Apple’s Mac updates, declining smartphone sales

OPINION: It’s the weekend again, which means it’s time for us to remember our winner and loser from the last week’s tech headlines.

The most exciting news this week came from Apple when it unveiled its latest MacBook Pro and Mac Mini computers, making the company an easy choice for our winner. With that said, the iPhone maker has almost certainly been hurt by the general downturn in the smartphone market.

Read on to find out more about this week’s winner and loser.

Winner: Apple

Apple is our winner this week after the company made a quiet announcement about its Mac line.

Not only has Apple unveiled updates to its MacBook Pro and Mac Mini computers, it’s also shown off the powerful new chips these Macs will be powered by.

The M2 Pro and M2 Max are the latest additions to the company’s own Apple Silicon line, with the Pro expanding the existing M2 architecture with up to a 12-core processor, up to a 19-core GPU, and up to 32GB of fast connectivity. memory

The Max takes it even further with up to a 38-core GPU and up to 96GB of unified memory, making it the world’s most powerful and efficient pro laptop chip, according to Apple.

Both chips can be found in the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro laptops, while the M2 and M2 Pro power the new Mac Mini.

The MacBook range as a whole has seen incredible leaps and bounds since Apple started developing its own chips to replace the older Intel-powered MacBooks, and we can’t wait to see what these new chipsets bring to the table.

Defeated: Smartphones

Our loser this week is almost every smartphone maker (including Apple) after it was revealed that the mobile market is in for a massive decline at the end of 2022.

According to Canalys Research’s market report, Q4 2022 marked the worst annual and Q4 performance in a decade.

While this is bad news for every manufacturer, Apple came out the best of the victims as the company managed to take the top spot from Samsung in terms of market share.

Apple currently holds 25% of the market, while Samsung is just under 20%, although of course this could all change as the latter unveils its Galaxy S23 series in February. Meanwhile, Xiaomi ranks third with 11% of the Q4 market, followed by Oppo and Vivo.

Canalys attributes the sharp decline in year-over-year performance to smartphone vendors struggling in a difficult macroeconomic environment set to erupt in 2022, with high-end devices feeling the brunt of the crisis in Q4.

You might think this would be good news for budget phone makers, but low- and mid-range smartphones were the first to suffer earlier in the year.

The outlook is not so optimistic for 2023, with Canalys predicting flat or marginal growth in the smartphone market this year, blaming “rising interest rates, an economic slowdown and an increasingly difficult labor market.”