- and that decline is expected to continue."
I have a Samsung Exhibit II 4G. It's a great phone. I've also rooted the shit out of it (so much so I don't get the government SMS texts....maybe I'm off the grid? How 31733 of me).
Either way, I don't mind that they track me.
Jack Knifed Booted Statist: "Mr.Shizzmoney, we tracked your phone and saw you were at a strip club 4 times this week"
Me: "Yes I was. I wanted to go before YOU also make that illegal."
Ifucked
I think you'll find many people have just decided "I don't fuckin' need an iphone 5, my iphone (4s, 4, 3gs - fill accordingly) is pefectly good enough thanks"
Personally I'm happy with my 32GB 3GS, still perfectly good. Added to that I'm now out of my 'rape' period with vodafone and I'm going to get a £10 per month rolling contract with Tesco Mobile and save £45 per month.
Do people really need yet another iPhone? Kids' jeans are already sagging down below thier crotches exposing their (dirty) underwear...do they need more 'stuff' in their pockets?
I think you missed a feature of smartphones. They come with superglue that acts as soon as the users first handle their phones. They need surgery to have them removed.
1 billion smartphones to be sold in 2013 / 1.9 billion total devices, most or all needing more silver than previous models, aka, the luminous and in demand retina display.
Nope, no silver shortage here. Move along folks, nothing to see.
The 1.7% 2012 "decline" was due to Apple not being able to keep up with demand for iPhones, iMacs, Ipad minis, and Google Nexus 4/7/10 - same problem. All can be traced back to LG display, aka the new luminous screens "production" issues.
But it's not shortage of silver. Nope, can't be.
There is no silver shortage. You can go to APMEX right now and buy $ millions worth with no problem.
Because you don't understand what I'm talking about. I'm talking about buyers of size, not buyers of a few ounces. If Apple needs silver to make 500 million iBabbles, do you think they buy from APMEX? Of course not. They get it directly from the mines. And 2+ million ounces per day comes out of the ground. So what's the problem? More than that is used every day in factories or hoarded by investors. This has been going on for so long that stockpiles of silver are gone. So, yes, try asking for delivery of several tonnes of silver and see how long you have to wait.
Let’s see the stages of a shortage (as defined by Israel Friedman around 2006). Now this isn't when you buy 10 ounces of metal. It's when you want a million ounces right now.
We are currently in Stage 2, and possibly soon to be Stage 3 since COMEX will not allow prices to rise to alleviate the metal shortage.
In a similar vein...Notice how long it took Mr. Chavez to get his people's Au back home..??
German automaker hoarding silver, fears of market shortage:
http://dailyreckoning.com/the-silver-shortage-of-2013/
Why does the German company store dozens of pallets of silver in a secure vault deep in the mountains of Switzerland? It’s simple, really. So that the metal is there when the carmaker needs it. As one purchasing manager explained later in my travels, “For some metals, like silver, there’s no such thing as ‘just in time’ delivery anymore.”Repbulic's website says they use Sprint's network...yuck. As someone who finally just left Sprint, I can tell you that you don't want anything to do with their worthless network. Unless you like standing in the middle of a major city with no data, or having every call drop.
I went off contact with Tmobile. Thought long and hard about Straight-talk, but their data shut off and lack of customer service scared me off. Baby steps I guess...at least I'm no longer handcuffed to Sprint!
Did anyone actually believe the amount of phones sold would continue to grow forever?
I think people have decided they now need other things. Like curtains to prevent spying by drones. and guns to shoot them out of the air.
Disclosure - I have neither, but I do have six phones.
Maybe it's just that people are content with the current level of technology built into the phone? I mean, who needs a quad-core phone? So you can play Angry Birds while taking a shit? Surprised someone hasn't come up with a rival game for this purpose: Angry Turds.
Or, it could very well be that no one has any fucking money...
"What happens next, nobody knows"??
Sure we do. Geometric progressions inevitably form their own anchors. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, but soon. Hell, I learned that when I was 13.
This author blames reduced cell phone sales as the source of the world’s problems. Not one word of Bank’s investment failures, ie. Mortgage fraud & Investment stupidity.
Seems that he never heard of Harry Dent. It WILL take more time before TPTB acknowledge what they already know.
How many of you were adults in 1966 to 1981?
Remember stagflation and that large numbers of people were retiring AND spending less!
I hope you can connect the dots from here.
If not read this, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQnkRWfkB8s
I was led to believe there were a billion strong Chinese consumers eager for those damn phones.
Nokia are selling their Asha smartphones at about ~1/8th the price of an iPhone 5. ~$100 sans contract is the top end device too. The cheapest is I think about $50.
I don't have a cellphone and you can't make me buy one!
You know what I would pay good cash for...........................one of those cellphone interferance scramblers. It's a simple little box that when you flip the switch, disrupts the wave patterns sent to any and all cellphones within a 30 ft radius. Check out youtube and search for the video's. They're hilarious. Some of the best stories I've heard are people doing this in a cafetaria to someone using their phone and they get so frustrated they smash their phones on the floor. I'd gladly pay the current retail cost of an IPhone5 for one of these scramblers!!!!