Mobiles

Competitions In Mobile Industry

Just three years after launching its first mobile device, China’s Xiaomi has officially become the number one smartphone maker. The 3rd in the world are Samsung and Apple whose sales grew 3x in quarter 3, 2014, behind only the big two. Press release of this ranking is an international consortium transmitted data at 10 am on 31/10 (Chinese time) (Samuel, 2014). However, at 6pm the same day (only 8 hours later), Lenovo officially announced the completion of the purchase of Motorola Mobility from Google.

Thus, according to analysts at IDC and Strategy Analytics, once Lenovo’s purchase agreement is completed it means that the company will suddenly become the world’s third largest smartphone maker in the world and the twisted home of Xiaomi. This quick swap clearly shows that the heat has never stopped between mobile manufacturers. While Samsung and Apple are “sitting” at the very top with a market share of 23.8%, respectively, and 12%, the third place appears to be “unconquerable”. The time is now temporarily located Lenovo after the completion of Motorola’s acquisition agreement. .

Q3 2015 Xiaomi also boasts of a 5.3% global market share only slightly higher than Lenovo’s 5.2% before acquiring Motorola. It thus indicates that indeed there is the steady rise of the company with respect to competitiveness as Lenovo also enjoys the same level during its pre-acquisition days of Motorola. South Korea’s LG Group is lagging behind with 5.1% market share.

Technology War

If in the past, smartphones were not much different than normal telephones, but since the iPhone came out, nowadays the boundaries between feature phones and smartphones are becoming clearer. And thus, a range of smartphone devices from many different manufacturers have been created to compete with the iPhone. In the end the result is somewhat inevitable, to be able to compete with Apple, some other manufacturers have good sales like Samsung, LG, Xiaomi have to improve themselves leading to a fierce race of upgrading hardware and software features.

(A). Hardware

Previously, Steve Jobs once said: “Nobody will buy a big-screen smartphone”. And indeed everything was happening as he said. Not only do smartphone users prefer larger screen sizes, there is also a new term for these larger screen phones known as “phablets”.

The screen size on smartphones is increasing and the start of this race is none other than Samsung. Large-screen products like the Samsung Galaxy Note 1 have shown that large-screen smartphones are very useful. Even Apple cannot ignore this pressure as to why the iPhone still does not have a larger screen because the strong competition by phablets from other firms has greatly impacted Apple’s sales. This caused Apple to increase the screen size on its iPhone from 3.5 to 4 inches, or more recently to 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus (Yoshikazu 2014).

The race is not only size, but also screen resolution. The standard in 2012 was an HD display. In 2013, Full HD became the norm. And by 2014, the higher resolution technology for displays advanced more to allow 2K as the maximum for the highest clarity and the most detailed visuals on screens and for displays.Studies have shown that a human eye will only accept data up to something around 300 ppi, and beyond that, pixel density increases just don’t yield as much benefit. For instance, a 4.7-inch cell phone is going to be pretty clear at an HD resolution of 720p. Usually, it is further down this stretch where benefits are mainly imperceptible for the average user, so it makes overkill to put a resolution like 4K on such a small screen.But now, HD resolution is only on mid-range smartphones (Eric 2013).

High resolution displays are only for devices with large screens such as phablets but the perception of users is that they always want to buy the best things with the money they have. Therefore, high-resolution screens are always their first choice. Of course, high-resolution displays on smaller-sized devices only reduce battery life and aren’t really helpful. Even though not many are concerned with it, innovation in 7G and 8G networks will redesign future communication technologies.

However, the powerful processor will bring a better experience to the users. However, sometimes it gives users a new smartphone with a high profile that becomes negative. A lot of devices have 4-core or 8-core of proprietary processors… but during actual usage, it is quite annoying due to lag phenomenon, shock, heat or wind-fast battery dissipation. Even many processors use simple multiplication purposes only for “testing benchmarks” to promote products and service”. Once in a while, the world of technology trembles when companies like LG, Samsung… get higher benchmarks than usual. To commit fraud.

Race configuration is not necessarily a negative sign. The development of microprocessors with amazing speed has helped mobile devices to gradually catch up with products like laptops, PCs… On Android product, this development in hardware has made customers turn away from this operating system due to its instability. Have taken.

Apple is the only company that is still in the race of configuration and camera resolution now. Both of its latest products remain as high as 8 megapixel resolution compared to their predecessor. However, the image quality of the iPhone has always been appreciated by users. However, improving camera resolution on smartphones will provide better image quality, and higher camera resolution can attract a lot of attention from consumers.

Although camera resolution does not play a significant role in image quality, it is valuable in changing the way a user thinks about selecting any smartphone camera. However, determining image quality depends on many different factors. So, if the product has high resolution but the image quality is still poor, it is really a disaster.

However recently after a new trend of using “selfie rod” is booming and the word “selfie” becomes popular around the world, the secondary camera starts to be used more equally, from the main camera. Even more. Nevertheless, in many different situations, limitations caused the front camera to capture more than one person or the resolution did not meet the user’s wishes.

Understanding this need, apart from upgrading the main camera, mobile firms have started focusing on front camera resolution and aperture. A series of newly launched smartphones with a higher resolution and wider aperture have been created to support the trend called “taking a selfie”, typically the HTC Desire Eye, Samsung Galaxy Prime mobile phone or Nokia Lumia 730 Grand mobile phone.

(B). Software

The race among smartphone manufacturers is not limited only on developing hardware, it is also happening in software development. The two largest application stores for users are Google Play (for Android users) and App Store (for iOS users). Google Play (formerly known as Android Market) is an international online store where users can download all types of applications developed by Google for any device running Android. It was introduced in October 2008. According to a survey conducted in 2014, approximately 1.3+ million apps have been created for this operating system, and 40 billion applications were downloaded from Google Play (Steve 2014). Later, App Store is a digital distribution platform for mobile applications on iOS, developed and maintained by Apple Inc. In June 2015, Apple announced that more than 100 billion apps had been downloaded from the App Store.

Starting with users being able to download a wide application range from these stores-from entertainment applications such as games and platforms for streaming of different videos, movies, etc., to the most important ones, like health care apps for counting fitness, managing medical records, and scheduling appointments-this results in providing a broad selection for various user needs.

People can check their blood pressure, track their phones, and monitor their homes at a distance with just one click. “Your smartphone should be smart,” said Aparna Chennapragada – Google Director while trying to demonstrate one of the many new features at the developer’s conference held in San Francisco. Mobile applications continue to grow in popularity, as they are used by more and more people. A study conducted in May by comScore proved that during the first quarter of 2012, more mobile users used applications (51.1%) than surfed websites on their devices (49.8%). Gartner predicted that in 2013, 102 billion apps were going to be downloaded. Though 91% of the applications would be free they would still manage to rake in $26 billion, which is up by 44.4% from $18 billion generated during 2012. It was a pointer that this market had really grown well but so fast that it is reflected by increases within the usage of the smartphone and free apps monetized by in-app purchases and adverts. The app economy is estimated by one analyst to generate profits of over €10 billion per year in the EU, fortunately for the growth of the app market it will create 529,000 jobs in all 28 states of the EU.

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