Which was the most boring product of 2018? It might be in your pocket
Get comfy, this year’s smartphone market is about to get quite yawn-worthy. Over the past decade, we’ve seen phones get larger, faster, sharper, crisper and curved. They even put cameras on the front! Consumers have been blessed by the array of choices available in the market. But now the pace of innovation is slowing, and that could hurt investors. In China alone, an average of two new models were released each day last year for a total of 764. In 2017, that figure hit 1,054, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology . The saving grace for smartphone makers these past few years has been the addition of new functions, which allowed them to reverse a previous slide in average prices and actually sell devices for more money. Apple Inc. thinks that average sales price is more important than shipment numbers, which is why it decided to no longer tell you how many iPhones it sells but merely how much revenue it makes from them. Read