Premium Android hits the wall

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Charles Arthur wrote about Premium Android hitting the wall.

“Premium” Android is getting torn apart, piranha-style. Cheaper phones from Chinese companies such as Xiaomi, Huawei, OnePlus, and Oppo are taking away their high-end Chinese business. Slowdowns in developing countries (notably south America) are killing sales there.

And in the west, there isn’t the same appetite for continued upgrades that there was; people are upgraded out. Does the Galaxy S6 really offer anything special over the S4 or S5? If anything, Samsung has pared back on both the software and hardware features – it doesn’t have some of the weird things where you waved hands to scroll screens, nor the microSD card and removable battery that a number of previous Samsung buyers liked. As I said before, Samsung must know how many people actually use the removable battery. But maybe that’s like buying a car with airbags: you don’t expect to need them, you just want to know they’re there in an emergency.

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I don’t think the crash in premium Android sales is a one-off. The competition from low- and mid-priced devices is fierce now, and yet these companies don’t seem to be putting any clear blue water between them; they’re not offering anything better than they did a year ago.

Case in point: Samsung’s Galaxy Note 5 has a smaller battery, also non-removable, than last year’s Note 4; and no SD card – which has pissed off some former Note buyers. How does that compete against the Xiaomis and Oppos and OnePlus phones of this world, which are much the same spec for less? Or even the iPhone 6 Plus, which has a better-adapted app store, and costs less?

Samsung is getting squeezed on both ends. Trying to be the premium Android brand isn’t and won’t work unless Samsung tries to be innovative instead of attempting to be an Apple clone.

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