The Fast and the Furious franchise is one full of improbability, a place where the laws of physics, science, and logic are thrown aside in favor of the inexorable powers of things like muscle cars, nitrous, and “family.” But the newly released trailer for F9 (the official name for the ninth Fast and Furious movie) may have just revealed the most fantastical thing of all: it appears to take place in a world where the failed RED Hydrogen One phone is a hit, with multiple characters appearing to use the phone in the upcoming film.
Both Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and the newly returned Han Lue (Sung Kang) are seen driving vehicles in the trailer using RED’s $1,200 smartphone mounted to their dashboards (presumably as GPS units). And make no mistake, it’s definitely RED’s phone, down to the giant logo, unused pogo pin receptacles for the expansion modules that never arrived, and the lackluster camera whose hyped “4V” (RED’s brand for stereoscopic 3D) images never really took off.
Obviously, the product placement here is sadly too late for the doomed phone — F9 began shooting in June 2019, back when RED was still selling its smartphone and even announcing plans for the since-canned Hydrogen Two. By the time RED canceled the entire Hydrogen phone project in October, it was already too late: most of the film was shot, leaving the Hydrogen One trapped in cinematic amber even as it imploded.
In a way, it’s sort of fitting that Dom and the gang would be using the Hydrogen One, a phone whose every facet was designed to be as bombastic and extreme as possible. If the Fast and Furious saga was distilled into a phone, it would probably look something like the Hydrogen One, all sharp edged and aggressively testosterone fueled.
There’s only one brief shot of the actual display of the phone in the trailer, which appears to be showing some sort of radar system — not exactly a standard feature on the real-world Android phone. But, if nothing else, the titanium-framed model could probably serve as a blunt weapon in one of the series’ signature set pieces.
F9 hits theaters on May 22nd, 2020. It’s unclear yet the extent to which the RED Hydrogen One will factor into the plot.
Enlarge/ You can practically hear the opening film's orc screaming, "You should seriously reconsider spending $30, you human sacks of filth!"
Blizzard Entertainment
The more I look at this week's launch of WarCraft III: Reforged, the more I shake my head. I've grown up playing Blizzard games for a majority of my life, and while I can think of Blizzard game launches with technical issues or critical shoulder-shrugs, I can't recall a retail launch for a product that, quite simply, wasn't finished. WC3:R changes that.
What's more, the uneven and problematic changes to this "reforged" 2002 game come with a bold, new step for Blizzard: the official sunsetting of a classic game's client. The original code base, which has remained roughly 1.3GB in size after an expansion pack launch and years of patches, has been pushed aside. Anyone who already owned an official WC3 license is prompted by Blizzard's default game launcher to download the new 26+ GB version to play online, whether or not they pay an additional $30 for its GBs of "reforged" content.
Worse, between a new Terms of Service requirement and a number of features removed from the previous version, it looks like the game's online ecosystem—the very thing that kept the game afloat for decades and earned a glowing retrospective from us only days ago—may be gone for good. Pardon my English, but, what in the freaking world is going on, Blizzard?
Beautiful new visuals—but not applied evenly
A comparison gallery of new and old graphics. Here's WarCraft III in "reforged" mode.
The same scene in "classic" mode.
A cut scene in "reforged" mode.
A cut scene in "classic" mode.
A cut scene in "reforged" mode.
A cut scene in "classic" mode.
A surface-level review of WC3:R may make you wonder what all the grousing is about, especially if you just want to play the game's single-player campaign. It's easy to grab screens of the game's original 2002 characters, then place them directly next to their updated, higher-polygon versions, and give the "Blizzard Classic" dev team an unadulterated high-five. As a zoomed-out real-time strategy (RTS) game, 2002's WC3 could get away with some decidedly rough 3D designs, particularly for Blizzard's first foray into fully rendered 3D characters. But in 2020, we're well past the original game's resolution maximum of 1280x1024, and that means Blizzard had serious work to do for one of WC3:R's selling points: scaling up to arbitrary monitor resolutions and looking good when doing so.
Alas, the updated EXE launched with a forehead-smack of a failure on that sales pitch: broken ultra-wide monitor support. In the immediate aftermath of the WC3:R patch going live, forum posters cobbled together a makeshift solution to get ultra-wide resolutions working, albeit with unoptimized results. On launch day, Blizzard customer service reps posted statements of disbelief about this ultra-wide issue in the technical support forum, which implies that the company intended to roll the feature out (and may very well fix it).
While fiddling with the new build's options menus to test arbitrary resolutions, meanwhile, I noticed this curious addition:
If you would like to remap any buttons in WarCraft III: Reforged, you are instructed to open and modify a .txt file. The instructions mention that this can be found in a "Beta" folder, even though this is not a beta client.
The .txt file in question points users to an "instructions" file that doesn't appear to have been installed on my system.
As the above captions clarify, the key-remapping interface has not been "reforged" in the slightest.
Anyway, back to the updated graphics. The problem with WC3:R's visuals comes less from individually updated assets; it's all but impossible to compare individual 3D models between the old and new versions and state that the older ones are superior. Rather, the issue boils down to how all of these new assets come together on the battlefield.
This gallery is dedicated to scenes that show off the flatness of the updated graphics mode.
There's just something about the way terrain slots together that feels bland and flat, in spite of individually rendered blades of grass and the like.
I wish someone from the Diablo team had pitched in to help with the underground dungeon scenes; their lighting is particularly flat.
Watery walking paths are a lot more difficult to discern this time around, and this reality makes returning to base after hunting for NPCs and treasure that much trickier.
The new presentation comes with a flatness that wasn't present in the original lower-poly game. Color saturation sees the terrain's soup of green and blue blur together, without any recognizable boost to unit or terrain clarity offered by details such as individual blades of grass. The lower-poly version at least made its roads, cobblestone paths, and other game-world clutter more discrete for the sake of instantly recognizable paths and obstacles. This arguably came because of pre-baked lighting systems, which, for example, added wild light bounces to spell effects so that any nearby enemies and buildings would glimmer in their wake. WC3:R's new physically based lighting model sounds good on paper—that's what modern games do to look realistic, right?—but as a part of the original game's bright-and-bulky aesthetic, this lighting model honestly falls flat (pun intended).
The old idiom "missing the forest for the trees" keeps coming to mind—as if the Blizzard Classic team split its artists up into separate camps and assigned them various units in isolation. The results, which include impressive mouth-animation systems and entirely new foliage-rendering systems, look like a talented team's fruits of labor lost in a soup of badly guided production. Contrast differences between units, buildings, and terrain are too mild when seen from a bird's-eye view (meaning, the majority of your time in an RTS game). Foliage looks pretty in close-up cinema scenes, but its shapes and patterns don't stand out as well as they did in the game's original, chunkier version.
The original version of WarCraft III put shadows on all NPCs, and bolder shadows on your controlled party.
This image from WarCraft III: Reforged, on the other hand, removes shadows from NPCs entirely. And your party's shadows are much milder.
The original WarCraft III. All NPCs have shadows.
Again, WarCraft III: Reforged removes shadows from NPCs entirely. And your party's shadows are much milder.
Fog of war in the original WarCraft III.
And the same area in WarCraft III: Reforged. This comparison is harder to show in still images, as it doesn't show the weird animations attached in the 2020 version. But you can at least see the splotchiness and blue tint in the updated build's "classic" fog of war.
You can toggle the game's "original" graphics in this new version if you want, but the newer version of the old visuals currently includes glitched shadow and spell effects. I confirmed this by installing an older build onto a wholly offline PC (more on that later), which let me compare the two builds. In the game's early missions, I found that the "fog of war" effect has some issues on WC3:R's "classic" mode, both in how it awkwardly bubbles up in square-shaped blobs upon leaving and re-entering zones and in the fog's new unsightly blue-green tint. Even with all "classic" graphic settings cranked to "high," shadows no longer appear on any enemies, and if they're attached to player units, they've become a (cough) shadow of their former selves.
Whether these old-version graphical issues will be remedied is unclear, but at least as of press time, what worked for over a decade has since been downgraded by this overhaul of the game's EXE.
You can't spell BlizzCon without "con," apparently
These included pledges to touch up the game's cinematic narrative sequences and modify its original user interface (UI). You can't type the word "Reforged" into a search engine this week without stumbling upon this fan-made comparison of the results:
Having played a few hours of WC3:R's campaign, it looks like the 2018 demo video and the final version align somewhat. Characters are posed in similar places as they speak between missions, and their bodies and mouths all have updated animations (and richly detailed ones, at that). The catch is, Blizzard has chosen to pull its in-game camera back from showcasing any of these changes. Blizzard's official answer during BlizzCon 2019 was to better resemble the original game. But I can't help but wonder if this was due to too many required models and environments needed to fill out the rest of these real-time cut scenes' backgrounds, since they dramatically moved the camera and exposed the game world's horizon.
Whatever the reason, it's a crying shame that the narrative sequences' updates have been so stymied. WC3, after all, saw the studio ramp up its storytelling ambition with full voice acting built into the game world in ways that set the tone for what World of WarCraft would deliver only a few years later. With that in mind, it's arguably better that Blizzard walked back its original plan to re-record and even rewrite the original game's dialogue in order to retcon WoW plot elements; of all the things I'd hoped for in a refreshed WC3, newly bolted plot elements weren't high on my list.
A tidier UI, on the other hand, would have been quite welcome, and I'm still puzzled as to why that system, which was demonstrated in 2018, wasn't included as an option. In particular, I would have loved for the game's inventory system, a first in a WarCraft game, to have been shifted to a more mouse-accessible position on the UI's far-right edge, and for various icons to shrink and shuffle around as might befit a default 1080p presentation.
A public pledge to remake the game's pre-rendered CGI sequences also fell through. It's a shame, but one that's arguably forgivable, since most of the game's narrative portions are built into the engine. That being said, the developer went to the trouble of remaking one of the original pre-rendered sequences, and... well... it's a spoiler if you've never played the campaign, but I've embedded it below. Watch it, if you dare.
Undead ending sequence from WarCraft III: Reforged.
Somehow, this looks cheaper and cheesier than the original in-game cinematic sequence, perhaps owing to the surprisingly low-budget look of this "new" pre-rendered video. Blizzard's reputation for high-end pre-rendered sequences takes a serious shot with this one.
No, these are not patch notes
The rest of the game's changes, downgrades, and issues are perhaps easiest to parse as a few bulleted lists.
Enlarge/ That locked icon means you can't access later-game missions without beating everything in order. This includes everything from the Frozen Throne expansion pack, as well. It's a relatively tough pill to swallow for a 17-year-old game.
Campaign weirdness
Previously, the separate "Reign of Chaos" and "Frozen Throne" campaigns could be launched as solo players saw fit. Now, the entire Frozen Throne campaign is locked until you beat the entirety of Reign of Chaos. I was hoping we'd at least have campaign-launching parity compared to the last version, if not a full unlock of every lengthy chapter as a nice "Reforged" tweak.
Every element of the Reign of Chaos campaign is newly saddled with the Frozen Throne expansion pack's balance and unit changes, with no option to revert.
Whatever graphics setting you toggle, it comes with its own save file. Meaning, you can't freely switch from old visuals to new, or vice versa; you currently have to beat each campaign mission twice to fully compare the two versions (despite the graphics modes having apparent gameplay parity). Until someone builds a guide for manually editing the new game's save files, at least—though that may never happen, since campaign progress is now linked to unlockable portrait icons in multiplayer lobbies.
I can't measure this for certain, but I'm pretty convinced that AI pathfinding has been hobbled compared to the original game. Getting my units to move together takes even more babysitting than it used to.
Enlarge/ I had to blur the entirety of that chat interface, it was that offensive. And as of press time, it cannot be disabled within nearly every menu in the Reforged version.
Online and lobby weirdness
Speaking of lobbies: Every launch of the game boots players into a live public chat room, with no option to disable this. Upon my first boot of the game, I was greeted with walls of repeating text from a single user who referenced Nazism, Islamophobia, and an ASCII rendering of male genitalia. (Meaning, content that flew right past the game's included "profanity filter.") There is currently no way to report or mute individuals in this default chat feed, or any other.
Should you load a custom map, its chat interface combines with the aforementioned default open-chat channel, and you cannot mute or stop the general slew of messages that interrupts your attempts to coordinate play with friends or strangers.
The original WC3 chat interface, which would only load when players began searching for automatic matchmaking or manual custom-map sessions, is long gone. Your ability to join a variety of IRC-styled chat channels, grouped by interests, has been removed, and so has the ability to type IRC-style commands (/help, /set-email, etc.).
If the game fails to connect to Blizzard's servers for any reason, you're still allowed to boot into the single-player campaign... but your progress is not saved, despite the game clearly writing your single-player progress to local, editable text files.
My attempts to scan and refresh the public "custom games" list of multiplayer sessions regularly fail without an error message. I simply see an empty list, as if nobody else is online. This requires a full reboot of the game client to correct.
Missing-feature weirdness
Custom campaigns can no longer be loaded—thus wiping out access to a ton of player-made content over the past 17+ years.
The custom map browser (different from custom campaigns) no longer includes players from outside regions.
Players can no longer expect prior beloved custom maps to load by default, whether because of asset conflicts or other unexplained reasons.
Clan support has been removed.
Competitive, ranked-matchmaking ladders have been removed.
Player profiles have been removed (with the exception of custom player icons, which have to be earned by winning matches in the new random-connection matchmaking system).
Native LAN support has been removed.
And as we've already reported, WC3's custom-map mode—its wildest-west zone of community-generated larks, and a hard one to explain to newcomers—has been stymied with a new, aggressive ToS. But that's not the only problem. This slew of content is the reason people still talk about WC3 to this day, yet WC3:R neither tutorializes the content for curious newcomers, nor uses the refreshed build as an opportunity to reinvite the Internet's weirdest, most passionate community of creators to cozy up with the Blizz once again. Call me crazy, but maybe—just maybe—the goodwill generated by a community-first WC3:R attitude would outweigh the slim chance that another DotA slips out of Blizzard's profit-generating hands. (Remember, 99.9% of WC3's community-generated content is confusing and opaque stuff.)
Is there any hope?
I'd like to express optimism that quirks will be fixed and features will be brought back online. But I'm not used to typing such lengthy "this is missing, weird, or broken" lists about a Blizzard game launch—and my list is missing complaints that I've yet to personally verify, including a possibly inaccurate German translation and a bug that makes campaign missions instantly fail.
The new build's visuals, both in classic and reforged states, could very well be brought back to working shape. While I doubt the newer visuals will receive significant changes to their polygons or animations, I wouldn't be surprised to see a color- and lighting-balance patch arrive to address issues with color saturation and apparent flatness. And the older graphics' bugs read like issues you'd find in an alpha testing build of a game—an embarrassment to launch in a retail state, obviously, but still addressable.
As far as the rest of the changes we'd like to see, or a return of the 1.3GB-sized executable of old... well, that's a massive boat of speculation, and it's uneasily sailing west to the lands of Kalimdor. We held this report an extra day in hopes that Blizzard would answer or address my questions about the aforementioned bugs and missing features, but as of press time, the Blizzard reps who connected us to the game's launch have yet to respond.
Until then, there's one glimmer of hope for anyone clinging to the game's original community of maps, campaigns, and modes: sneaky ways to get the original files running. I have managed to get a non-Reforged build of the game working and connecting online with at least one method that didn't require hacks or skipping authentication. I'm leaving the details out, though, just in case that omission preserves the original working version for a little while longer.
For now, the game's previous versions have been wiped from Blizzard's Battle.net interface, and all online-connected owners of the original game are currently being redirected to WC3:R's failings and problems. That's in addition to the people who paid $30 expecting more in their new version of WarCraft III, not less. We don't know what Blizzard's next steps are at this point, but we sure hope it addresses at least one of these rightfully angry pools of customers, and soon.
Despite criticism from Apple, EU lawmakers on Thursday voted overwhelmingly in favor for new rules to establish a common charger for all mobile device makers across Europe (via Reuters).
Members of the European Parliament voted by 582-40 for a resolution urging the European Commission, which drafts EU laws, to ensure that EU consumers are no longer obliged to buy new chargers with each new device.
The resolution said voluntary agreements in the industry had significantly reduced the number of charger types, but had not resulted in one common standard.
The Commission should adopt new rules by July, the lawmakers' resolution said, calling for "an urgent need for EU regulatory action to reduce electronic waste, empower consumers to make sustainable choices, and allow them to fully participate in an efficient and well-functioning internal market."
The proposed charging ports for portable devices include Micro-USB, USB-C, and the Lightning connector. Thursday's resolution didn't specify what the mobile charging standard should be, but non-Apple mobile devices and increasingly laptops and tablets are charged by USB-C, so the EU is highly unlikely to choose Apple's Lightning connector.
Apple last week pushed back against proposals for binding measures to make smartphones, tablets, and other portable devices use a standardized charging port such as USB-C.
In a statement, Apple said that the industry was already moving to USB-C and that regulation to force conformity would stifle innovation, harming European consumers. Apple also claimed that such a move would "create an unprecedented volume of electronic waste and greatly inconvenience users."
The European Commission, which acts as the executive for the EU, has been pushing for a common charger for more than a decade. However, the latest resolution makes legislation more likely, with the EU executive having included the common charger standard as one of the set of actions it plans for this year.
It’s not every day we get to talk about a good old-fashioned utility app update. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re a dying breed, but the Apple App Store platform dynamics of recent years have made their row much harder to hoe.
Which is one reason I’m happy to say that if you’re a Mac or iPhone user (or, ideally, both), you should absolutely go check out the newly updated Fantastical apps. There are a few new features and parity across platforms — I personally am excited for a calendar app that integrates with several to-do apps.
The thing about this update that may grab some attention is that it is moving to a subscription model. Historically, this kind of move has sparked consternation, but I’m not feeling any of that. It’s $4.99 a month or — in my preferred way to talk about subscription pricing — $40 per year (a $20 discount). That subscription gets you access to the iPhone, Mac, iPad, and Apple Watch apps. Non-Apple users should look elsewhere.
You are reading Processor, a newsletter about computers by Dieter Bohn. Dieter writes about consumer tech, software, and the most important news of the day from The Verge. This newsletter delivers about four times a week, at least a couple of which include longer essays. You can subscribe to Processor and learn more about it here. Processor is also a YouTube series with the same goal: providing smart and surprising analysis with a bit of humor. Subscribe to all of The Verge’s great videos here!
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I think the subscription model is totally fair, especially given Flexibits’ history of updates and quality. That’s partially because, as I alluded to up top, there really aren’t better options for this category of apps given the rules laid down by Apple in the App Store.
If you’ve watched the App Store market dynamics over the past years, none of this will come as a surprise, but let’s recap:
First, there was a rush to the bottom when it came to pricing. Many apps were priced at $0.99, which set a consumer expectation that iPhone apps are cheap.
Driven by that dynamic and by ranked lists on the App Store, the app market moved to a sort of hit-based system, where games and free apps dominated downloads.
(Many of those games switched over to very skeezy in-app purchase schemes once Apple later allowed microtransactions in free apps, but that’s a story for another time.)
Over the years, Apple refused to offer more flexible pricing options to developers. There never has been (and may never be) such a thing as “upgrade pricing” in the App Store, unlike on more open platforms like the Mac. Developers either had to offer major new versions for free, charge current users the same amount as new users, or try to jerry-rig an in-app purchase system.
(Apple also obstinately refused to let any app so much as gesture to the whisper of an idea that it might be possible to pay the developer in any way other than through Apple’s 30-percent-cut payment system, and is now facing anti-trust complaints on this point, but again, story for another time.)
Perhaps realizing that the rules it had put in place for the App Store were skewing the market dynamics for apps, Apple switched over to a new system that encouraged subscriptions by reducing its cut after a year.
There are pros and cons to the subscription model for both developers and users and they’re all heavily context-dependent. So I’m not making a judgement on that one way or the other — only pointing out that the realm of possible business models has been heavily constrained by the App Store’s rules.
Those limitations have sometimes forced developers into weird decisions and I obviously wish Apple would open up to more pricing models. I especially wish it weren’t engaging in such blatant rent-seeking when it comes to taking a cut of in-app fees.
Anyway, the point is that if you see an app switch to a subscription model, it’s not necessarily doing so because it’s the trendy thing to do — instead, there may not be any other real choice.
One thing strikes me about Fantastical’s switch to a subscription model is how elegantly it was handled. I can’t imagine figuring out how to fork its versions to support this, but Flexibits is doing it:
If you already own Fantastical 2, though, Flexibits has a pretty cool offer to help mitigate that feeling, in part. If there’s any feature in Fantastical 2 that is now a Fantastical Premium feature, you will still be able to use that feature in the updated app on the platform you own it on, even without a Premium subscription.
One quick note: A lot of my newsletters have had a little “▼” in the subject line. It’s there not to evoke The Verge logo (though that’s a nice side effect), but instead to indicate that the newsletter includes a longer essay. I’ll aim to keep doing it, but you’ll notice this one doesn’t have one because it’s relatively short. I bring it all up as a reminder and also a heads-up that as tech news picks up over the next few weeks there may be a few more ▼-less editions than usual.
Daily Steals is offering Verge readers a big discount on a two-pack of Google Nest Mini smart speakers. By using the offer code VERGENEST at checkout, you’ll get two for $46.99. These cost about $35 each right now, so getting two for around $10 more is a very good deal.
Why would you need two, exactly? They can hang on your wall, so you won’t have to give up precious desk or table space. And compared to the previous generation Home Mini, this speaker sounds better and uses an ultrasonic sensor to detect when you’re near, which then turns on lights that guide you to the right button.
Tesla has bought itself more breathing room than it’s had in years, maybe ever. The company spent the last few years — especially 2017 onward, as it started spinning up production of the Model 3 — moving at breakneck speed with little margin for error. Tesla CEO Elon Musk even said in late 2018 that his company was single-digit weeks away from death at one point. Its workforce suffered through what Musk dubbed “production hell” as he pushed to make the Model 3 — the company’s most affordable electric car — at mass-market scale.
Most divisions are up. The Windows 7 transition helped Windows, Surface is making respectable but not outsized gains, and of course the real money driver is cloud services. The following note from Tom Warren made me laugh, it’s funny because it’s surely true:
Microsoft notes that Xbox content and services revenue also decreased by 11 percent, primarily due to a “third-party title” (likely Fortnite) performing better last year. Subscription growth has partially offset this decrease, but clearly the third-party game boosted Xbox content revenue last year.
AT&T really, really seems to think there’s going to be a virtuous cycle between HBO Max, 5G, and hardware upgrades. I am far from convinced that’s the case with any two of those three nodes, much less the entire flywheel. And even if it turns out to be true, it will mean that content services end up getting tied more tightly to other products.
As should be blindingly obvious to readers of this newsletter, I use a ton of web apps every day, and in many cases I use them instead of native apps because I prefer their interfaces and functionality. Password managers are not one of those times when I prefer a web app. They benefit so much from being integrated into the OS. This one’s a bummer.
SpaceX has permission to launch nearly 12,000 satellites and has expressed interest in launching 30,000 more. To fulfill its licensing obligations, SpaceX has to launch nearly 6,000 within the next five to six years. The company plans to launch up to 24 Starlink missions this year. ... Each Starlink launch consists of 60 satellites, so today’s mission will bring SpaceX’s constellation to about 240 satellites in orbit
The FCC has been trying to open up 3.5GHz airwaves since 2015, but it’s taken years to put structure around how it’ll happen. The trouble is, this spectrum is already being used by the US Navy, as well as a small number of companies. Particularly when it comes to the Navy, the FCC doesn’t want any of these new deployments getting in the way. ... So the commission spent the last several years setting up a scheme to make it all work. Any company that wants to use the 3.5GHz spectrum will have to work with an approved company
One commenter referred to Kim as the “Bob Ross of keyboard making,” and it’s an appropriate assessment. What makes the videos so appealing is Kim’s steady, soothing narration of the rather technical keyboard construction process. He walks through each step slowly and accentuates the precision involved in, say, soldering the key switches onto the printed circuit board. He also fields live questions from his Twitch chat about his work, the parts he finds, and why he enjoys doing what he does. All the while, light lounge music plays in the background.
Lincoln’s parent company, Ford, announced a $500 million investment in Rivian in April 2019, and said it would build an electric vehicle on the startup’s platform (basically the battery, electric motors, and all the other tech that makes an EV go). It was reported in the months following that the vehicle would be a Lincoln SUV, but Ford’s luxury marque had not confirmed any parts of those reports until today.
A woman tries out a new Apple 11 Pro during an Apple product launch event at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California on September 10, 2019.
Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images
Apple has beaten Samsung on quarterly smartphone shipments for the first time in two years, according to figures from several industry analysts.
The iPhone maker saw shipments surge to 72.9 million units in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to Counterpoint Research, climbing above the 70 million Galaxy phones sold by Samsung.
Strategy Analytics said Apple held the most market share in the quarter, with 70.7 million units sold versus Samsung's 68.8 million in the final three months of 2019. Another industry tracker, Canalys, reached a similar conclusion.
One firm, IHS Markit, bucked the trend, putting Samsung at 70.7 million and Apple at 67.7 million. But the figures nonetheless showed strong momentum for the U.S. firm as consumers flock to buy its latest model, the iPhone 11.
"Apple has surpassed Samsung thanks to iPhone 11 popularity and improvement in upgrade cycle from the larger base of iPhone 6S, 7 and user base," Neil Shah, partner and vice president of research at Counterpoint, told CNBC by email.
Still, China's Huawei managed to outpace its U.S. rival during the whole of 2019, taking the number two spot behind Samsung despite headwinds related to the U.S.-China trade war. The company accounts for a whopping 39% of the Chinese market, according to Canalys, with Apple trailing behind on 11.8%.
Apple reported better-than-expected earnings for the fiscal first quarter, thanks in no small part to a pop in iPhone sales. The tech giant said iPhone revenues climbed to $55.96 billion in the quarter, up 8% from the previous year.
Gartner Research Vice President Annette Zimmermann said the numbers showed Apple's strategy for the iPhone 11 paid off, noting the "clever marketing" strategy of dropping letters — referring to the iPhone X — in favor of a number, as well as a reduction in cost from previous models.
But risks remain for Apple and other smartphone players, especially as the spread of China's coronavirus threatens to shut down production operations for several manufacturers. In Apple's latest earning call, CEO Tim Cook said the firm had restricted employee travel and shut one store due to the outbreak.
"There will definitely be an impact on China in terms of consumption," Zimmermann said. She added that local sources are saying smartphone output will likely remain "on hold for another week or so" as the country grapples with the health crisis.
Despite a 1% slump in the overall smartphone market — the second decline in two consecutive years — experts expect the rollout of more 5G-capable devices to turn around the market's fortunes in 2020. Apple is slated to release its first 5G phone later this year, while Huawei, Samsung and Xiaomi have all launched 5G handsets already.
Such devices struggled to catch on last year, representing just 1% of sales, according to Counterpoint, but the firm expects this figure to rise to around 18% of shipment volumes in 2020.
Huawei overtook Apple to become the world’s second best selling smartphone manufacturer in 2019, according to reports from Strategy Analytics, Counterpoint Research, and Canalys. Over the course of the year, the Chinese manufacturer reportedly shipped around 240 million phones, compared to just under 200 million for Apple. Samsung retained its comfortable lead in first place, shipping just shy of 300 million devices. Xiaomi and Oppo rounded out the list of the top five manufacturers.
The jump is especially surprising given Huawei’s continued presence on the USA’s entity list, which prevents the company from installing Google’s apps and services on its new devices, limiting their appeal outside of China. As a result, Huawei’s main strength was in its home country. Counterpoint Research says China accounted for 60 percent of its sales, allowing its shipments worldwide to increase by 17 percent between 2018 and 2019 — though not in Q4 specifically.
However, tensions with the US still had an effect. Canalys notes that 2019 could have been the year that Huawei challenged Samsung for the number one smartphone spot, but ultimately this challenge never materialized. It’s unclear when the situation could change in the future.
Huawei has been nipping at Apple’s heels for a while. Back in 2017 Huawei initially overtook Apple to sell more smartphones in the months of June and July, and the following year IDC reported that it had sold more phones than Apple in the second quarter of the year. But in 2019, the company overtook Apple to sell more phones throughout the entire year.
Although it lost out on the number two spot for 2019 as a whole, Apple had a very strong fourth quarter as is typical for the company. All three market analyst firms agreed that it managed to outsell Samsung in the last quarter, with sales being driven by the iPhone 11’s lower pricing in particular. Analysts said that Apple’s phone sales were up by between 7 and 11 percent in Q4 2019 compared to the same quarter in 2018.
Despite individual gains, all three reports agree that the industry sold fewer phones in 2019 than it did in 2018. Counterpoint Research notes that this is the first time the smartphone market has ever declined for two years in a row. With the US’s trade wars still ongoing, and China’s coronavirus scare having potential implications for supply chains, 2020 could be another challenging year.
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