I'm still an HTC user, but do like the Sammy brand save for their huge screens. . I find 4.0" is the largest phone I want to use and the Mini S4 looks half decent at that size.
Oh well. Once my current phone dies I'll look at them again.
Samsung outsold every other smartphone maker combined during the third quarter of 2013, according to IDC. The consumer device maker shifted 81.2 million smart phones, giving it 31.4 per cent of the market and increasing its share by nearly half. Apple, Huawei, Lenovo and LG between them scraped up 69 million units. Nokia, …
Generic phone-ist comment:
YOU use different phone to me, therefore YOU must be a gullible idiot who's easily conned into buying overpriced crap just for the label.
I use a Samsung/Apple/HTC/STC rotary dial phone (delete as appropriate) and therefore exude a subtle and stylish musk that makes women swoon and world leaders hang on my every word.
Trying to be an 'individual' by leveraging your use of consumer electronics is rather silly, regardless of the brand. Once you cross the line into 'millions sold' any individuality has long since been quite efficiently packaged up and tossed out with the rubbish.
If you want to show 'individuality' get rid of mobile phones completely. Not having a technology is the only way you're going to be 'different'. I stopped using the Internet years ago.
Your sentence has a completely different meaning though. My sentence implies one is weighting their sense of self worth by publicizing their personal choice in electronics; specifically a given brand. You sentence does not indicate the brand specific qualities the discussion is about and implies any use of any electronics is as a system of self valuation is silly.
While the meaning of your sentence is also true, it is a different meaning.
I see what you mean. I wasn't omitting the brand stuff deliberately. Just the leveraging bit.
Incidentally (this is weird) I was thinking the other way that people would start saying "weighting" when they meant "increasing". Seriously. This is spooky.
I think I need to start recording the current fashion of converting nouns that have associated verbs into new verbs (e.g. "reference" is the noun, 'refer to" the verb, becomes "reference" the verb, for no real reason).
Well, HTC, Motorola, and Blackberry aren't on the list. I'd guess they did about as well as Nokia (Note that the article didn't say Nokia was #6; only that it wasn't in the top 5.). Giving each of them 3% would leave about 29% remaining
Then there's ZTE and the other low-end but still technically smartphone manufacturers. I'd guess there's at least 15 of them, so they're probably clustered around 1-2%. One or two may even have beat Nokia...!
The non-smart phones are quite a bit cheaper. If I had the cheapest smartphone on the market I would be a bit annoyed if I broke it or lost it. A cheap non-smart phone, not so much. So there is that. Then there is all the other things that they are better at.
They are safer, easier, more durable and you can easily go ten days without charging them.
But it is a different product. If you don't need, don't want (at all, or in some situations) a smart phone, then it is a very good alternative that cost less than lunch. Some people own both a car and a bicycle.
I think the total figures are for all handsets including those that are not smartphones. It's possible that Samsung's 31% share does represent more than 50% of the smartphones. I'm not sure how that works given that Windows phones (and possibly Blackberries) do technically count as smart and they make up more than 2% of the market, but still.
Samsung makes a mind boggling range of smartphones. Some are good, some less so, and then there's the bottom of the range cheapies. Would be interesting to see what proportion of their range accounts for their volume. A good Android phone is a nice device (our office has pretty much all bought Nexus 4's) but my experience with Samsung phones hasn't been so good as I don't like their attitude to updates or the changes they've made from stock Android. However, it is painfully obvious that many people are buying based on price and the 'galaxy' brand which is why they've spread that all over their range. What I don't tend to see is much loyalty with buyers of their phones and their practices regarding updates and the recent region locking issues don't endear them.
"What I don't tend to see is much loyalty with buyers of their phones and their practices regarding updates and the recent region locking issues don't endear them."
That's correct, but there's nobody white than white in this regard. Given other buying considerations (OS preference, removable batteries, SD slot, screen size preference, app availability and functionality, maps/voice/camera add ons etc) it's very difficult to say that updates and region lock issues would tip the balance for many users.
I have a near vanilla Android works phone, and a personal SGS2, and I actually think that the Sammy overlay is rather good (although I don't care for their bundled software that overlaps default Android inclusions) so they'll please as many as they offend. And probably the majority of buyers simply won't care about any of the anorak factors you and I consider, they'll buy on brand or what's hip in their peer group.
That's the key point right there. Many phone buyers care about the cost of the phone + cost of monthly plan to make sure it is in their budget. After that does it Google/Bing/Firefox/Opera to what I what I want, and can I be a Twitter/FB with my friends. Hell, they likely don't even call it the Internet. Or if you prefer a slightly different context: they just want their "XP Word program to write their damn letters" as my mother once told me.
I don't like their attitude to updates or the changes they've made from stock Android.
The update policy, along with that of other manufacturers, has got a lot better. I think this has had as much to do with having the right people managing the software and its distribution as official policy. Kies used to be the biggest pile of shit out there, and on MacOS it pretty much still is. But now that OTA is working well that hardly matters.
I find the UI fine but wish it would be easier to uninstall some of the apps that come preinstalled and that don't interest me at all. Then again rooting is hardly a problem, Samsung have never really tried to stop users doing it.
To be fair, 'stock' Android would be a severe disappointment to most consumers. I think their stance with a 'blind eye' to rooting is the smart road for that small subset of users who wish to do so. I'm an iPhone user and see no point in rooting the phone, but not allowing it seems kind of silly. Even if I could, easily do it, I wouldn't want to fool with it and Apple still wouldn't have lost out on the whopping $9 I've spent on music through iTunes.
I do wish that Lenovo phones were more available here too, they appear to be quite nice from the looks of it. (didn't look too much into specs just yet however, so I may be wrong...)
Coming up in 2 months for a phone renewal with my carrier, looking around there doesn't appear to be that much choice with most carriers for Pay Monthly phones, mainly Samsung, Sony, Apple, Nokia, Blackberry, perhaps HTC and maybe even a Huawei here and there, but that's about it. Surprised almost none of the major carriers offer LG phones in a PM bundle, let alone other brands.
Still unsure if I want to switch from SGS2 to 4, or buy something else in the end...
I didn't even know Lenovo had phones. There must be some distribution contractual conflict (or something far removed from the customers view) or the sales guy I bought all our new Lenovo notebooks from would have been trying to sell me some. God knows he's tried sell me everything else Lenovo branded.
I would be open to checking out their phones if offered the chance.