Apple to beat Samsung in smartphone shipments for first time in 14 years
18 comments
·December 2, 2025gmueckl
throwfaraway4
Or maybe they make better phones?
barbazoo
Not because Apple made a jump in sales but mostly because Samsung has been on a decade long decline.
nextos
Samsung has good hardware, but their software is really mediocre, at best. Many of their devices are laggy and slow down further after some updates.
This is the case even on high-end devices. Our 12-month-old Galaxy Tab is slower than a 7-year-old Pixel. Hard to understand.
Plus, they make really odd tweaks to the UI, such as adding a permanent button overlay that clashes with most hamburger icons in websites and apps. This drives novice users insane.
If you wanna ship a custom Android, at least get it right. Otherwise, just stick to stock. Sony does this really well: https://developerworld.wpp.developer.sony.com/open-source
StopDisinfo910
Samsung hardware is not what it used to be.
They have been shipping the same camera block for something like three or four models. Compared to what Chinese competitors like Xiaomi or Oppo offer, it doesn't look that great anymore.
The poor software is just the cherry on top.
jampa
I recently got a Samsung device for testing, and the experience was terrible. It took three hours to get the device into a usable state.
First, it essentially forces you to create both a Samsung account and a Google account, with numerous shady prompts for "improving services" and "allowing targeted ads."
Then it required nine system updates (apparently, it can only update incrementally), and worst of all, after a while, it automatically started downloading bloatware like "Kawai" and other questionable apps, and you cannot cancel the downloads.
I wonder how much Samsung gets paid to preinstall all that crap. The phone wasn't cheap, either. The company seems penny wise and pound foolish.
nish__
True, thanks for that info. Changes the narrative entirely.
butlike
I don't call them Samdung for no reason
jp191919
It also doesn't help that google have steadily been increasing their market share.
davidcollantes
pu_pe
Looks like Samsung decreased a lot because Xiaomi ate their lunch, which doesn't surprise me.
tooltalk
I'm surprised that Samsung managed to stay #1 globally for so long after forced out of China after Xi's rise to power in 2013.
HPsquared
That goes both ways though, there's a slight but growing taboo about Chinese brands for many in the West.
vondur
Aren't they really big in other parts of the world, like Europe and Latin America?
So dark patterns to increase peer pressure and hard vendor lock in work then: exploiting networking effects and social pressure like green vs. blue bubbles, technically unnecessary hard requirements for other devices that are locked into the same garden prison, random compatibility restrictions/omissions in built in apps etc.
Apple really is far from innocent. They just pull their customers over the table in such a smooth way that it feels like nest warmth to them.