All is not well in smartphone land. The industry was headed for a slowdown well before SARS-CoV-2 entered the picture. The glory days of expanding markets and bi-annual upgrades are seemingly at an end, and things have only been exacerbated by two years of financial hardships and supply chain constraints.
For all these reasons, it’s not surprising that manufacturers are pulling back on manufacturing. A new report from South Korea’s Maeil Business News has the world’s leading smartphone maker ramping production down by 30 million units for 2022. The news comes as sales are further hampered by the conflict in Ukraine. In March, the company followed fellow tech giants Microsoft and Apple by suspending sales in Russia.
Apple, too, has been feeling the pain. Recent Bloomberg reports noted that the iPhone maker is throttling plans to manufacture an additional 20 million phones in 2022. Instead, its numbers are reportedly going to remain flat from 2021. Those reports follow several quarters of iPhone sales that had managed to buck many of the industry’s macro trends, but the company might be coming back down to Earth, even with the imminent arrival of the iPhone 14.
It’s a perfect storm of industry and global factors that have gotten us to this place. It’s not panic time for the larger manufactures — they’ll almost certainly come out of the dip unscathed. But there are broader questions that remain about the industry going forward. Biggest of all is whether this is a lull following a decade of explosive smartphones sales, or whether not even the arrival of new technologies like foldable screens will kickstart a return to the mobile golden age.
Samsung declined to comment on the reports.
Samsung reportedly cutting smartphone production by 30M
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US beat China on App Store downloads for first time since 2014, due to coronavirus impact
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The U.S. App Store’s downloads have surpassed China’s downloads for the first time since 2014. According to data from Sensor Tower’s Q2 2020 report, out today, the U.S. App Store saw 27.4% year-over-year growth in the quarter, compared to the 2.1% growth for the China App Store. During the quarter, the U.S. App Store generated 2.22 billion new installs compared with China’s 2.06 billion downloads, to regain the top position. This then translated to the U.S. beating China on App Store consumer spend, as well.
Contributing to the shift was the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on both China and the U.S.
The U.S. surpassed China on installs beginning in April and lasting all the way through June, the firm found.
China in Q2, meanwhile, was coming down from its own abnormally high number of downloads in March and April, due to COVID-19. But as its download figures began to normalize, the pandemic was wreaking havoc in the U.S., where it hit slightly later.
This led to the U.S. to see a surge in downloads, as suddenly the population was forced to work from home, attend school from home and entertain themselves at home with apps, games and streaming services.
Image Credits: Sensor Tower
Sensor Tower tells TechCrunch there was particularly significant growth in U.S. business and education apps in Q2, as a result. These categories were the largest contributors to the U.S. surpassing China’s installs.
Business app downloads grew 133.3% in Q2, followed by education (84.4%), health & fitness (57.7%), news 44.9%) and social networking (42.4%).
Image Credits: Sensor Tower
Video conferencing app Zoom, in particular, had a breakout quarter and even shattered the record for App Store installs, with nearly 94 million total downloads in a single quarter. The prior record had been set by TikTok, which had in Q1 2020 seen 67 million downloads in a single quarter. No other non-game app has ever surpassed 50 million installs in a quarter, Sensor Tower noted.
TikTok still had a strong Q2, with nearly 71 million App Store downloads in the quarter, representing 154% year-over-year growth. Its top two download markets were both the U.S. and China — the latter where it’s known as Douyin.
Image Credits: Sensor Tower
Mobile gaming was also a big hit in the U.S., as people stayed home under government lockdowns. Top mobile games by App Store downloads included titles like Save The Girl, Roblox, Go Knots 3D, Coin Master, Tangle Master 3D, Fishdom, ASMR Slicing, Call of Duty: Mobile and others.
On this front, Roblox had a stellar quarter as kids stayed at home and went online gaming, due to being disconnected from school and their playmates in real life. Roblox’s gaming app shot up the U.S. rankings from No. 11 in Q1 2020 to No. 2 in Q2, and achieved a new high of 8.6 million downloads in the quarter.
Rollic Games had two hits in the quarter, Go Knots 3D and Tangle Master 3D, each with over 5 million App Store downloads. Its Repair Master 3D title also came in at No. 20.
Both Zoom and Rollic Games were the only new top publishers to find themselves in the top 10 on the App Store in Q2, the report found.
Image Credits: Sensor Tower
Though the U.S. surpassed China in the quarter for the first time in years, the rest of the top five — Japan, Great Britain and Russia — remained the same as last quarter, though growing on a year-over-year basis.
Related to the surge of new downloads, the U.S. also surpassed China on consumer spending on the App Store for the first time since Q4 2018 — but that was only by 1.6% (around $53 million). In Q2 2020, the U.S. surpassed China by 14%, or about $717 million.
The U.S. also saw more significant quarter-over-quarter growth in spending during the COVID-19 outbreak, growing 20% between Q1 and Q2. In China, the consumer spending growth on the App Store was just 5% between Q4 2019 and Q1 2020, when it felt the full impact of the virus.
US beat China on App Store downloads for first time since 2014, due to coronavirus impact
Samsung will reveal the next Galaxy Note on August 5
Samsung’s next big Unpacked event is scheduled for August 5. As is the trend these days, the unveiling will be online-only, following in the footsteps of big virtual events from the likes of Microsoft and Apple. It’s Samsung’s first crack at the format. The company just made it under the pre-COVID-19 shutdown wire back in February for the Galaxy S20 launch.
Image Credits: Samsung
The headliner of next month’s event will no doubt be the next version of Samsung’s popular phablet line. The Galaxy Note S20 has leaked online a fair bit already, because Samsung. The most notable occasion was the beginning of the month, when the company’s Russia site briefly posted a copper colored version of the Note 20 Ultra. Fittingly, the invite for the event features a copper S-Pen dripping into a big similarly-colored puddle.
Here’s everything Samsung just announced at Unpacked 2020
The premium version of the handset sports a folded zoom lens, much like the Galaxy S20 Ultra. Additional leaks appear to confirm some minor changes to the handset’s design, including the swapping of some buttons and moving the S-Pen slot to the left of the charging port. Other details will almost certainly leak out between now and August 5, because that’s just how these things go. There will likely be a slew of other devices on the docket for the event, as well. Samsung likes to pack a lot into Unpacked, after all. Accessories, audio products and wearables are all candidates.
Notably, Samsung also announced that it will be holding its own virtual event in the early September time frame. The company had initially planned to attend IFA, but ultimately — and understandably — thought better of it. The August 5 event, meanwhile, kicks off at 10 a.m. ET/7 a.m. PT. It will be available via Samsung.com.