Smartphone sales falling

Re: Idiot analysts

Then get thee to T-mobile, STAT! You can upgrade several times a year, no problem. If you like that sort of thing. I had SD sockets on my Android devices, but it's a fucking pain in the ass to; unmount it, pop out that tiny thing, insert it into another adapter, load it, clean the desktop system's garbage off it, then load it back in again. I got tired of it and don't miss it now. Just get more memory and sync that crap over the radios. And the headphone jack is pretty silly with all the cool bluetooth devices available now, and some of them dirt cheap. I got a $10 mini headset at Big Lots and still can't believe how its so cheap to make. And it works great, despite the old-style power plug for it. I felt the way you do when they stopped putting DVD-ROM drives in laptops, but it makes sense, you just get an external one via the USB. They are also cheap and easy to deal with, and my newer laptops are that much smaller. Not a big deal, kinda better to deal with. Same thing with the venerable floppy disk drives. They were useful to boot from, but you can boot from USB just the same. You think they are taking away your choices, but the choices are just migrating to a simpler method to manufacture and support. Not an offense to the consumers, a modernization.

No, Apple would not do better to add a micro SD slot

Just because YOU want that doesn't mean they should do it. Apple's built in flash is massively fast, the SD card would be so slow it would be a bigger drop in performance than the increase I saw going from a 5 to a 6S. No thanks.

Apple has done just fine without your business advice, they are the valuable and most profitable public company in the world after all, so they're doing well without Mage's business savvy.

I don't know if they'll drop the headphone socket, it seems a bit silly to me (especially if the reason really is because it won't allow making the phone thinner...what's wrong with a 2.5mm socket if that's the case?) But if they do, it'll come with headphones like they always do, so most people who use the headphones it comes with won't be affected in the least. Those who want to use other headphones will need an adapter. I'm sure Apple will sell an overpriced one and all the Apple haters will scream, but two months later you'll be able to buy them off eBay for $3.99.

Stuff like SD cards and headphone sockets are not going to affect Apple's market. If they lose share, it will be because the iPhone people already have will still be fine and people won't see a reason to replace it just because the new one is faster or thinner or whatever. Samsung has the same problem and they've been flailing around adding and removing SD slots and other features the last few generations but that isn't helping them. Why buy a new phone if your old one still does everything you need it to do?

Re: "halved its forecast for worldwide sales of smartphones"

> But the phablet thing is interesting. It makes me wonder the extent to which people are slow to change the way they do things

Maybe it's down to reducing devices: why carry a phone and a tablet (needing its own SIM or tethering), when a phone by itself is good enough?

Plus: either people are getting less self-conscious about holding a phablet to their ear, or they are simply making fewer phone calls and relying more on text-based forms of messaging.

Getting used to smaller phones

The first cell phone I ever owned was a Nokia 8860 back in 2000. Cost me $500 (subsidized!) but I wanted something really small. I just couldn't see having a phone I couldn't carry in my pocket, and just about everything back then was designed to be carried in a purse or clipped to a belt. Not for me!

I continued with small phones for years and when the iPhone came out I thought it was cool but it was huge, and was waiting for them to come out with something smaller! I finally bit the bullet and got a 3gs in 2009, and at first it seemed ridiculously big coming from a KRZR. I got used to it and had a few others and then Apple introduced the 6 and 6 plus. By then I was using my phone enough that I could see the value in something bigger, but couldn't decide between the two sizes. So I just waited until the 6S and bit the bullet and got the plus. At first I was almost ready to return it, but I got used to it, and holding an old 5/5S (let alone the even smaller ones before it) seems almost like a toy now.

I could even see the value in something bigger, but the size of my pockets (and the pocket in my golf bag and bike's saddlebag) couldn't handle much bigger so until the technology to make a phone that's the current size and thickness but unfolds to double its size exists, I think this is as big as I can get. If you told me in 2006 that 10 years later I'd be carrying a phone the size of the 6S plus, I would have thought you were on drugs! I was half expecting that phone from Zoolander to become a reality :)