The global smartphone market continues to grow in single digits driven by growth in emerging markets. In such a scenario, we have seen key hardware differentiators proliferate to lower price points at much faster rates. For example, alternative aspect ratio 18:9 devices already penetrated sub $150 segment within two quarters of launch in the premium segment. This indicates how cut-throat the competition is within the industry...Read more
Within just 24 hours of opening on July 27th 300,000 new accounts were opened with KakaoBank (this is more than what all other Korean banks got in 2016 through online channels). The number continued to rise throughout August. We estimate KakaoBank took close to 45% market share in all new bank accounts opened in August – including both offline and online...Read more
This is a significant milestone for Huawei, the largest Chinese smartphone brand with a growing global presence. It speaks volumes for this primarily network infrastructure vendor on how far it has grown in the consumer mobile handset space in the last three to four years. The global scale Huawei has been able to achieve can be attributed to its consistent investment in R&D and manufacturing, coupled with aggressive marketing and sales channel expansion...Read more
On June 29th 2007, Apple first begin selling its then iconic smartphone the “iPhone” which with multiple iterations transformed Apple into one of the richest enterprises on the planet. The leaders in the pre-iPhone era surely launched touchscreen phones that were somewhat smarter for the time with hosts of productivity features powered by Palm OS or Windows Mobile OS. But the amalgamation of finger based touchscreen, slicker software (iOS) in iPhone buoyed by the growing ecosystem of third party developers creating innovative applications was the game changer for Apple....Read more
With the rise of super-fast 4G networks and beyond, smartphones have become the primary devices for content creation and consumption, driving demand for bigger displays. Clearly, there is a practical limit to the physical size of a smartphone, typically determined by the size of the user’s hands or pockets. As a result, rather than increase the size of the display, handset OEMs are turning to solutions that increase the effective viewing area of the display without increasing the overall size of the phone. ...Read more
Apple’s annual WWDC 2017 conference was centred on getting its legions of developers excited developments in the Apple ecosystem. With this end goal in mind, Apple sufficiently delivered. Key impressive brags to excite the over 5,000 developers in attendance:
Oppo and vivo were the fastest growing brands followed by Huawei, together cementing the top three spots and extending their lead over Apple, Xiaomi and Samsung by a widening margin. Apple’s performance has become very seasonal, while Xiaomi and Samsung are losing to Huawei (Honor) and the Oppo-Vivo onslaught respectively...Read more
Samsung needs a great product. The humbling recall of its Galaxy Note 7 not only tarnished the company’s hard won reputation for quality and reliability, it also knocked a huge hole in its finances. The lost revenue and profit from the Note 7, and the cost of recalling the devices and compensating both consumers and channels, only heightened the impact. Meanwhile, competitors, including Apple, Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and even Google themselves, were able to benefit to a greater or lesser extent from Samsung’s misfortune. ...Read more
Smartphones have (and are) becoming advanced computers as the software, hardware, services and user needs mature to a point it almost are replacing the need for PCs. Applications such as AR/VR will be more demanding on DRAM in phones this year. Higher Resolution Displays, LTE all are driving need for higher DRAM capacities in smartphones. Furthermore, OEMs have been pushing for advanced hardware configurations to differentiate, win mindshare and marketshare. ...Read more
During the first eight months of 2016, Apple saw its smartphone market share remain at a record low compared to the last few years. However, the iPhone 7 series launch has been able to offset most of the previous decline. The iPhone 7 series demand was healthy through the holiday period, especially in markets such as USA, Western Europe and Japan somewhat offsetting a softer than expected performance in China. ...Read more
- Tina Lu