The headline here under-serves the article in my opinion: this is a fascinating, deep explanation of how the memory market works and why increased demand for HBM (used by big GPU racks) hurts the availability of wafers for DDR and LPDDR (used by laptops and phones).
The MacBook Pro on which I’m writing this piece needs memory that can keep up with a powerful processor running many programs at once: so it uses a standard called DDR, “double data rate,” which runs at a reasonably high voltage and offers high bandwidth. The processor on my iPhone is less powerful, so it needs less data at any given moment; but voltage matters enormously, since every milliwatt allocated to memory is drained from the battery. So smartphones use LPDDR, “low-power double data rate,” a variant of DDR engineered to operate at lower voltages.
The last MacBook Pro to use DDR was in 2019. All Apple Silicon Macs use LPDDR.
But aren't there plenty of used expensive phones from the last 5-7 years that are more or less equivalent replacements for new cheap phones? Apple alone sells 250 million phones a year.
The article takes a while to get there, but it is focusing on a set of companies I hadn't heard of ("Transsion, Oppo, Vivo, and Lava") that buy components from last gen smartphones to make cheap devices to sell in the African and South(/east) Asian markets.
Presumably the supply of 5+ year old used phones that fully work is not enough to meet that demand, which is why these frankenstein Android companies exist.
The deep dive on memory market dynamics and the LLM bubble distortion is great. But another cause of declining smart phone sales is simply that the devices have matured and aren't improving at nearly the same rate.
From 2008 to around 2015, upgrading every two years could make a meaningful difference. From ~2015 to ~2020 upgrading every three years might be worth considering. I just upgraded my top of the line flagship after nearly six years. And I actually looked for compelling reasons to buy a new phone every year since 2023. There just weren't any.
Frankly, this latest flagship phone is pretty underwhelming. It's slightly faster at a few things. The battery lasts a little longer. The screen can get a little brighter. The camera is supposed to a little better. But those are just the claimed improvements. I haven't actually noticed any of them in daily use because they weren't issues with my 2020 flagship phone either. Otherwise, the new phone is almost exactly the same size, same weight, same resolution, same look and same capabilities. I only upgraded because I was long out of contract and it was a only a couple hundred bucks for a $1400 MSRP phone with a new contract and a trade-in of the old phone.
What does it improve, in practice? For myself, I need my phone to make phone calls, take photos/videos, occasionally run apps, and to be a wifi hotspot. My iPhone 6S did all of these well enough that I only upgraded it recently because I dropped it and bent the power button. My new phone has a slightly nicer camera and better battery life, that’s about it.
Ever since I started working from home I barely use my phone, I just buy a mid range phone, and it seems just as capable as high range phone in most every practical way. The only real thing that seems a bit better is the camera, but I don't actually use it that often. The only thing I've really been a bit tempted by is Lidar on Apple, but more for dev fun that normal practical purposes.
I can't say I've noticed specifically. I have two tracfone accounts and a Cricket account so used to use the Android phone with Cricket after two months - a free phone. But tracfone was bought by Verizon and they being them immediately changed the unlock period from two months to a year. So that to me kills my use case of free smartphones as I don't want to spend any money on phones.
The headline here under-serves the article in my opinion: this is a fascinating, deep explanation of how the memory market works and why increased demand for HBM (used by big GPU racks) hurts the availability of wafers for DDR and LPDDR (used by laptops and phones).
This author has outstanding articles regularly
The last MacBook Pro to use DDR was in 2019. All Apple Silicon Macs use LPDDR.
But aren't there plenty of used expensive phones from the last 5-7 years that are more or less equivalent replacements for new cheap phones? Apple alone sells 250 million phones a year.
The article takes a while to get there, but it is focusing on a set of companies I hadn't heard of ("Transsion, Oppo, Vivo, and Lava") that buy components from last gen smartphones to make cheap devices to sell in the African and South(/east) Asian markets.
Presumably the supply of 5+ year old used phones that fully work is not enough to meet that demand, which is why these frankenstein Android companies exist.
The deep dive on memory market dynamics and the LLM bubble distortion is great. But another cause of declining smart phone sales is simply that the devices have matured and aren't improving at nearly the same rate.
From 2008 to around 2015, upgrading every two years could make a meaningful difference. From ~2015 to ~2020 upgrading every three years might be worth considering. I just upgraded my top of the line flagship after nearly six years. And I actually looked for compelling reasons to buy a new phone every year since 2023. There just weren't any.
Frankly, this latest flagship phone is pretty underwhelming. It's slightly faster at a few things. The battery lasts a little longer. The screen can get a little brighter. The camera is supposed to a little better. But those are just the claimed improvements. I haven't actually noticed any of them in daily use because they weren't issues with my 2020 flagship phone either. Otherwise, the new phone is almost exactly the same size, same weight, same resolution, same look and same capabilities. I only upgraded because I was long out of contract and it was a only a couple hundred bucks for a $1400 MSRP phone with a new contract and a trade-in of the old phone.
First, the iPhone 17 Pro is a huge improvement.
Second, the article doesn’t focus on phones we buy. There won’t be a shortage of those.
Improvement in what way and over what previous phone? The parent mentioned a number of metrics.
What does it improve, in practice? For myself, I need my phone to make phone calls, take photos/videos, occasionally run apps, and to be a wifi hotspot. My iPhone 6S did all of these well enough that I only upgraded it recently because I dropped it and bent the power button. My new phone has a slightly nicer camera and better battery life, that’s about it.
Ever since I started working from home I barely use my phone, I just buy a mid range phone, and it seems just as capable as high range phone in most every practical way. The only real thing that seems a bit better is the camera, but I don't actually use it that often. The only thing I've really been a bit tempted by is Lidar on Apple, but more for dev fun that normal practical purposes.
This article expanded my understanding of the memory industry dramatically.
For anyone who doesn’t follow the market closely, this is about a good a primer as you could hope for.
I can't say I've noticed specifically. I have two tracfone accounts and a Cricket account so used to use the Android phone with Cricket after two months - a free phone. But tracfone was bought by Verizon and they being them immediately changed the unlock period from two months to a year. So that to me kills my use case of free smartphones as I don't want to spend any money on phones.