Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Flagships aren’t driving innovation anymore”.
Smartphones are being released, left right and center if you’re in the market for a new device. There’S so much choice right now that it can honestly get overwhelming. But I want you to try and remember the last flagship that actually innovated and brought in a new feature that wasn’t just an upgrade of a previous version. It’S hard, because smartphone manufacturers are now adding in all of the latest and greatest specs of their flagship devices. But those devices aren’t breaking new ground or taking risks in the past, going from one generation of a flagship to the next word, you would tangible benefits, the phone would look really different and it would function completely differently as well. There was something that was new to the device like a big speed, jump or significantly slimmer, bezels, but as the years go on, it feels like these companies are just going through a bottleneck. Everything tends to look and feel really similar and the lines between different flagship phones are becoming blurred.
We’Ve reached a point now, where upgrading from one flagship to the next iteration year-on-year it’s just kind of meaningless to a lot of people. The latest flagship smartphones have heaps of features and specs. The most of us will never fully utilize. There’S heaps of RAM that most users won’t fill up.
Camera features that most will overlook and simply use the regular mode, a lot of processing power that most people just don’t push on a phone. The fight against commoditization has led to overkill spreadsheets and therefore soaring prices for customers. This leads to a smartphone market, where a lot of the phones look pretty much the same. There are slight variances here and there, but they’re all the same formula with the same specs, the same features and similar pricing. However, that’s not to say that there’s not any kind of innovation in the entire smartphone market.
You just have to look beyond flagships. Look at the concept, phones or niche products where there are some really innovative features. Sometimes very mainstream features now initially originated in niche devices. For example, the high refresh rate displays a super in at the moment, but they started off being a fringe gaming feature something an Apple account for near enough: 35 % of all smartphones sold worldwide according to IDC and a much higher percentage in the US and Europe. Yet both of these companies are very conservative with their flagship lines.
Those brave and bold moves to implement a new and upcoming awesome feature is something that Samsung’s reserved for its kind of accompanying phones. Take, for example, the Galaxy Note edge that wasn’t the main Galaxy Note for that year. It just comes launched alongside the Galaxy Note 4, which had the more conventional flat screen. If these side bets proved to be popular, they tend to be worked on or and find and then eventually get integrated into the main phone, whereas with Apple, they seem to be content with releasing the same basic iPhone design for years at a time the rumors and Renders always show a crazy new design for the iPhone each year, but these wildly outstripped reality, though. A lot of us love new features and actively ask for them. We’Re also very quick to condemn companies when they don’t do a good job, and we do that with our wallets features that haven’t been tested properly or that may be hiked. The price of a phone up too much or they’re, just not suited for the market can be an absolute disaster. Asking people to pay top dollar for a feature that hasn’t been road-tested properly or implemented properly is never a good idea, but it can also be really dangerous financially for the company. If you need proof of this, just ask HTC, LG or Motorola: they all committed to innovation over the is releasing features in all most fearless ways. In the past, there’s a lot of room for experimentation, but in 2020 they haven’t been doing so well and many of their innovative features have fallen by the wayside, leaving competitors to soar past them.
Is there a successful phone maker still out there that takes risks in bold ways? I’M not sure there is in 20/20 flagship smartphones are box, jackers that take off a list of specs at the high end that these phones are at performance, specs offered diminishing returns. The biggest leaps right now are being made in the mid-range flagships are improving in 2020, but by such a tiny margin that is often not worth making that 12-month upgrade. If you want innovation these days, you need to be looking at niche fringe releases. Gaming phones, concept, phones, folding phones, where companies are bridging that gap between dream and reality without gambling.
The success of their main flagship, smartphone flagship smartphones, are supposed to be the most perfected item that our company offers and perfection is frankly boring, and that is why there’s no room for innovation in flagship smartphones anymore, all right guys. Thank you all so much for watching. If you want to read more into this check the link in the video description, which will take you to my colleague simon’s article, I think it’s a brilliant article and it was the inspiration for this video also washed it down here. Please do click the like and subscribe and then tell us in the comments what you thought of this video and what you think of innovation in technology these days, I’ve been Ryan Thomas with Android authority and I’ll see you later .