Google's Planning a Cheaper Smartphone to Rival iPhone XR

[0388631]

Dealing with iOS is a PITA. I'll stick with my S9. Tried an iPhone for a month. Not my thing.
[doublepost=1550184284][/doublepost]

Apple should be giving you and 12.6 million other customers a free iPhone Xr for the $9.5 billion they get to feed your search data to Google.

They gave Samsung 4 or 6 billion. I should get a new S10+.

 

[apolloa]

https://www.gadgetmatch.com/apple-samsung-huawei-global-smartphone-profits-q2-2018/

Your guess is as good as mine.

Hmm I guess the tiny percentages are a few hundred million still? Looking at how much apple is making? I’ve seen those reports before and to me they make no sense, as you said it’s kinda a mystery?
[doublepost=1550184733][/doublepost]

Even Nokia and blackberry didn’t close down right away. They hung around for years despite clearly making losses. Then you have companies like LG who prop up their mobile divisions with money from elsewhere.

Doesn’t mean they are doing well. Just that they simply haven’t decided to exit the market yet.

But so long as they continue to rely on a commoditised OS which isn’t theirs, this is likely as far as they go.

I was thinking more of Xaomi or however you spell it, I suspect Huewei, sorry if I misspelt that, is propped up by the Chinese government for its spying tools? They are the one company I believe to be doing this seeing as British Telecoms here in the UK, the owner of the biggest infrastructure etc for telephone and broadband, announced it is removing ALL Huewei equipment from there network due to the security risks. That’s not a very cheap or easy thing to do, but they do actually make very nice handsets so it’s a bit of a shame they aren’t very trustworthy, far worst then google etc.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Well, maybe in the USA where Apple services work. At work we get an iPhone 8 and I know several colleagues who don’t use it because they don’t like how iOS works. Believe it or not, it’s true. Also the services on Android, like assistant, cloud, maps are so much better compared to Apple offerings.
85% in the world is using Android and not all those people have cheap phones.

Such concrete data to deduce your bias. Come on. Grow up and enjoy whatever you enjoy w/o peeing in the wind to get attention.

 

[9081094]

Such concrete data to deduce your bias. Come on. Grow up and enjoy whatever you enjoy w/o peeing in the wind to get attention.

You probably live in the past or haven’t looked outside your rose gold walled garden.

 

[whyamihere]

Apple should be giving you and 12.6 million other customers a free iPhone Xr for the $9.5 billion they get to feed your search data to Google.

Quite a stretch, equating web searches to having complete access to all data in all apps at an OS level.

 

[AustinIllini]

Quite a stretch, equating web searches to having complete access to all data in all apps at an OS level.

Most of Google's data comes from search and the effect of Apple's deal with Google is far more widespread.
[doublepost=1550187482][/doublepost]

The pixel 3 XL is the most disgusting looking phone I’ve seen in years.

The ugly notch shape plus chin. OMG. I throw up a little whenever I see it.

But you should see the amazing pictures it takes.

 

[Tech198]

Google should focus on all the countries Apple can't affordable get to, like India.Apple sticks to the game of users with $$ buying their devices, while Google targets low-income type users..


Instead, Apple's wanting to push into ALL markets. and be the king. Its not like it will be a major decline in cashflow, if Apple can't get in somewhere...

 

[480951]

How is it a cheaper phone to compete with the XR if it's the same price? The XR is still well over $1000 (CDN), that's not cheap by any means. Also, Apple's iPhone sales aren't as strong as they used to because there's only so many phones you can sell, they still had their second best quarter ever. This makes it sound like they're failing as a company. Terribly written article.

 

[Baymowe335]

Well, maybe in the USA where Apple services work. At work we get an iPhone 8 and I know several colleagues who don’t use it because they don’t like how iOS works. Believe it or not, it’s true. Also the services on Android, like assistant, cloud, maps are so much better compared to Apple offerings.
85% in the world is using Android and not all those people have cheap phones.

Most of the Android world ARE cheap phones.

People that buy Android overwhelmingly do so because they can’t afford iOS and the Android phones are free or under $200.

Pixel, Note, Galaxy, etc are only a very small portion of Android sales.

I have posted the numbers before, but it’s safe to say Apple absolutely owns the high end phone market. THOSE are the customers that value their personal data, privacy, and security.

Others will come around to the idea when they have the money the care.
[doublepost=1550193865][/doublepost]

//Your comment that majority prefer Android over iOS is baseless and untrue.
Probably going by the market share, wouldn't that be easy to say?

Market share is irrelevant in this discussion for 2 huge reasons:

1) Apple doesn’t make a sub $300 phone.
2) Because of #1, Android dominates the numbers because most of their phones are sub $300.
[doublepost=1550194019][/doublepost]

You have to be kidding with your last sentence about market share. Globally Android still leads iOS 3-1 when factoring all brands combined.

People that buy iPhones choose them. Android is the “because it’s cheap” OS for most of their market share. There are so many sub $100 and free Android phones, you have to eliminate those from your comparison because Apple doesn’t even compete there.

I’ve posted numbers before, but the iPhones dominate the high end market. It isn’t close. 217M iPhones at an ASP of $760 is not even close to matched by ANY company.

If you think Android is the market share leader because people are “choosing” it actively, you’re delusional.
[doublepost=1550194886][/doublepost]

I think we get the same service from Apple in our country here as google services over there. I’m curious why your wife hates all things Apple though.

Did you know Apple set a revenue record in your country?

 

[Sasparilla]

Have to say nope - Google is not gunning for the Xr with these low end 3's if they come out. Other than the display its not remotely competitive - its a mid range phone (mid range CPU / GPU, plastic case etc.). Guessing the target is the mid range market ($499) for these proposed Google mid range phones.

 

[I7guy]

Apple should be giving you and 12.6 million other customers a free iPhone Xr for the $9.5 billion they get to feed your search data to Google.

Why? It's your choice if you want to use google. Apple is not about blocking off the internet.

Yeah, Huawei really is doing bad. They have grown only 40% in a market where Apple saw plummet their sales.

And if one compares the sales of phone in the price range of iphones, how does that market share look?

 

[manhattanboy]

I own both a pixel and an iPhone XS. They are both very similar and at times different. iMessage is amazing and you can google how many articles have been written by android sites wishing for iMessage on the android. In general I like that apple sticks with things and then works on improving them over time. Google on the other hand is like a 3 year old with attention deficit disorder. I’ve gone from Google voice to hangouts to allo to messages to hangouts and likely will end back at google voice just so my journey has gone full circle LOL Same thing happened with wireless charging... introduced into a nexus phone only to be later abandoned and later still reintroduced. And then there’s google wallet or is it android pay, or is it G pay or is it Google Pay. What about android wallet? One of those should exist at any given point in time

While we are google bashing, the current OS on my pixel sucks. It’s slow and buggy; probably no one at google headquarters is testing these betas on older pixels prior to release. It is so bad it has me - gasp - considering a Samsung. I’ve been rocking google phones all the way back to the Nexus One, and the ingenuity google displayed with that phone along with a vibrant home brew dev community have both slowly died over the years. A lot of good folks have left google over the past year or so, and it feels like google’s quirky wow factor is decaying, with a fungus called ROI justification growing from its carcass.

 

[Shanghaichica]

Copycat, copycat, oh, copy copycat.

Google is now in the upper tier of phones. They'll get to $700. But they won't have a custom chip that beats everyone. Where are their stores? If it breaks, how do you get it repaired?

Meanwhile, they'll never make the cheap ones the cheaper networks give away.

They have class leading AI. I wouldn't buy a google phone but they don't rely on hardware and their approach relies heavily on computational learning and in this area they are years and years ahead of anyone else in the smartphone business.

 

[nazaar]

umm doesn't the iPhone XR start at $1029 (Can). It's interesting that they're now trying to normalize that dollar amount as 'cheap'.

 

[Shanghaichica]

You do realize Apple dominates in full on smartphones in markets were there is a choice. People who know better do not prefer Android.

Android dominates in a lot of European countries where people have disposable income and can chose what they want to use. Apple dominates in the US.

 

[Shanghaichica]

Yep, can attest. Bloke at work had the Pixel 2 XL. Smashed the screen.

2-3 week repair time (UK). And it cost around £250 (direct from Google, else their warranty would be void with a 3rd party repair), which is about as much as “eye-gouging Apple” charge.

Every flagship-Android user I know seems to gloat, unprompted, about not being stupid enough to pay £1000 for an iPhone X. Yet they’re paying just as much for their Google/Samsung flagship phone and it comes with an armload of privacy issues, considerably worse aftersales support, and its specs can’t even touch the A-series SoC.

I really have to wonder what they’re so smug about. Congratulations. You’ve avoided buying from one massive corporation by spending the same amount of money with an equally massive corporation instead. Talk about being off the grid.

Well the iphone comes with years of softhware updates and a physical store with good after sales support.

However, chip aside most android flagships have better hardware. Better cameras, support VR, can be used as a desktop computer, higher resolution displays, stylus support, multiple methods of biometric security methods, Better AI, faster wireless charging, reverse wireless charging.

Sometimes it can take more than 2 weeks to get a genius bar appointment. However I'd rather take my chances with Apple.
[doublepost=1550201990][/doublepost]

I own both a pixel and an iPhone XS. They are both very similar and at times different. iMessage is amazing and you can google how many articles have been written by android sites wishing for iMessage on the android. In general I like that apple sticks with things and then works on improving them over time. Google on the other hand is like a 3 year old with attention deficit disorder. I’ve gone from Google voice to hangouts to allo to messages to hangouts and likely will end back at google voice just so my journey has gone full circle LOL Same thing happened with wireless charging... introduced into a nexus phone only to be later abandoned and later still reintroduced. And then there’s google wallet or is it android pay, or is it G pay or is it Google Pay. What about android wallet? One of those should exist at any given point in time

While we are google bashing, the current OS on my pixel sucks. It’s slow and buggy; probably no one at google headquarters is testing these betas on older pixels prior to release. It is so bad it has me - gasp - considering a Samsung. I’ve been rocking google phones all the way back to the Nexus One, and the ingenuity google displayed with that phone along with a vibrant home brew dev community have both slowly died over the years. A lot of good folks have left google over the past year or so, and it feels like google’s quirky wow factor is decaying, with a fungus called ROI justification growing from its carcass.

The situation with message clients on android is ridiculous. Google need to stick with one and just accept that they are not going to match imessage. The only thing they have been consistent with is the Google assistant. It started off as Google now in 2012 and they have continued to improve and develop it. Everything else they haven't really stuck with.

 

[Abazigal]

In terms of the bigger picture, the issue with iPhone sales isn't that pricing is too high, but that a growing number of iPhone users are content with what they currently have. People are holding on to their iPhones for longer before upgrading. When you take into account factors such as residual and trade-in values and monthly payment pricing, a $100 to $200 difference in iPhone pricing probably wouldn't make a huge difference when it comes to demand.

A cheaper android phone didn’t threaten the iPhone 5 years ago, and it’s not going to threaten the iPhone now.

 

[Vanilla35]

Yep, can attest. Bloke at work had the Pixel 2 XL. Smashed the screen.

2-3 week repair time (UK). And it cost around £250 (direct from Google, else their warranty would be void with a 3rd party repair), which is about as much as “eye-gouging Apple” charge.

Every flagship-Android user I know seems to gloat, unprompted, about not being stupid enough to pay £1000 for an iPhone X. Yet they’re paying just as much for their Google/Samsung flagship phone and it comes with an armload of privacy issues, considerably worse aftersales support, and its specs can’t even touch the A-series SoC.

I really have to wonder what they’re so smug about. Congratulations. You’ve avoided buying from one massive corporation by spending the same amount of money with an equally massive corporation instead. Talk about being off the grid.

Yeah it's been funny to watch the apple price hating fan boys talk about the price of android phones. It seems the same people now back phones like the Pocophone and now everything else is trash because they charge more. The battle lives on, yet another day.

 

[BigDO]

"Cheaper" $750 phones... what a time to be alive.

 

[AMPO]

Copycat, copycat, oh, copy copycat.

Google is now in the upper tier of phones. They'll get to $700. But they won't have a custom chip that beats everyone. Where are their stores? If it breaks, how do you get it repaired?

Meanwhile, they'll never make the cheap ones the cheaper networks give away.

They're already into custom chips and optimized software. They also offer excellent support with fast updates for a year longer than any other Android OEM, live on the phone support, and in store repairs with guaranteed by Google OEM supplied parts in their deal with uBreakiFix and their hundreds of locations.

 

[ronno]

Why is the Pixel not cheaper since the OS is barter for data mining? Pixel line of phones should be half the price of what they are because of free OS or Google is charging too much and Apple is charging too little for their phones.

Plenty of data mining hapoening on your iPhone.
That is unless you don't use any of the following: Google maps, Gmail, YouTube, Chrome, Search...

 

[ROGmaster]

You do realize Apple dominates in full on smartphones in markets were there is a choice. People who know better do not prefer Android.

What markets are those?

 

[ronno]

Copycat, copycat, oh, copy copycat.

Google is now in the upper tier of phones. They'll get to $700. But they won't have a custom chip that beats everyone. Where are their stores? If it breaks, how do you get it repaired?

Meanwhile, they'll never make the cheap ones the cheaper networks give away.

Google does a great job supporting Nexus phones. You call or email them and they send a replacement - it arrives in a day or two. Then mail your phone back for repair (in the same box, prepaid) or just keep the one they sent. It's very fast and efficient.

 

[one more]

Your comment that majority prefer Android over iOS is baseless and untrue.

The previous poster is actually spot-on, iOS has a tiny portion of the mobile OS market compared to Android:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_operating_system

 

[Radon87000]

Sticking with a crappy LCD like Apple to shaft users. Just get an S9 at that price.