The first three months of 2019 saw Apple and Samsung collectively selling 17.5 million fewer smartphones globally compared to last year. As I've previously noted, we have market saturation and a lack of yearly upgrades for many users. I upgrade with roughly every third model, for example. The premium end of the market also continues to move out of the reach of many, meaning fewer people can upgrade as often. The innovation jump in successive models is also diminishing, so they lack the wow factor that drove earlier upgrades. These figures do not include the impact of the latest Samsung S10 range which shipped at the end of the quarter. The top three remain Samsung, Huawei and Apple. This may change with the recent US Huawei bans, or at least reduce any growth. Even after price cuts, Apple's sales fell 17.6% in the quarter leaving Samsung as the one least likely to lose their position in the next few months. Oppo and Viva rounded out the top five in sales with Xiaomi nibbling at their heels.
The latest range of smartphones is providing some excellent camera technology that nearly rival the point and shoot alternatives. They will never challenge the quality of the larger lenses, nor the optical zoom capabilities, but the picture and video quality of the latest offerings are excellent. The Huawei P30 Plus is winning overall on the photo side while the Samsung S10 5G leads in video quality. For some, it comes down to the way a particular camera handles night shots or skin tones or colour reproduction. When you drill down to this level, each camera has its strengths and weaknesses depending on the particular subject. I'd also recommend trying some shots with the auto intelligent correction features turned off. Sometimes you get better shots that way.
The current US battle with Huawei is a complex one associated with the broader US-China trade war. Consider the issue purely from the perspective of the Android operating system and the phones that use it, like the Huawei range; they still have access to the open source components but anything else is suddenly in doubt. Access to the Google Play store for example, security updates and so on, all potentially fall under the US ban.
China may very well have to make its own Android versions from now on. Dolby, Intel, Corning and others all contribute components to the smartphone market. All are US companies, so the ban applies to all of their products, which means Gorilla Glass screens, music playback, processors and more. It also potentially includes access to Silicon Valley apps like Facebook, YouTube and Gmail. Huawei also sells notebooks, so there goes the Microsoft OS. Huawei say they have three months of spares.
It has been a while since I looked at CPUs. For the average person wanting to buy a computing device, be it a PC, notebook, tablet or smartphone, the current range of CPUs provides more than enough. The latest smartphones contain 8-12 GB of RAM and up to 1TB of on-board storage. Their CPUs and GPUs are top of the line, driving high density screens and, to all intents and purposes, they are more powerful than a notebook from a few years ago, with prices to match.
The main players are still AMD and Intel and every year they come out with more powerful chips. Architectures are down to 7nm for AMD CPUs and GPUs. Terms like eight core and 16 threads and 12 core and 24 threads or similar are commonly thrown around along with ever lower power requirements. For Intel there is faster RAM and 10nm fabrication with slightly faster base CPU speeds. Intel is planning 7nm fabrication for 2020-2021. I still maintain that, except for some very specialised game processing, and a few other edge cases, it really doesn't matter what you get anymore.
We are still a long way away from truly driverless cars. Tesla has added an option to their latest models that allows the vehicle to automatically change lanes on highways to prepare for an exit. In tests, these vehicles performed worse than human drivers, and did things like cutting off other cars without giving them enough space and speeding past cars in ways that violated road laws. The Navigate autopilot software did not react to brake or turn signals, requiring the human driver to always be ahead of the software ready to step in. A Tesla spokesperson said: "Navigate on Autopilot is based on map data, fleet data and data from the vehicle's sensors. However, it is the driver's responsibility to remain in control of the car at all times, including safely executing lane changes."
James Hein is an IT professional of over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com
