Samsung is selling more phones in the EU at the expense of Apple and Huawei

[nanoguy]

According to research firm Canalys, the European smartphone market has been shaken up by Samsung, who managed to reach a 40 percent market share for the first time in five years.

The state of the European market for the second quarter of 2019 shows the Korean giant made the right decision to focus on its A series smartphones, which make up two thirds of the total number of 18.3 million shipped units. Apparently that's more than any other company managed to sell with their entire product range.

The biggest losers in the process have been Apple and Huawei. The first managed to sell 6.4 million iPhones -- a 18% drop -- and the latter saw a similar hit as a result of mounting pressure from the US-China trade war. Still, Huawei managed to stay ahead of Apple with 8.5 million units shipped to European consumers.

Interestingly enough, Xiaomi grew almost 50% when compared to last year, leaving HMD Global (Nokia) and other value-oriented brands in the dust. Carriers have historically shied away from selling Xiaomi phones because of the low profit margins, but now appear to have less of a choice as the number of alternatives diminishes every year.

The market intelligence firm believes Samsung's good fortunes are also the result of a lack of brand loyalty in the low end and mid range segments of the market. That means the company only registered a small victory, in contrast to companies like Apple, who focus more on profit margins and not on unit sales.

This report mirrors the overall conclusions that Strategy Analytics and Counterpoint Research drew about the global smartphone market, which remains as competitive as always. Things are about to get heated next year with Apple supposedly preparing three 5G-ready iPhones, and Huawei potentially bringing its first HarmonyOS-powered smartphone to the market.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/81411-samsung-selling-more-phones-eu-expense-apple-huawei.html

 

[MaitieS]

Of course Xiaomi will beat Samsung at some point. It is just matter of time. Samsung is increasing price of their phones each year even when improvements aren't even that big. Note 10 showed us that they increased the price for downgrades and we only got what? Better CPU/GPU that you wouldn't even notice and slightly better camera that you rarely even use?

People are less likely to upgrade. Samsung is even losing 42% of profit in Mobile sector like they used to but they are still acting like they are Apple of Android.

Making fun of Apple while coping everything they do... They lost their identity long ago.

 

[trparky]

Of course Xiaomi will beat Samsung at some point.

You act like Samsung only makes expensive flagship devices, they do make cheaper versions for those who don't want to buy expensive devices. Take the Samsung Galaxy A6 for instance, at most places you can get it for $300.

There will always be expensive flagship devices for those people who want the best of the best. Who else do you think gives Samsung the money to do the research and development to make new technologies? You guessed it, the people buying the expensive devices. Some of you guys really sound like fools around here; it takes a lot of money to come up with better stuff, faster processors, better screens, betters cameras. None of that stuff grows on trees, people need to pay for it and Samsung gets that money from people willing to buy the expensive flagship devices for which there will always be a market.

Note 10 showed us that they increased the price for downgrades and we only got what? Better CPU/GPU that you wouldn't even notice and slightly better camera that you rarely even use?

That's why upgrades have slowed down, people have realized that they don't need to upgrade yearly and that's fine. Every two or three years is going be the norm from here on out.

 

[Puiu]

Of course Xiaomi will beat Samsung at some point.

You act like Samsung only makes expensive flagship devices, they do make cheaper versions for those who don't want to buy expensive devices. Take the Samsung Galaxy A6 for instance, at most places you can get it for $300.

There will always be expensive flagship devices for those people who want the best of the best. Who else do you think gives Samsung the money to do the research and development to make new technologies? You guessed it, the people buying the expensive devices. Some of you guys really sound like fools around here; it takes a lot of money to come up with better stuff, faster processors, better screens, betters cameras. None of that stuff grows on trees, people need to pay for it and Samsung gets that money from people willing to buy the expensive flagship devices for which there will always be a market.

Note 10 showed us that they increased the price for downgrades and we only got what? Better CPU/GPU that you wouldn't even notice and slightly better camera that you rarely even use?

That's why upgrades have slowed down, people have realized that they don't need to upgrade yearly and that's fine. Every two or three years is going be the norm from here on out.

The SOC in the Galaxy A6 scores what, 40-50K in Antutu? It's below even the Snapdragon 625 in the sub 200$ Xiaomi Redmi Note 7.

For 300$ you can get the Xiaomi Mi 9T (also known as the K20) with the SD 730 SOC which scores well above 200K. The difference is night and day: cameras, screen, fingerprint sensor, RAM, storage, fast charging, battery life, DAC, etc etc. For less than 350$ you can get the Xiaomi K20 Pro with an SD 855 which scores about 350k in Antutu.

We are talking about flagship hardware pitted against hardware that even low end phones don't use anymore at the same price point. It's no wonder that Xiaomi is winning big in Europe and other markets.

 

[trparky]

The SOC in the Galaxy A6 scores what, 40-50K in Antutu? It's below even the Snapdragon 625 in the sub 200$ Xiaomi Redmi Note 7.

Sure, but how many people who are buying cheap phones really need all that kind of raw computing power?

Xiaomi

Yeah, but it's a Chinese company; God knows what kind of spying crap is in it. If I was looking for a cheap Android I'd be looking at Motorola.

 

[Puiu]

Sure, but how many people who are buying cheap phones really need all that kind of raw computing power?

Yeah, but it's a Chinese company; God knows what kind of spying crap is in it. If I was looking for a cheap Android I'd be looking at Motorola.

Trust me when I say that they do need the raw power. You can run google maps and other heavy apps but you'll notice big slowdowns, especially once you have a few of them installed.
My last phone had the SD 625 SOC and I could notice serious slowdowns after a while. I opened a few things and installed the usual apps that I need (things like Uber, Bolt, Waze, Accuweather, banking apps, chat apps, etc) especially once the phone wasn't factory clean a few months down the line. The performance of new phones should not be taken for granted, garbage always gathers.

The Motorola phones are ok-ish, but the hardware is still very anemic. For example the 300$ Motorola One Vision has a 90k score with much worse battery, screen and other things. The G series is the same. You can get much better phones for the same money (that aren't Xiaomi).

And it isn't just about the raw power, but everything else too. Somebody might not care that it's running slower than usual, but he'll definitely notice the difference in battery life between the phones. I leave from home for work at 8AM with the phone at 100% and at 6PM it's above 80% with normal usage (and above 60% with heavy all day usage).

What exactly will the Chinese government gonna do with my data that the US government, google, facebook and many others won't? I'm actually more scared with the later ones. China can have my browser history and shove it up theirs.

 

[trparky]

But will those Chinese brand phones work in the US? Remember, the US carriers are pretty darn paranoid about what devices they'll allow on their networks and what devices their carrier apps will allow being installed on.

 

[havok585]

Of course Xiaomi will beat Samsung at some point.

You act like Samsung only makes expensive flagship devices, they do make cheaper versions for those who don't want to buy expensive devices. Take the Samsung Galaxy A6 for instance, at most places you can get it for $300.

There will always be expensive flagship devices for those people who want the best of the best. Who else do you think gives Samsung the money to do the research and development to make new technologies? You guessed it, the people buying the expensive devices. Some of you guys really sound like fools around here; it takes a lot of money to come up with better stuff, faster processors, better screens, betters cameras. None of that stuff grows on trees, people need to pay for it and Samsung gets that money from people willing to buy the expensive flagship devices for which there will always be a market.

Note 10 showed us that they increased the price for downgrades and we only got what? Better CPU/GPU that you wouldn't even notice and slightly better camera that you rarely even use?

That's why upgrades have slowed down, people have realized that they don't need to upgrade yearly and that's fine. Every two or three years is going be the norm from here on out.

The SOC in the Galaxy A6 scores what, 40-50K in Antutu? It's below even the Snapdragon 625 in the sub 200$ Xiaomi Redmi Note 7.

For 300$ you can get the Xiaomi Mi 9T (also known as the K20) with the SD 730 SOC which scores well above 200K. The difference is night and day: cameras, screen, fingerprint sensor, RAM, storage, fast charging, battery life, DAC, etc etc. For less than 350$ you can get the Xiaomi K20 Pro with an SD 855 which scores about 350k in Antutu.

We are talking about flagship hardware pitted against hardware that even low end phones don't use anymore at the same price point. It's no wonder that Xiaomi is winning big in Europe and other markets.

You are on point !

I'm actually buying my first android phone next month and K20PRO's (china only it seems/ around $ 350 but no supported bands for EU) twin , the soon to be released Mi 9T PRO will possibly be my next phone (features gallore) but there's a price increase to 430 euros (import taxes and all) and STILL, like you described, it packs hardware that rivals the $ 800+ phones that are now on the market.

But will those Chinese brand phones work in the US? Remember, the US carriers are pretty darn paranoid about what devices they'll allow on their networks and what devices their carrier apps will allow being installed on.

Please do not be fooled by mainstream media and think with your brain, logical!
Whenever you hear the words "SPY" it's actually people in high power positions that dont want their goat to be milked by another "rival" government;

Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo are coming hard for Apple/Samsung and we can't have that...

If you buy a phone, you buy it for what it does/ it IS; not what some influencers that get paid to brainwash you everyday on TV/internet news...

 

[trparky]

But if I can't use the device to its full potential and use advanced carrier services like Visual Voice Mail, VoLTE (HDVoice), and most importantly WiFi Calling who gives a crap how cheap the device is? It's useless for me!!! OK, maybe I can get away without Visual Voice Mail but the last two (VoLTE and WiFi Calling) are absolute must-have features.

A lot of these features are only accessible on the devices that the US carriers have approved to access these network services and you can probably bet that any Chinese-made devices are not on that approved list.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Of course Xiaomi will beat Samsung at some point.

You act like Samsung only makes expensive flagship devices, they do make cheaper versions for those who don't want to buy expensive devices. Take the Samsung Galaxy A6 for instance, at most places you can get it for $300.

There will always be expensive flagship devices for those people who want the best of the best. Who else do you think gives Samsung the money to do the research and development to make new technologies? You guessed it, the people buying the expensive devices. Some of you guys really sound like fools around here; it takes a lot of money to come up with better stuff, faster processors, better screens, betters cameras. None of that stuff grows on trees, people need to pay for it and Samsung gets that money from people willing to buy the expensive flagship devices for which there will always be a market.

Note 10 showed us that they increased the price for downgrades and we only got what? Better CPU/GPU that you wouldn't even notice and slightly better camera that you rarely even use?

That's why upgrades have slowed down, people have realized that they don't need to upgrade yearly and that's fine. Every two or three years is going be the norm from here on out.

The SOC in the Galaxy A6 scores what, 40-50K in Antutu? It's below even the Snapdragon 625 in the sub 200$ Xiaomi Redmi Note 7.

For 300$ you can get the Xiaomi Mi 9T (also known as the K20) with the SD 730 SOC which scores well above 200K. The difference is night and day: cameras, screen, fingerprint sensor, RAM, storage, fast charging, battery life, DAC, etc etc. For less than 350$ you can get the Xiaomi K20 Pro with an SD 855 which scores about 350k in Antutu.

We are talking about flagship hardware pitted against hardware that even low end phones don't use anymore at the same price point. It's no wonder that Xiaomi is winning big in Europe and other markets.

Redmi Note 7 - SD 660
Redmi Note 7 Pro - SD 675 (180K antutu score)

 

[hahahanoobs]

But will those Chinese brand phones work in the US? Remember, the US carriers are pretty darn paranoid about what devices they'll allow on their networks and what devices their carrier apps will allow being installed on.

You don't recommend Chinese phones, yet you don't know if/how they work in the US?!

lol Um, ok.....

 

[trparky]

You don't recommend Chinese phones, yet you don't know if/how they work in the US?!

Considering how the US carriers tend to be very protective of their network assets, yes... I wonder if they would be allowed access. Remember, the US isn't like Europe where it's pretty much a free-for-all when it comes to devices on cellular networks. Remember, we pretty much have only four carriers in the US and they can do whatever they please because... yeah, they're freakin' monopolies and who are you going to go to? You really have no choice and the carriers in the US let you know that.

That's why when people talk about unlocked devices I can't help but to think that they must be talking about using unlocked devices in Europe. Verizon and Sprint, for instance, are straight-up d**ks about what devices they allow on their network.

Yes, there are the pre-paid MVNO providers in the US but they pretty much suck.

 

[Puiu]

But if I can't use the device to its full potential and use advanced carrier services like Visual Voice Mail, VoLTE (HDVoice), and most importantly WiFi Calling who gives a crap how cheap the device is? It's useless for me!!! OK, maybe I can get away without Visual Voice Mail but the last two (VoLTE and WiFi Calling) are absolute must-have features.

A lot of these features are only accessible on the devices that the US carriers have approved to access these network services and you can probably bet that any Chinese-made devices are not on that approved list.

And how do you know you can't use those features? O_o Nobody outside of the US cares about those features. You can do "WiFi" calls using any chat application anyway. VoLTE can be enabled on Xiaomi phones as far as I can tell.

Here, it works for some places out of the box and for some it is harder to activate (I have no issues where I live): https://forum.xda-developers.com/Mi-9/how-to/wifi-calling-volte-mi-9-t3917887

You can blame your greedy ISPs for these artificial "restrictions".

 

[hahahanoobs]

Considering how the US carriers tend to be very protective of their network assets, yes... I wonder if they would be allowed access. Remember, the US isn't like Europe where it's pretty much a free-for-all when it comes to devices on cellular networks. Remember, we pretty much have only four carriers in the US and they can do whatever they please because... yeah, they're freakin' monopolies and who are you going to go to? You really have no choice and the carriers in the US let you know that.

That's why when people talk about unlocked devices I can't help but to think that they must be talking about using unlocked devices in Europe. Verizon and Sprint, for instance, are straight-up d**ks about what devices they allow on their network.

Yes, there are the pre-paid MVNO providers in the US but they pretty much suck.

Chinese phones work in the US. All that's required to find out is spending 2mins with a search engine...
smh

 

[trparky]

Nobody outside of the US cares about those features.

Yet, people in the US do care about those features. VoLTE or HD-Voice is amazing, phone calls have never sounded so good! I could be talking to someone on my phone with HD-Voice and it sounds like the person is in the same room with me, it's just that good! If you call someone without HD-Voice on Verizon it sounds like the person is underwater, they compress the crap out of the audio on their legacy CDMA network.

As for WiFi Calling, if you ever find yourself in an area with less than desirable coverage like in a basement or a building with thick brick walls you'll wish you had WiFi Calling because all you need to do is connect to a local WiFi network and you can call and send text messages as if you're connected to the real cellular network. It's amazing!

But as I said, a lot of the opinions I get from people here on this site are people from Europe and have never lived in the US where our ISPs can be, as you yourself said, straight-up d**ks. It is what it is, there's no fighting them for they're all monopolies and they treat us like they know it. Oh well, big deal. You either move on and live with it, or you don't; it doesn't matter.

 

[Puiu]

Yet, people in the US do care about those features. VoLTE or HD-Voice is amazing, phone calls have never sounded so good! I could be talking to someone on my phone with HD-Voice and it sounds like the person is in the same room with me, it's just that good! If you call someone without HD-Voice on Verizon it sounds like the person is underwater, they compress the crap out of the audio on their legacy CDMA network.

As for WiFi Calling, if you ever find yourself in an area with less than desirable coverage like in a basement or a building with thick brick walls you'll wish you had WiFi Calling because all you need to do is connect to a local WiFi network and you can call and send text messages as if you're connected to the real cellular network. It's amazing!

But as I said, a lot of the opinions I get from people here on this site are people from Europe and have never lived in the US where our ISPs can be, as you yourself said, straight-up d**ks. It is what it is, there's no fighting them for they're all monopolies and they treat us like they know it. Oh well, big deal. You either move on and live with it, or you don't; it doesn't matter.

It's why I gave a link that could help people with enabling such features. All you have to do is make a bit of research online and check if others managed to do it with your ISP and how. It's usually just a few settings.

 

[trparky]

It's why I gave a link that could help people with enabling such features. All you have to do is make a bit of research online and check if others managed to do it with your ISP and how. It's usually just a few settings.

OK, but is your average user going to take the time to go to that web site and do the necessary changes? Nope. I may take the time because I'm tech-savvy but for the average person on the street it just has to work. They have to be able to open the box, pop the SIM card in, power it on and have it just work.

People like us tend to forget that we represent only a tiny fraction of the population of the world that even comes close to understanding how any of this stuff works and how to fix or tweak it. If it doesn't work out of the box, forget it. We have to make technology stupid-proof or somebody is going to mess it up.

People may make fun of the iPhone but at least Apple understands that for the vast majority of users the technology just has to work. No tweaking, no researching, no understanding anything, it just has to work. Period. People have lives to live, many don't have time to figure out why something broke or why something doesn't work as it should; these people have to have the gadget work straight out of the box with no questions asked.