Supplies of the Hottest Smartphones Could Soon Run Out (bloomberg.com) 43
As Chinese factories hit by the coronavirus look to restart production, the pain is only beginning for carriers that rely on steady shipments of Asian smartphones. From a report: AT&T is bracing for handset shortages across the U.S. A carrier in the U.K. and one in France are already dealing with supply disruption and could run out of some popular models, people familiar with the matter said. British network operators may even resort to using stockpiles of phones they'd built up in case of a Brexit-related supply crunch, said one of the people, a company executive who asked not to be identified as the information is private. The supply chain chaos may last only a few weeks, but it's already wiping out the smartphone industry's hopes for sales growth this year. Worldwide device sales are set to fall 4.3% in 2020, with European sales tumbling 7.4%, according to industry consultancy Canalys. It was forecasting global growth of 3.6% before the virus brought much of Chinese industry to a juddering halt. "There's a huge supply-side shortage for smartphones that we are already starting to see trickle through to some markets around the world," said Ben Stanton, head of devices research for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Canalys.
Aren't these boring commodities yet? (Score:3, Interesting)
I rarely see the hype and excitement about new phones. Do many people still treat them like a status symbol or care about flagship phones?
Re:Aren't these boring commodities yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
I rarely see the hype and excitement about new phones. Do many people still treat them like a status symbol or care about flagship phones?
Yes.
This is 100% a first-world problem.
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In places that have abstracted themselves from reality, yes, unfortunately.
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Evidently. Most of the things they do to make a phone fashionable are pretty silly, but I have to admit that people actually do use and appreciate camera improvements.
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...I have to admit that people actually do use and appreciate camera improvements.
Mass narcissism isn't exactly a valid justification for mobile camera improvements.
Not that you'd ever be able to convince the attention whores sitting to the left and right of you...
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Well, what other people do with it is none of my business, but I find it very useful to always have a camera handy. Most of the pictures I take are of stuff I'm taking apart so I know how it goes back together again. The most recent picture I took was of a DIY experiment I did to trying to make copper sulfate from chopped garlic and white vinegar.
Of course the project photos don't have to be that good, but after those most of my photos are of my kids. I've been carrying these things for twenty years now, si
That's okay (Score:2)
I only use the cool ones.
*Sunglasses*
We're doomed! (Score:5, Funny)
Not only will we all die, but there will be a 2 year old phone in our cold, dead hands.
Oh, the horror! The shame.
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In that case, you will be perfectly safe from returning as a smartphone zombie. So the survivors won't have to decapitate and burn your body.
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I'd rather have a smartphone zombie coming after me - they can't bite you as easily due to "text neck" [spine-health.com]
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Not only will we all die, but there will be a 2 year old phone in our cold, dead hands.
Oh, the horror! The shame.
Well Darn, I'm doomed then.. My phone is at least 3 years old and going strong...
What a pile of doom and gloom this is. WORST CASE here is a few thousand people die, which if it's me sucks, but this will all be over in a few months for the bulk of us. By then, the supply chain will be back in full swing and working overtime to catch up. By the end of summer, this will be but a bad memory and if you simply have to replace your phone, you will be able to.
The only folks who will have an issue are the ones
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What a pile of doom and gloom this is. WORST CASE here is a few thousand people die
Well by most estimates a few thousand people have already died; unless specifically are just talking about the in the States. I agree with you its just a statistic, a sad one, I don't want our fellow people dying of disease but its also true that a lot of that goes on and will always go on COVAD-19 or not.
On the other hand a few thousand people died on 9/11 and its pretty much driven our politics for the last 19 years are running!
The actual threat form COVAD-19, probably is small; but don't for a second und
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SARS killed thousands here in the USA, but we didn't argue the politics of it, why are we debating this one? Only 11 died so far here in the USA. 8 have recovered and we've had 117 reported cases. SARS was WAY worse before the administration did much at all to control it, it was on a similar time line, discovered late in the winter but it wasn't until like October before a public health emergency was declared. THIS administration has already declared an emergency and committed to sign the supplemental eme
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Nothing I said was intended to critize the current administrations handling. I agree with your assessment; I think by and large they have done a good job. Even though many (as the do matter what he does) are complaining about some of things Trump has said not being accurate. One of his jobs is prevent a panic. As long as the actual policy is coming from Pence's team of experts and cooler heads that want to take the time to actually understand information in context can get it from those source - I have n
Not just smart phones (Score:2)
Smart phones may be just the first of many products, and should be the least of our concerns. Between the outsourcing of manufacturing to countries outside North America, with an emphasis on China, and the dependence across all industries on "just in time" delivery, there are little or no reserves for many necessities, including clothing, shoes, electronics, auto parts, health care supplies, and other goods, Depending on how badly this all pans out, we may see empty shelves throughout North America, dela
Re:Not just smart phones (Score:4, Insightful)
While this is subject to change, I know of at least two manufacturing facilities in China in my line of work that I deal with regularly.
One never shut down and isn't projected to, as it is in a region unaffected as yet.
One was in Wuhan and it is idled, but they are anticipating resuming shipments in 10 days based on the information.
If things continue to go as they seem to be going, there will definitely be a hiccup, but I don't think the scale will be quite so grand as that for *this* time. I suspect they'll be enough of various things to handle urgent situations and other things might have to wait a few weeks.
Of course this hiccup may be a wave. There is every possibility that North America will handle their cases worse than China from a productivity standpoint. Because of the greater emphasis on freedom and not wanting to compromise that, an underfunded CDC that has not been able to provide the required materials to accurately track infections, and an administration that simply refuses to take it very seriously. On the plus side there was about a 1 month head start and hopefully more favorable weather conditions will mitigate the propagation.
Re: Not just smart phones (Score:2)
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People who can't learn from history are bog standard, and even those who can't learn from example are plentiful enough that it's
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The problem of course is sometimes knowing you have a problem and being able to address it are two different things.
You might understand your supplier is a single point of failure. You might even have experience with supply chain disruptions and know on some instinctive level its coming. So what to do? Oh have multiple suppliers - easy right? Maybe or maybe it means you can't get the volume discounts you need to be competitive or you can't get contracts signed at all because nobody wants to take your smal
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And sometimes there's not even an alternative supplier for a particular part.
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Actually, we have plants in US, Mexico, and Hungary as well. However only the two plants in China were relevant to the discussion in this scenario.
As an aside, the trade war had us migrate some capacity out of China, but a lot more of our US capacity was moved out. It became cheaper to ship from Mexico to the US than to mfg in US, due to having to source some key components out of China for lack of other vendors.
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an underfunded CDC that has not been able to provide the required materials to accurately track infections, and an administration that simply refuses to take it very seriously.
What? On two points you seriously miss the truth.
The CDD's funding has NOT been reduced from previous budgets, they are getting every dollar they where and then some. I know it's popular to say the CDC is underfunded, but if this is true, it's been true since before this Congress took control of the budget (and the one before that) so be sure to blame the right people for the CDC's funding levels.
On your second point, the current administration take this VERY seriously and did so very early. They insti
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Came here to be amazed that this comment wasn't marked down yet. The TDS is strong on /. and it's nice to see actual nice comments.
Slashdot has removed the ability to see all the moderation activity they used to show you but I can tell you that this message has hit 5 multiple times, only to be modded down again. I'm guessing from the pattern that it's drawn a LOT of moderation activity in both directions.
TDS is a strong delusion. Where I understand the vitriol is being hopped up on both sides in some wayss, it does amaze me how the supposedly tolerant folks are out of their right minds regarding Trump and his supporters. I recall n
Good (Score:3)
That's what can happen when a corporation has a single source.
They should setup redundant sweatshops in Vietname like the sneaker people have.
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That's what can happen when a corporation has a single source.
They should setup redundant sweatshops in Vietname like the sneaker people have.
This is what happens with a focus on short-term profits and stock appreciation. A dependency on China is not only limited to virus outbreaks. What happens when China decides to treat Apple like the US is treating Huawei? What if Foxconn decided to play hardball with price negotiations? What if Foxconn were crippled by bad business decisions or by Chinese government actions? It's literally an existential risk to the company and that risk certainly cannot be realistically characterized as low. Anyone wh
5 year old phone (Score:3)
My Galaxy S5 still works fine. It still runs all the apps that most people need to use, and performance is still more than adequate (go-go Snapdragon 801). It also has fingerprint reader and headphone jack, which is a plus compared to the newest devices.
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Do you still get OS updates though for bug and security fixes?
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I don't. But I still get near-instant updates for all apps, including google's core apps. Anything I got through the play store seems to be getting timely updates.
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OS updates are still important that control everything in Android. :(
hottest toasters (Score:1)
The hottest toasters don't make the best toast.
So what? (Score:3)
The only problem I have with my Galaxy S6 is that it doesn't have a mechanical keyboard like my older phones did. That's not a problem that a newer phone's going to fix.
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Though leaving production soon, the Blackberry Key2 and Key2 LE are both pretty good Android phones with mechanical keyboards. They won't be doing VR gaming any time soon, but I remain quite happy with mine.
I'm also drooling over the Fxtec Pro1: https://www.fxtec.com/pro1/ [fxtec.com]. At $700 it's a bit above midrange on the price tag, but the fact that they have a slider keyboard and formally support LineageOS and Sailfish out of the box means that it's a good tinker phone, too. ...so yes, a newer phone might fix tha
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I've never had and don't want a Blackberry. The Fxtec looks interesting though. I'm going to have to look into it.
Boo hoo (Score:2)
Boo boo, people can't buy $4,000 folding phones, what will they ever do!
I like my phone at room temp (Score:2)
I don't want the hottest phone, I want one that runs cooler. My phone should be room temp most of the time. I leave the hot phones to people that really want one.
Just an excuse to $$$$ (Score:2)
Dear MBAs (Score:2)
So tell me MBAs, hiws that Just in Time working out for ya?