Smartphones are Pandemic Hot Property
Global smartphone sales snapped back in the first quarter of the year to show the strongest growth since 2015, a market tracker said Tuesday.
Strategy Analytics said smartphone makers shipped some 340 million units in the first three months of the year, a 24 percent jump from the same period last year.
The rebound followed a pandemic-induced slump in 2020 for the market as many consumers postponed purchases or upgrades.
The research firm said the first quarter gains were driven by robust demand from consumers with aging devices and a strong 5G push from Chinese vendors.
"The China smartphone market had a sensational quarter driven by 5G product success across multiple price tiers," said Strategy Analytics senior director Linda Sui, noting a 35 percent jump in the Chinese market.
"Chip shortages and supply side constraints did not have a significant impact in Q1 among the top five brands but was and will be a concern for smaller vendors over the next few quarters in our view."
Samsung led the market with a 23 percent market share, following by Apple at 17 percent and three Chinese vendors, Xiaomi (15 percent) and Oppo and Vivo (11 percent each).
Strategy Analytics executive director Neil Mawston said Samsung's 32 percent growth came from the launch of the "more affordable A series 4G and 5G phones," as well as solid sales of its flagship Galaxy S21 series.
Mawston said Apple also delivered strong growth of 44 percent from the prior year.
"The strong momentum behind the 5G iPhone 12 series continued across multiple markets," the analyst added.
AI is the Neat Handwriting of the Illiterate
A model in the hands of someone who has read the filing and walked the plant is a clerk. The same model, speaking for someone who has done neither, is a disguise. On AI slop, phantom citations and factslop, why finish stopped being evidence of work, and the containment layer KXCO built so a machine cannot speak as the institution until a source is attached.
Worthship: Do Not Conform to the Age
Worthship is the older English word for worship, and it means to ascribe worth. Bishop Robert Barron preached Romans 12 on 30 August. This essay follows the text into the prison letters, and puts two questions to a graph: do the four readings of that Sunday agree, and was Paul free or in chains when he wrote about despair?
The Truth in All Its Ugliness Must Survive
A majority vote does not determine the truth. Consensus is a mood, gossip is a sport, and a model will write the pretty version for free. Why the ugly number has to survive, why a record beats a dashboard, and what KXCO was built to keep standing when the room changes its mind.
Don't Be the Best, Be the Only: Winning in an AI World
AI is repricing competence downward. What it cannot reproduce is a life. The case for remaining non-fungible, why friction still produces the best ideas, and what it means to build AI systems that keep the human intellect in them.
Every story, signed and delivered.
Subscribe to the kxco channel and get the headline, the AI-written key takeaways, and the chain-anchor link the moment we publish. Audio versions and per-ticker subscriptions arrive in the next iteration.