News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by rsynnott on Wednesday September 17, 2025 @03:33PM (#45280400)
If you are aiming to have your chips in a decent portion of all mid/high-end phones sold, which they appear to have been aiming for, then the Nintendo Switch isn't really that much of a consolation prize. The Switch had very high sales... for a console, with 150 million over 7 years. Smartphone sales peaked at 1.5 billion units a year. You'd probably prefer to be Qualcomm than Nvidia in this particular market segment, all things considered.
Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by oblio on Thursday September 18, 2025 @12:26AM (#45285388)
Yearly global smartphone sales are around 300 million.
Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by rsynnott on Thursday September 18, 2025 @03:46AM (#45286777)
... Where are you getting that? The iPhone _alone_ sells about 200 million units a year.

There are almost 5 billion smartphone users; sales of 300 million a year would imply that those are only replaced every 16 years, which is obviously absurd.

Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by oblio on Thursday September 18, 2025 @09:48AM (#45289665)
Oh, that was quarterly: https://canalys.com/newsroom/global-smartphone-market-q2-202...

On a separate note, speaking of the average lifespan of a phone, I'm fairly sure that with how expensive they're becoming, smartphone lifespans are increasing. Especially with:

* hardware performance largely plateauing (not in the absolute sense, that of "this phone can do most of what I need")

* the EU pushing for easy battery and screen replacement and also for 7 years of OS updates

* the vast majority of phones having cases to protect against physical damage

Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by rsynnott on Thursday September 18, 2025 @10:18AM (#45290033)
Yeah, peak sales per year were a few years back. People are definitely keeping them longer than they used to.