People are becoming emotionally attached to their smartphones, according to the preliminary conclusion of a study by Loughborough University published this week.
It is not the hardware per se, but the connectivity it enables – and the value people place on it – that is "creating a huge ripple in the pond of human behaviour," said Tom Page, senior lecturer at Loughborough University, who surveyed 205 smartphone owners aged 16-64 from the U.K., Hong Kong, China, Canada, Australia, Peru and the U.S.
"It is important to understand that, as smartphones develop, we continue to study the way they affect behaviour, emotions and emotional attachments," he said.
I must keep buying the wrong smartphone, because the emotion I have experienced most frequently during my smartphone-owning life is frustration. Why doesn’t Swype recognise what I’m trying to type? Why am I getting uplink but no downlink? Why does this app want to know my blood type? Why do I need to approve 47 updates?
Perhaps it is because I am seemingly one of the only people left on this planet who doesn’t own a Samsung or an iPhone, and everyone who does own one has been assimilated into a palpable state of collective bliss, where everything works perfectly and th e love between human and touchscreen is actively encouraged. Meanwhile, outcasts like me toil away with our unresponsive swipe-able keyboards, wailing in agony because an app we were using has stopped unexpectedly.
A cursory glance at the numerous research notes this week about Apple and Samsung certainly lends a bit of credibility to that statement – the part about everyone owning them, not the bit about the palpable state of collective bliss.
Apple had yet another record iPhone quarter, shipping 74.5 million units in the three months to 27 December 2014. iPhones are proving particularly popular in China, where Apple grew its revenue 70% to $16.1 billion, putting it just behind Europe at $17.2 billion.
The news sparked a frenzy among the analyst community as it appeared that the U.S. device maker may have caught up with market leader Samsung; however, it is difficult to find definitive proof, since Samsung does not disclose exact shipment volumes.
Strategy Analytics put the South Korean firm’s figure at 74.5 million – level pegging with Apple – while IDC put Samsung’s smartphone volumes at 75.1 million, a whisker ahead of Apple. Juniper Research was even more generous, concluding that Samsung shipped just over 76 million smartphones.
Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence gathered by yours truly suggests that there is very little to pick between Apple and Samsung.
Recently I’ve listened to long-time Samsung users complain that the finish on their Galaxy S5 feels too ‘plasticy’, but at the same time I have heard diehard Apple fanboys bemoan the fact that their big-screen iPhone 6 Plus looks just like every other smartphone on the market. In addition, with Apple now addressing demand for big-screen smartphones, as well as the contactless payment market, some of the more tech-savvy consumers have concluded that they aren’t missing out on anything by switching to an iPhone.
While Samsung and Apple duke it out at the top end, others are quietly making gains on the fringes.
Much has been made of Chinese low-cost device maker Xiaomi’s meteoric rise to prominence, but this week it was the turn of another big name from China, Huawei, to crow about its achievements.
The kit maker’s device arm on Tuesday revealed it shipped 138 million handsets in 2014, 75 million of which were smartphones. While it has traditionally gone after the affordable end of the market, Huawei has set itself the challenge of shipping 100 million mid-to-high-end smartphones in 2015.
This of course will ramp up the rivalry with Apple and Samsung, but with those two shipping in a quarter what Huawei shipped all year, it will be a tall order.
