Apple placed third in worldwide smartphone sales in the first quarter of 2019, suggest new figures from Gartner.
Samsung came in first place, with 71.6 million units sold in the three month period. Huawei followed in hot pursuit, with 58.4 million sales. Apple, for its part, sold 44.6 million units for the quarter: a decline of 17.6% year over year.
Samsung’s boss Koh Dong-jin says that his company will announce its conclusion about the future of the Galaxy Fold this week.
Samsung has reportedly “reviewed the defect” highlighted in early reviews, and will announce its rescheduled launch plan in the U.S “in a couple of days.”
Samsung has reported its weakest profits in two years as first quarter earnings suffered from weak smartphone and memory chip sales.
While Samsung said that it expects things will be get better in the second half of the year, the immediate outlook isn’t great. Samsung posted operating profits of $5.4 billion for the quarter, its smallest since late 2016. By comparison, this quarter last year raked in $13.4 billion.
Having pushed back the launch of its Galaxy Fold folding smartphone, Samsung is now supposedly retrieving all units it sent reviewers — without issuing replacements. While there’s disagreement on whether the original units were meant to be returned after 10 days, it seems things aren’t quite playing out as expected.
This comes after early reviewers noted that the $1,980 handset suffered some serious screen problems.
The massive rise of the smartphone is coming to a close, and Samsung is bearing the brunt of it.
As well as a manufacturer of its own handsets, Samsung also provides memory chips and display panels to other companies. Due to slowing demand for smartphones around the world, Samsung today revealed that its operating profits have plunged. It expects that its first quarter takings will be down by 60 percent compared to last year.
You’d think that most of the subscribers to Apple Music would be firmly locked into the Apple ecosystem. That may be true, but new figures suggest that there are quite a few listeners on Android as well.
Figures shared by Sensor Tower‘s Store Intelligence platform suggest that 40 million Android users have installed the Apple Music app from Google Play. Not only that, but the analytics firm believes that the “current quarter will be the service’s best yet for new users on the platform.”
Apple’s AirPods have been a massive smash hit since they launched a couple years back. It’s therefore unsurprising that rival companies would be keen to get themselves some of the sweet wireless cash — by launching their own wireless earbuds.
One of these companies, Samsung, is reportedly set to show off its own “Galaxy Buds” at its upcoming February 20 press event. And thanks to a leaked image, we have a good idea of what they’ll look like.
In its quest for minimalist perfectionism, Apple loves shaving ports off its products wherever possible. But even it has stopped short of creating a phone like the Meizu Zero.
Promising no buttons, no speaker holes, no Sim card slot, and no charging port, this sleek Chinese Android phone looked like a concept phone or, uncharitably, an early April Fool’s joke when it first popped up online last month. Well, it seems that that’s not the case at all — since pre-orders have just gone live on Indiegogo. Be warned: It’s not cheap.
Imagine letting a friend connect to your Wi-Fi network just by tapping a hockey puck-sized chunk of wood. That’s the promise of Wifi Porter, an accessory from Ten One Design that saves guests from having to type in a password to get on the net.
It uses NFC and doesn’t require users to install any software.
Apple may not be planning to release a 5G iPhone until at least 2020, but don’t expect rival Android handset makers to be willing to hold on for so long.
According to Qualcomm president Cristiano Amon, by this time next year the market is set to be flooded with 5G Android phones. “Every Android vendor is working on 5G right now,” he said.
