Samsung, BlackBerry Phones Less Popular Than iPhone 6 in 2014
It was a tough year for Samsung and BlackBerry, as the two former smartphone stars tried to revive their fading fortunes.
But both brands clearly still have value with American consumers — BlackBerry’s ancient Pearl model, released in 2010, was the second-most searched for tech gadget on Yahoo.com in 2014. Samsung’s new Galaxy S5 phone was the third-most searched for device, and the company’s new “phablet,” the Galaxy Note 4, came in fourth. All three trailed the new iPhone 6 from Apple, which topped the rankings for the year.
Unlike Apple’s new iPhones, which quickly topped the charts in many parts of the world, Samsung’s new S5 was a disappointment.
Samsung expected sales for the new model would run about 20 percent ahead of last year’s S4, but consumers weren’t enticed by new features like a heart-rate sensor, and inventory piled up. Samsung sold only 12 million S5 models in three months after it went on sale in April, down 25 percent from sales of the S4 in a comparable period, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Most of the shortfall was in Asia. Sales in the United States actually were up a bit, but sales in China were down 50 percent from the preceding model. By the end of the third quarter, Samsung’s global smartphone market share dropped to 24.4 percent from 32.1 percent a year earlier, according to research firm Gartner.
One problem was that the new model didn’t offer much in the way of upgrades to entice owners of older Samsung devices, says Yahoo Tech’s Daniel Howley.
“It was hard to tell the difference, to be honest with you, if you look at them side by side,” Howley says. “They’re pretty even in terms of looks.”
But the bigger problem was improved — and lower-priced — models from competitors such as Lenovo, Huawei, and Xiaomi. Chinese consumers opted for the cheaper competition, which offered comparable quality rivaling the S5 and other Samsung models, Howley says.
BlackBerry’s downfall started much earlier — its smartphone sales have been waning for years. This week, the Waterloo, Ontario-based firm introduced an update of the classic Pearl design dubbed the BlackBerry Classic.
But most consumers have moved on from physical keyboards, Howley says.
“There are people out there that really do love the physical keyboard; they don’t like the idea of this touchscreen technology, “ he says. “But the market is moving away from that, because the majority of people just want a touchscreen.”
That leaves only a “very small niche market” for the new Classic.
