People are holding on to their phones longer

A few days ago Apple CEO Tim Cook released lowered earnings guidance for Q1 of 2019, which essentially means the company isn’t expected to make as much money as they thought they would. Cook has blamed a number of factors for the decline, chief of which were “fewer iPhone upgrades than we had anticipated”.

While many people are pointing and laughing at Apple, blaming the company’s sky-high pricing for their products as one of the reasons for the big decline, the reality is that the smartphone market is plateauing, meaning less people are buying phones every year, and more of them are holding on to their older phones longer than ever before.

Apple isn’t the only one feeling the pinch. Over on the Android side, Samsung has also felt sluggish sales on their top-end devices. Fewer people are forking out serious cash for top-end models, content to hold onto their current phones for one more year, or more likely, opting to get mid-range phones from Chinese manufacturers like OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, and Huawei.

Today’s smartphones are a far cry from the ones offered a three or four years ago, where generational upgrades of top-tier processors offered clear performance hikes to the consumer. Honestly, I’d personally be hard pressed to see the difference between a Snapdragon 835-equipped phone between a Snapdragon 845 device in daily, regular use, if put in the same chassis. The hardware that powers our smartphones nowadays is so good that you’ll probably still be OK using your Note 9 or Mate 20 Pro two or even three years from now, which isn’t good news for both Samsung and Huawei.

And expect that phenomenon to trickle down to the mid-range market as well. Mid-range phones nowadays are fast approaching flagship levels of performance, to the point that regular consumers won’t really notice the difference between a mid-range processor and a top-end one in non-gaming applications.

It’s a burgeoning headache that all companies will have to face in the future as more and more people hold on dearly to their phones.