Samsung is back on top

Samsung has dethroned Apple as the top smartphone seller... again

4/15/24 10:51AM

Hold the phone

Samsung has reclaimed its position as the world's largest smartphone seller, dethroning Apple in the first quarter of 2024. Preliminary data from research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) revealed that Samsung shipped a market-leading 60 million units, some 20% more than Apple during the same period.

Although Samsung's return to the top spot is not entirely surprising — iPhone sales historically peak in the fourth quarter, and the two smartphone giants constantly tussle for #1 — what is noteworthy is the nearly 10% year-over-year decline in Apple's sales, as demand for its products in China falls. By contrast, Samsung sales were flat, and overall smartphone shipments grew 8%.

Samsung only has a small foothold in the Chinese market, while Apple was a major player in the region last year, boasting over 17% market share. And, like in so many other sectors, Chinese consumers are increasingly opting for a “Made in China” option, with Apple facing intense competition in the nation from rivals Transsion and Xiaomi, both of which reported strong double-digit growth in the most recent quarter. With fewer groundbreaking new features in recent releases, consumers are also holding onto their devices for longer.

Apple has been working hard to diversify away from the iPhone, but the product remains the primary gateway into the Apple ecosystem and its infamous walled garden — and the slump in sales comes at a tough time. The recently launched Vision Pro headset is struggling to gain traction, and the company faces a DOJ lawsuit over the iPhone's alleged monopolistic power. All told, the company’s shares have lagged the wider market (S&P 500) by 13% this year.

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Report: SpaceX planning for IPO late next year

SpaceX has told investors that it is planning for an IPO in late 2026, according to a report from The Information.

Elon Musk’s rocket company is in talks for a share sale for employees and investors that would put the company’s valuation at $800 billion, making it the world’s most valuable private company, recapturing that crown from OpenAI.

Per the report, all of SpaceX including Starlink would be listed as one company, rather than spinning off Starlink, which Musk had discussed a few years ago.

SpaceX Tells Investors It’s Aiming For Late 2026 IPO

Per the report, all of SpaceX including Starlink would be listed as one company, rather than spinning off Starlink, which Musk had discussed a few years ago.

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What prediction markets think will happen with Apple’s CEO

People inside the company say executive changes are coming, The Information reports.

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The Netflix Effect

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How much could Netflix charge if a subscription included HBO Max?

Here’s what streaming companies, many of which offer streaming bundles, charge now.

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Meta reignites on-again, off-again relationship with news organizations with multiple AI content licensing deals

Meta has a long and tumultuous relationship with news organizations: first flooding them with traffic, then cutting it off; declaring news a priority, then deprioritizing it in people’s feeds; even hiring its own team to curate breaking news before abruptly disbanding it.

Now it seems media companies are back in Meta’s good graces. The social media company has struck a number of content licensing deals with publishers — including USA Today, People, CNN, Fox News, and The Daily Caller — in order to use information from their articles in Meta’s AI tools, Axios reports. The company first inked an AI news deal with Reuters last year.

Meta has been integrating its AI chatbots across its suite of products, and these licensing deals, which the company reportedly plans to expand to more news organizations, will give users better access to real-time information.

Exclusive: Meta strikes multiple AI deals with news publishers

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Cloudflare just went down again, but apparently only for 20 minutes this time

Another day, another massive network outage taking down huge sections of the internet... and, once again, the cause of the hiccup was Cloudflare.

On Friday morning, the American IT giant reported that a change made to “how Cloudflare’s Web Application Firewall parses requests” caused its network to “be unavailable for several minutes.”

Roughly 20 minutes later, the company said that “a fix has been implemented,” helping to soothe the stock’s losses after falling as much as 6% in premarket trading, according to Bloomberg. Shares of Cloudflare are trading about 2% lower at the time of writing.

Users reported that sites including LinkedIn, Zoom, Fortnite, Shopify, and Coinbase were all made unavailable by the outage — or at least they would’ve reported that, if Downdetector weren’t also down, per The Verge. Even so, some are still seeing issues as the service supposedly gets back on its feet.

Cloudflare went down only last month, though that time the network was down for roughly three hours and took OpenAI, X, and “League of Legends” with it — and that incident followed in the digitally disruptive footsteps of Amazon Web Services, which saw a major outage in October lasting some 15 hours.