Low-end smartphone sales dominate markets where the Christmas sales
The Christmas app download volume growth has collapsed. This matters a great deal to the cheap smart phones industry, because high-end smartphone sales depend on affluent markets where the Christmas bounce is big: The United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, etc. Low-end smartphone sales dominate markets where the Christmas sales bounce is small-to-non-existent: Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, India, Nigeria, etc.
That pool of consumers has been exhausted. Refugees from Nokia and BlackBerry camps have already bought an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy. All high-income and middle-class consumers have already migrated from feature phones to smartphones. Gartner’s Q3 2013 numbers reflected the same phenomenon. Globally, Apple and Samsung stopped gaining market share in the autumn quarter while Lenovo, LG and Huawei were all market share gainers.
The cataclysmic slowdown of app download volume we just witnessed is likely a sign that the number of consumers buying a high-end smartphone for the first time has tanked in the Western world. The people who triggered the massive Christmas app download surges of 2012 and 2011 were consumers who had just received the first high-end smartphone and have either switched from a feature phone or a low-end smartphone that lacked strong app support (Nokia, BlackBerry, etc.).
A separate poll shows gaming and music apps are the most frequent downloads on smartphones and tablets in the U.S., with weather in third spot.The survey says smartphone owners had an average of 21 apps and tablet owners had an average of 29 apps installed, versus 30 apps for iPhone users, with Facebook the most popular on phones and tabs.So, you own a new smartphone and would like to stock up on the absolute, must-have games for Android, right? fgcC5Gc
Well, similar to how you should bring a toothbrush and a change of clothes when traveling, there are some essential Android games you should download immediately after setting up a new phone.World smartphone leader Samsung is reportedly planning to launch the next generation flagship phone Galaxy S5, along with a brand new Galaxy F series line of metal-clad smartphones, early this year.We feel pretty confident that Samsung’s Galaxy S5 will be a killer S4 1:1 MTK6589 but one question remains: Will Samsung finally follow in the footsteps of the iPhone 5s and the HTC One and use a premium aluminum build or will it stick with its tried-and-true plastic formula?
The latest gossip from Korea’s ETNews suggests that Samsung may release two flagship smartphones at the same time next year: The Galaxy S5, which will have Samsung’s trademark plastic casing, cell phones for sale and the Galaxy F, which will be the first flagship Samsung smartphone to have a metal casing.Smartphone owners moan about battery life more than any other aspect of their devices, and yet when it comes to choosing a new model, battery performance seems to plummet down our list of priorities like a novelty song in a post-Christmas chart rundown.
Even as I write, the technology blogs are buzzing with news that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding work at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory that will "charge your smartphone using urine". When you follow the link, you read about a fantastic project that utilises waste in an ingenious way, but it currently appears to use a small vanload of gear (and urine) to charge an old Samsung phone.