“Samsung’s first quarter profits fell by 39% as mobile customers switched to the new big-screen iPhones,” Yeon Choul-Woong reports for The Korea Times.
“Earnings from the South Korean firm’s mobile business have been squeezed to less than half what they were a year earlier,” Yeon reports. “Until the launch of Apple’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, large screens were one of the features that set Samsung apart. But since the launch of Apple’s new device last autumn, Samsung has taken a hit.”
“Apple sold 61 million iPhones in the first three months of the year, an increase of 40% from a year earlier, which drove another quarter of big profits,” Yeon reports. “Sales of the iPhone have been growing in markets that Samsung typically dominates, such as in South Korea and Vietnam.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote exactly one year ago, over four months before Apple unveiled the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the 5.5-inch flagship iPhone 6 Plus:
People are waking up; they don’t want pretend iPhones, they want real iPhones. An iPhone with a larger screen option will hurt Samsung immeasurably more than myriad, unending traipses through the legal morass.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “M J Miller” for the heads up.]
Good, maybe copying is the best form of flattery. But, the loss of profits could be the best way to force Samsung to finally innovate for once.
Or finally exit the market! The easier path to take.
this should fix the bold issue for everything below this post.
or maybe not…
Truth be told MDN, you made fun of phablets and big-ass phones in your takes just as much as other pro-iPhone people. So did I. It’s amazing how quickly things change when you need to chase after a bigger market and accommodate their tastes.
Yes it’s disingenuous how we all were making fun of the need for larger phones but truth be told I was fine for a long time with my 4″ iPhone. That being said my iPhone 6 Plus has worked out better than I expected but I was more than fine for Apple to decide when the size change would come. And when it did – BOOM! Forgive me a cruel Shamsucks crashing fortune & sinking market share chuckle.
thank you for saying this. Yes I remember mdn always making fun of larger phone screens and now they take credit for recommending that apple make larger phones! I don’t mind if they are wrong once in a while but they better sure admit it! Otherwise we might have to start putting mdn on an iCal to show them when they are full of it!
To be fair, MDN did both. They defended Apple’s one-hand design mantra for a couple of years. Then MDN saw the increasing sales of the larger Galaxy and Note models from Samsung and decided that Apple needed to fight fire with fire.
Yes, MDN changed its mind about larger phones. But MDN also accurately predicted the financial hurt that bigger iPhones would place on Samsung.
MDN is always full of it. That’s the point, they are the ultimate Apple troll, they are clickbait at its finest.
The following is a social experiment”
Isn’t it amazing how Samsung “changed the world”?
Your experiment failed… Zero reaction either way.
Or perhaps it’s succeeded, if that was your intention….
As with any experiment, it would be wrong to prejudice the outcome. It is what it is. If anything, I posted too late.
Now…my hypothesis was that if Apple actually introduced the tablet, then MDN would acclaim it’s “change the world” benefit. Since it didn’t they must either accept that Phablets changed the world, or that they are not that big a deal (which they aren’t). The social experiment part was whether the same yardstick gets used.
Introduced the phablet…
You’re right. Merely changing the size of a phone? Not a big deal.
Actually introducing the world’s first, true smartphone? VERY big deal.
Suck it Samsuck! You deserve these loses POS slavish copying turd of a SK company. ☺️
great.
now if Apple would make a mid tower mac which many people had wanted for years they would be again I think pleasantly surprised by sales.
1) Many people work with desktops and towers instead of laptops or tablets and towers are more popular than all in ones like iMacs (go look at any office or Windows PC sales)
Desktops can be way more powerful than laptops (the Mac Pro benchmarks at Geekbench at 32000, the top 15 in Macbook Pro Retina is 14000. Not even close. Desktops can also have way more powerful video cards. People are burning out their laptops playing games with their MacBooks hooked up to big monitors. I dropped in a 3 GB card (cost $100 + ) into my old Mac Pro cheese grater. I can run two big monitors.
2) Apple wants to move into business (re: IBM alliance etc) and tower pcs are one component missing in their line up. How many banks for example do you see using laptops, tablets?
3) that’s a huge gap between the $500 mac mini and the $3000 Mac Pro. Actually I believe the ‘sweet spot’ machine is missing. The mini especially with new stripped down versions is not powerful enough the Pro too expensive (when you expand the TINY standard 250 GB drive — 250 drive is a giant iPod not a pro machine — the machine goes way up in price )
4) Desktops will encourage SWITCHERS as many Windows folks (including businesses) don’t want to ‘lose’ their monitor investments,
(I should actually repeat this as this is so important for sales… Note also iPhones have near 30% marketshare worldwide, Macs around 5 -10 %)
5) we see macs nowadays as a bright spot in Apple sales and finances (as in the last 2 quarters). People seem to want macs, give it to them.
and BTW apple should also Advertise their macs. No serious mac campaign since Mac PC guy (66 different ads in 4 years) ages ago.
Desktop system. How Quaint.
quaint?
Several big monitors. Project files open. Applications: Adobe Creative suite (Photoshop, Illustrator) , Painter, Lightwave, , Daz 3D open, several Notetaker 500-700 page reference files of designs open thousands of jpg.s in each , 15 high res texture files open, instructional video, 3 manuals open , link to client open, 3D rendering in the background all at the same time…
Since you said they are quaint maybe you have a ‘modern solution’ to do the above instead of a desktop ? try doing it on a tablet or even a Macbook.
I HAVE an iPad and a Macbook Pro but for all kinds of things even ‘simpler’ things than the above — like working on complex spreadsheets, project management, – two or more big monitors is way more efficient. A Tower with a cheaper vid card can also be used as a SERVER.
Or even try high end gaming with Macbook or iMac against a gaming PC tower. (no I don’t like PCs but I’m just pointing out a need… )
( Macbook Pro and higher end iMacs processors are quite powerful but the video cards can’t match cards for Towers. and you need powerful video cards to keep all the files, apps open. )
(for people not used to Towers: video cards are DIFFERENT. they have different RAM, different designs, some are good for games, others for 3D rendering, other help out the processors etc ).
The other problem with iMacs is that you can’t CHOOSE or replace your monitor . Monitors are also different. One of mine is $2000+ Cintiq where I can draw on it like a giant iPad. and Monitors WEAR OUT faster than CPUS, graphic artists who need absolute fidelity change their monitors when they fade after a few years (but usually the CPU and Vid card is still ok) . Likewise with a Tower if for some reason your CPU dies you can salvage your expensive monitor and hook it up to another.
With cloud stuff like handoff its so easy to bring a tablet etc to meetings and then continue later at your station with a desktop and big monitors.
people who diss desktops are those who said ” no one wants a big azz phone”.
——-
I REALLY don’t get people who are sarcastic to a mid tower.
Even if you personally don’t need one how is it going to hurt you if Apple gives other users what they want?
It’s not going to hurt Apple — hardly any money for R&D if it’s a box shaped, OSX is already there, manufacturing easy — but it might just increase sales. If Apple is worried they will lose money from third party monitors or video cards, users ilke me are willing to pay a bit more for a Mac than an equivalent specced PC.
I just bought another Mac Pro cheese grater (used) for 600 U.S, I’m going to dump a 4 GB card into it ($200-300) it’s going to run two big monitors as well. I don’t think many MacBooks or iPad for that price range will match it’s power. I bought it because I can’t get a Mid Tower.
Whle, I can certainly see how some people would benefit from a Mac Pro with multiple PCI-e slots, I don’t believe your usage scenario really needs it.
Through Thunderbolt, you can easily connect multiple monitors so that you can have easy view of all your open apps and windows. Go with 4K or 5K displays and you should have plenty of screen real estate.
I also believe that your assumption that monitors “wear out” is no longer a very valid argument. Current LED backlit monitors have extremely long life spans and their images don’t degrade in the same manner that old CCFL monitors did.
In my opinion, I believe that the only people who truly need a tower and PCI-e slots are those who rely on video cards for GPGPU. However, even this can be addressed to some degree with the use of Thunderbolt to PCI-e cages such as:
http://www.sonnettech.com/Product/thunderbolt/index.html
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/PCIe_Chassis/Mercury_Helios
What you are describing is an exceptionally minuscule percentage of desktop computing market.
Apple has demonstrated many times that they will carefully examine their user base and eliminate features, as well as products, that are not really used. They may have made a few exceptions, and current Mac Pro (the ‘trash can’) is probably an exception (in that its market share within the Macintosh user base is in low single digits), but if the user base of a product or a feature is in the low single digits, it is axed (examples are optical drives, ethernet ports, modem ports, PC card slots, PCI card slots, etc, etc, etc…).
Your use case is perfectly valid, but the number of users such as yourself among all the desktop computer users is negligible for Apple to consider.
Mid tower is likely never going to re-appear. What does this mean for user like yourself? Very unpleasant and hard choices, for sure, but Apple will likely prefer losing a few angry ultra-power users than losing their ability to streamline their product lines.
This is to endorse Predrag’s (as always) wise remarks. My only criticism is of his last sentence: it should read “Apple will definitely, always prefer losing a few angry power-users rather than their ability to make what everyone else wants.” Apple has made computers ‘mass’, not ‘niche’. They did this by taking the ‘computer’ out. No talk of DRAMs, or of ports, or of speeds, or of pixels. Just kit that is efficient and is useful. And is easy to use and (despite recent whining about a couple of slips) just works.
chefpasty and predrag:
1) you guys are responding to my second post almost exclusively instead of also looking at the first one (which the second one is an expansion)
like Predrag you say : “What you are describing is an exceptionally minuscule percentage of desktop computing market…. he number of users such as yourself among all the desktop computer users is negligible for Apple to consider.”
in my first post for example I was talking about the need for a Mid Tower between the 500 mac mini and the 3000 Mac Pro.
“Low percentage, negligible ?” I talked about for example Windows Switches with Monitors, businesses with Monitors… low percentages? that’s hundreds of millions! So many PC people I’ve talked to don’t want to switch because they will ‘lose ‘ their monitor investments as I pointed out (mac minis are less powerful than their current window machines, mac pros are too expensive)
A business with hundreds of PC towers and monitors, which is easier : to convince them to switch to a mac Mid tower and keep their monitors or dump everything and get iMacs?
(and Apple unlike in the past wants to make a determined foray into business).
that’s an obvious big gap in the line up ($500 to 3000 and the 3000 Mac pro like I pointed out has a tiny 250 drive that you need to upgrade or hook up an external etc) and obviously Apple does see a need for headless macs otherwise why have these two?
and chief pasty you can argue that the iMac screen is great which is true but lots of people still don’t want a monitor stuck to the CPU and lots of people want their own type of monitors (or ALREADY have monitors) . And the Retina 5K iMac with a base 8 GB memory isn’t cheap at 2,500 ! (it doesn’t bother me but some graphic people have complained about the glossy screen for example)
also saying 5K increases screen real estate: that’s because it makes things SMALLER (you can pack more stuff in) with it’s attendant trade off . that’s different from the real estate of two monitors.
2) so much of the stuff Chief Pasty you are talking about are ‘work’ arounds. External PCI-e cages? What is so hard for apple to build a mid tower? Apple might have made a decision for whatever reason but it’s hardly for ‘greater convenience ‘ for many users.
It’s like two years ago people yelling saying ‘Apple is right about small phones’ because ‘people who need more screen real estate CAN CARRY AN IPAD WITH A MOBILE CARRIER CHIP AND a small iPhone ‘. yeah that works too but is it convenient? and cages aren’t cheaper either.
one of those PCI-e cages like the Sonnet express is $500 (250 for lower end single slot) . you are going to convince PC users with Towers to switch and get one of those ? that’s just the price of the SLOT without a card.
Get this dude: like i keep pointing out : I’m NOT asking apple to make this really HARD thing, or spend so much money on R&d etc a mid tower should be a simple thing to produce…
it’s not going to detract from new initiatives like Watch but see point 4 below it might just add a lot to sales.
3) i’m not into the server thing but lots of people have said they want a mid tower also for server needs (as again i pointed out in post one) .
4) Lastly every time I mention Mid Tower mac I get a whole bunch of positive responses (like above) so it’s obvious there are a whole lot of people who want one just like a lot of people who clamoured for a big iPhone for years. (yes yes I know that you guys are going to nitpick on it, so i’ll be crystal: I do NOT think the market is AS big as the iPhone market of course… but a mid tower market is probably even larger than the Mac Pros., look at all the potential windows switchers .. and like i said it’s EASY to do. ). What is wrong with selling more macs?
actually my last thoughts on this is :
I’m an apple fan myself and used macs for years.
But too many other fans always think Apple is ALWAYS right and Look at stuff from YOUR own perspective. You don’t need it and you assume some one who wants one is wrong.
Several years back when I argued that Apple needed to upgrade it’s long in the tooth cheese grater Mac Pros (it didn’t even have thunderbolt like an iMac!) I got responses like Predrags “What you are describing is an exceptionally minuscule percentage of desktop computing market.” The Mac Pro should be discontinued or left to die. Leave the high end market to the niche PCs.
Then apple came out with the Cylinder Mac Pro.
Apple was so keen or ‘desperate’ because they knew they were too long between upgrades they showed a model on stage which was still being designed which is extremely rare.
Now all the naysayers that said the Mac pro should have been left to die (like the big iPhone detractors) say it’s ‘good ‘ apple has a new Mac Pro. That’s it’s ‘taking a lead’ in PCs… etc.
Now if I CRITICIZE the cylinder Mac Pro practically the same naysayers who wanted it to die jump on me… (*sigh*)
You write well thought out and intelligent posts. I still disagree.
The ‘trash can’ Mac Pro is definitely a niche product and is, as I said above, an exception, an aberration of Apple’s business stray. There is a reasoning behind it: there is no desktop pc like it. It is unique by sheer power and style. It is a pc only Apple could make. Mid tower would have to land in the middle of the top-tier DELLs, HPs, Lenovos… And switchers still wouldn’t switch because they would get three times as many Lenovos with same specs for the same money.
Apple is trying to avoid enterprise switchers. By building non-upgradable hardware, they simplify manufacturing and support.
When ‘trash can’ Mac Pro came out, I didn’t expect it, but I wasn’t that surprised. After all, with FCP and Logic, it made sense to offer a computer where those would really shine. All mid-tower would do is cannibalise the iMac market. The current potential market among Mac users is away too small. And for switchers, no matter what Apple makes, it would be way too expensive for them to seriously consider it.
predrag,
you are also intelligent and I enjoy your posts
as mac and apple users we can politely disagree.
I am grateful to apple, Macs made my career in graphics possible, and apple stock has allowed me if I wanted to to buy a Mac Pro instead of a mid tower!
if Apple had ONE choice: future with Watch or Mid tower I say Watch hands down, but maybe apple will do both (although I’m not really holding my breath) and surprise us.
Apple rumoured to be moving to bigger iPad with dock (?) so they do have some interest in enterprise concerns, so maybe big iPad is their take instead of a mid mac.
1. Even when Apple was still making towers, we never saw your friends or those businesses flocking to go buy them. If they were, Apple may not have discontinued them.
Yes, running at native resolution a 4K or 5K monitor at 27′ will make things very small. However, nothing is stopping you from getting and connecting a few 70″ 4K TVs to use as monitors if that’s what you need.
If you have something against using Thunderbolt to connect external monitors, you can always use DisplayLink USB adaptors.
2. Apple has never been afraid to remove ports and devices from Macs. Take for example ADB, SCSI, floppy drives, Optical drives. The fact is, there are not a great deal of Mac users who need install PCI-e cards. For the minority who do, there are the PCI-e cages that I mentioned. For better or for worse, fact is, Apple has placed their bets on Thunderbolt and it’s something we have to live with.
3. Idk what type of servers you are talking about, but servers don’t always have to be hulking behemoths with gobs and gobs of power and ports. There are some services that even a lowly Raspberry Pi can serve.
4. I’m sure there are people who want a tower but not all of them need one and there are enough choices in the current Mac lineup to fulfill just about everyone’s needs. I think lots of people are still stuck with the perception that gigantic full towers equate power but it’s nothing more than a perception.
As I said earlier, when the towers were available, those Windows switchers didn’t bite, I don’t see how making a tower available now will change anything.
I didn’t really want to discuss more but since you keep writing and keep having to explain …
like I said you keep describing ‘workarounds’ like the people a couple of years ago saying “we don’t need BIG phones because we can use a SMALL phone AND carry an iPad with a mobile chip”. yeah but is it ideal? . Saying that people ‘can’ use a PCI cage at the cost of near mac mini or get a 2500 iMac (to get the video chip for second big monitor expansion — lower end iMacs have low powered video chips 1 GB or less, ) when they don’t want it (like if they have their own favourite graphics monitor) is just silly.
and it’s not like ‘few people ‘ want PCIe slots as you say … it’s MANY people want more powerful video even just for playing games. The lower end iMac has a integrated video or 500 Mb or just 1 GB. With a slot (for an inexpensive Mid tower) you have a CHOICE, you can load in a 4 GB card for just around $200 or even more powerful cards if you wanted to , I was shocked myself when I upgraded an old Mac Pro to 3 GB video, the is no comparison to 1 GB or integrated video performance… (and i can keep dropping more powerful cards in if I wanted to).
” Even when Apple was still making towers, we never saw your friends or those businesses flocking to go buy them. ” In those days the different in price between a Mac tower and PC was huge (mac towers costs thousands) today the gap is much closer, the Macbook Air is close to Ultra book prices, apple iPhone is close to Galaxy s6 etc. If you are right “people won’t buy them (i.e headless macs)” WHY does apple build mac minis (low end tower) and Mac Pros (high end tower) ??? shouldn’t your SAME argument apply to mac minis and mac pros as well? Are you ALSO arguing that PC users who ‘wont flock to Mac towers’ and have their own PC monitors will for some reason flock to iMacs (and throw away their monitors) ? (seriously does that make sense?)
isn’t the Mac Pro a small niche? yet apple caters for it.
conventional wisdom also said PCs were dying (and many many apple fans I debated with said we should forget macs) yet we see a resurgence in mac sales….
like i said before Apple might have their own reasons (which I can’t guess it) for not selling a Mid tower but it can’t be price or difficulty in building it. It must be way easier than the Apple Watch.
etc.
i don’t really want to get into this anymore you guys are fixated on Apple can’t do anything wrong , or the needs of some users (like those who wanted big phones) should be discredited because Apple does not build that product at that time.
, but just look at my first post, I got like 17 five stars so looks like lots want a mid tower besides me…
to be clear :
I’m not really thinking about a Mid Tower like an old beige PC tower you might be thinking. If apple wants to build one with new tech, thunderbolt or USB C etc fine as long as I can hook up two monitors minimum.
I just want a headless mac in-between the price range of the mac mini at $500 and the 3000 mac pro (which goes up if you need more than the paltry 250 GB drive) .
is that so weird to ask?
You keep talking about multi monitors. Every single Mac in the current lineup is capable of driving multi monitors.
Other than being able to switch video cards, what other PCI-e cards would you put in to a tower?
You are looking for an infinitely upgradable tower. This is something Apple will no longer produce. The upgrade cycles for something like that is far longer and goes against Apple’s business model. Additionally, support for something like that is far more complicated than closed systems.
Something between a Mac Mini and a Mac Pro would be a MacBook Pro which is priced at approx $2500 and has a dedicated 2GB Nvidia graphics and can be operated with the built in display disabled. iMacs which are priced between $1100-2500 are also between Mac Minis and Mac Pros. There are no holes in the lineup.
For the tinkerers who want PCI-e, the only option is to look for used Mac Pro 4,1 or 5,1s. These can upgraded to perform at levels very comparable to the current Mac Pros. They are great choices for the Windows switchers looking for a bargain. Toss in a USB 3 PCI-e card and a modern video card and they can have a very powerful Mac at very reasonable costs.
Now I am expecting the iPhone7 with Dual SIM (both simultaneously active like HTC), 5.2″ display & longer battery life. That would be the complete and best iPhone ever.
Dual SIM has practically no purpose in America. I have yet to meet a person (online or in person, other than you) who has a justifiable use for a dual-SIM mobile phone. It is such a niche market that it would be a colossal waste of ever-so-limited space.
The 5-inch phones being sold before the iPhone 6 were thicker and heavier. When I was showing people the iPhone 6, they all said “it’s lighter than the old iPhone!” Its thin profile and light weight makes it usable even at the large screen size. Other manufacturers were selling huge phones with the thickness of an iPhone 4.
I wonder why all the comments in this feed are bold.
Because they tell it like it is 😉
Because MDN did not properly close its “strong” markup in its take.
The same thing has happened a few times with italics. But then again, the comments herabouts are usually slanted anyhow
Bold? Ooh. Anyone remember Rambling Sid Rumpole?
I just posted a /strong closing flag. Did that do the trick?
Apparently not.
Any way the usual:
Boohoo Samsung yoo are soooo scroowed.
Ha ha ha.
93% of the entire mobile industry’s profits?
I do like that strategy . . . a lot!
Maybe it has to be / strongAs …
Samsung 6S is a very nice phone, excellent screen, great camera and certainly up there on a par with the iPhone 6 Plus. They deserve to sell a lot.
You forgot the sarcasm tag.