Smartphone shipments dropped 13% globally, and COVID-19 is to blame

We knew it was going to be bad — but not necessarily “lowest level since 2013” bad. As Apple was busy reporting its earnings, Canalys just dropped some of its own figures — and they’re not pretty. After two quarters of much-needed growing, the global smartphone market just took a big hit. And you no doubt already know who the culprit is.

The mobile industry joins countless others that have taken a massive hit due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with shipments dropping 13% from this time last year. Here’s a graph for those of you who are visual learners:

Analyst Ben Stanton used the word “crushed” to describe the novel coronavirus’s impact on the mobile market. “In February, when the coronavirus was centered on China, vendors were mainly concerned about how to build enough smartphones to meet global demand,” he writes. “But in March, the situation flipped on its head. Smartphone manufacturing has now recovered, but as half the world entered lockdown, sales plummeted.”

First it was impact on the global supply chain, which is centered in Asia, along with a drop in demand among consumers in China. As Europe, the U.S. and other locations continue to live under shelter in place order, demand in those markets has taken a significant hit. People are stuck inside and many have lost jobs — it’s not really the ideal time to consider shelling out $1,000+ for what still seems a luxury for many.

Samsung regained the top spot, while still losing significant numbers. Both it and the number two company, Huawei, were down 17% for the quarter. Apple, at number three, dropped 8%. Chinese manufacturers Xiaomi and Vivo saw some gains, at 9- and 3%, respectively.

There are bound to be rough times ahead as well. Per Stanton, “Most smartphone companies expect Q2 to represent the peak of the coronavirus’ impact.” Apple noted the uncertainty of its own earnings by opting not to issue guidance for next quarter.

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Samsung expects COVID-19 to hurt smartphone and TV sales, but increase demand for memory

In its first-quarter earnings report today, Samsung said it expects the COVID-19 pandemic to continue impacting its business for the rest of the year, cutting into sales for smartphones and TVs, but increasing demand for PCs, servers and memory chips as people continue to work or study from home.

Samsung’s results for the first-quarter of 2020 was in line with the guidance it released earlier this month. Operating profit was 6.45 trillion Korean won (about $5.3 billion). Revenue fell about 7.6% from the previous quarter to 55.33 trillion won, due to a seasonal drop in demand for displays and consumer electronics, and the impact of the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused more than 3 million confirmed cases around the world and more than 217,000 deaths, and resulted in shelter-in-place orders in countries around the world and a global recession.

Samsung said that because the pandemic’s impact through the second half of 2020 remains uncertain, it plans to make flexible investments and adjust its product mix to adapt. Because it expects competition among manufacturers to increase as they try to recover from a weak first half, Samsung said it will continue to launch premium products like a new foldable and Note devices, and expand 5G to more mass-market smartphones.

Samsung’s display panel business saw a decline in earnings during the first quarter due to weak seasonality and lower sales in China during COVID-19 shutdowns, and it expects demand to continue being impacted by the pandemic and postponement of major sporting events like the Summer Olympics.

On the other hand, Samsung expects to see solid performance in its memory business as remote work, online education, online shopping and streaming entertainment services continue putting more demands on cloud providers and data centers. As a result, Samsung will speed up its transition to 1Z-nm DRAM and 6th-generation V-NAND flash memory.

Samsung also said it plans to offset store and plant closures around the world through flexible supply networks, improving its online sales capabilities, and tailoring promotions and logistics for different market.

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Samsung’s Galaxy Watch blood pressure monitoring app approved by South Korean regulators

Samsung Electronics announced today that its blood pressure monitoring app for Galaxy Watches has been approved by South Korean regulators. Called the Samsung Health Monitor, the app will be available for the Galaxy Watch Active2 during the third quarter, at least in South Korea, and added to upcoming Galaxy Watch devices.

TechCrunch has contacted Samsung for more information on when the app, which uses the Galaxy Watch Active2’s advanced sensor technology, will be available in other markets.

It was cleared by South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety for use as an over-the-counter, cuffless blood pressure monitoring app. The app first has to be calibrated with a traditional blood pressure cuff, then it monitors blood pressure through pulse wave analysis. Users need to recalibrate the app at least once every four weeks.

According to a recent report by IDC, in the last quarter of 2019, Samsung wearables ranked third in terms of shipments, behind Apple and Xiaomi, with volume driven by its Galaxy Active watches. Samsung has sought to differentiate its smartwatches with a focus on health and fitness monitoring, including sleep trackers.

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch Active 2 is a solid smartwatch for Android users

 

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Samsung’s new ‘eco’ TV packing transforms into cat houses, shelves and magazine racks

Here’s a nice thing. It’s not revolutionary or life-changing, but it’s nice. And right now we can all use a little bit of nice. Earlier this month, Samsung announced an addition to its line of “eco-packing” that will turn TV boxes in a wide variety of different “furniture.” I use furniture in quotes here because it is, in fact, still cardboard.

As someone who has transformed a box or two into a piece of pet shelter in his time, however, I’m pretty on-board with the whole thing.

It’s a bit like Nintendo Labo for grownups, with a QR code that unlocks instructions for transforming the containers into a wide range of different objects, including shelves, magazine racks and even cat houses. The longevity of each will be entirely dependent on usage and your specific cat.

To start, the boxes will be used to ship The Serif, Frame and Sero TV models. They’ll be shopping with the TVs starting this month. Samsung’s approach earned it a CES Innovation Award back in January. 

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Samsung’s new Galaxy Watch app reminds you to wash your damn hands, dummy

A few months ago, the idea of hand washing app would have seemed trivial, at best. We’re all adults here, right? We’ve been washing our hands our entire life. But things change. It’s mid-April and we’re afraid to go outside and engage with other humans — and thorough hand-washing is one of very few tools we have in our collective arsenal.

Life, am I right?

According to Samsung, “a small group of designers and developers from Samsung Research Institute-Bangalore, or SRI-B’s UX and wearable teams, worked round-the-clock over the last two weeks to come up with a solution that helps you keep healthy and safe.”

They came out the other side with Hand Wash, a Galaxy Watch app designed to remind wearers to wash their hands for at least 20 seconds. There are preset intervals for the reminders, which can be customized by the wearer. The app gives a buzz at the end of 25 seconds — the extra five seconds were tacked on for the application of soap.

The app tracks washings and shows the amount of time that’s elapsed since you last washed. It’s the kind of things that would be absolutely crazy-making normally, but these days are anything but. It’s available now for download in the Galaxy Store.

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Google said to be preparing its own chips for use in Pixel phones and Chromebooks

Google is reportedly on the verge of stepping up their hardware game in a way that follows the example set by Apple, with custom-designed silicon powering future smartphones. Axios reports that Google is readying its own in-house processors for use in future Pixel devices, including both phones and eventually Chromebooks, too.

Google’s efforts around its own first-party hardware have been somewhat of a mixed success, with some generations of Pixel smartphone earning high praise, including for its work around camera software and photo processing. But it has used standard Qualcomm processors to date, whereas Apple has long designed its own custom processor (the A-series) for its iPhone, providing the Mac-maker an edge when it comes to performance tailor-made for its OS and applications.

The Axios report says that Google’s in-house chip is code-named ‘Whitechapel,’ and that it was made in collaboration with Samsung and uses that company’s 5-nanometer process. It includes an 8-core ARM-based processor, as well as dedicated on-chip resources for machine learning and Google Assistant.

Google has already taken delivery of the first working prototypes of this processor, but it’s said to be at least a year before they’ll be used in actual shipping Pixel phones, which means we likely have at least one more generation of Pixel that will include a third-party processor. The report says that this will eventually make its way to Chromebooks, too, if all goes to plan, but that that will take longer.

Rumors have circulated for years now that Apple would eventually move its own Mac line to in-house, ARM-based processors, especially as the power and performance capabilities of its A-series chips has scaled and surpassed those of its Intel equivalents. ARM-based Chromebooks already exist, so that could make for an easier transition on the Google side – provided the Google chips can live up to expectations.

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Decrypted: Zoom’s security fallout, Crowdstrike’s new CTO, Bugcrowd raises $30M

Another week in quarantine.

As the world adjusts to working from home under mandatory stay-at-home orders, hackers are keeping busy. Microsoft said this week that coronavirus-related attacks are on the rise but still make up just a fraction of the overall malicious activity. Cybersecurity companies seem to be faring mostly well — in part thanks to the uptick of attacks, but also the challenges of securing the workforce as hundreds of millions work from home.

But as coronavirus dominates the headlines, the wheels of government keep turning. Lawmakers are trying to push through a controversial bill that critics say would undermine encryption, which keeps everything from your phone to your online banking accounts safe. One startup is bracing for a showdown. Signal, the end-to-end encrypted messaging app, sounded the alarm when it warned this week that it may exit the U.S. market if Congress passes the controversial EARN IT Act.

In a blog post this week, Signal engineer Joshua Lund wrote it would “not be possible for a small nonprofit like Signal to continue to operate within the United States.”

Will encryption become the latest causality of this tumultuous year?

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THE BIG PICTURE

Zoom slapped with more security woes, but calls in the cavalry

A growing number of companies and governments, from SpaceX and Google to Taiwan and Germany, have banned Zoom. Not even the U.S. Senate is taking any chances with the video-calling software, which has faced a steady stream of headlines critiquing its security practices and privacy policies. But Zoom’s popularity, undoubtedly sparked by the mass working from home to stem the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, seems to be weathering the storm.

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Samsung earnings guidance stays upbeat despite global macro crisis

Samsung overnight released its earnings guidance for the first quarter of 2020, stating that it expected sales of $45.4 billion and an operating profit of roughly $5.3 billion. The company’s fiscal year is aligned to the standard calendar year, and it will announce official earnings results on April 23.

Those numbers are slightly up from last year’s first quarter, which had sales of $43.3 billion and an operating profit of roughly $5.1 billion.

Those sales and profits are in line with Samsung’s historical first quarter earnings, which have been relatively stagnant over the past few years, with the minor exception of 2018, which saw a bump to both revenues and profits.

Samsung recognizes four main segments: consumer electronics (19.2% of sales and includes smart devices like TVs), IT & Mobile (51.9%, and includes key flagship products like the Galaxy line of smartphones), Device Solutions (39.4%, which includes display components, memory, and semiconductors) and Harman (4.2%, which includes audio and connected car technology), which it acquired in 2016 for $8 billion.

Samsung had been on a tear until the crisis around COVID-19. From August last year to February this year, the company’s stock soared roughly 50% on encouraging electronics news in the smartphone, DRAM and components businesses, only to sink about 15% in the increasingly dire global macro environment.

South Korea was among the first countries to institute wide-scale responses to the advent of the novel coronavirus, which has affected everything from manufacturing to logistics to transoceanic shipping. Most of Samsung’s first quarter coincides with these initiatives, perhaps indicating that the economic damage from the global pandemic may be somewhat limited.

Nonetheless, demand for products in the company’s key profit centers is likely to be soft as consumers cut back on spending this year given the massive global recession underway. The company must also navigate the intensifying trade war between the U.S. and China, two of its largest export markets.

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