Chinese manufacturers leading the smartphone market in 2018

The serious company Gartner just released its smartphone sales figures for the third quarter of 2018. Overall, this market remained relatively stable thanks to the excellent performance of the leading Chinese manufacturers, led by Huawei and Xiaomi.

The trend of slowing down the growth of the global smartphone market continues. According to the latest figures published by Gartner for the third quarter of 2018, sales of this device increased by 1.4% worldwide. It means that 389 million terminals were sold during the three months concerned (July, August, and September). According to Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner, the smartphone market would have declined by 5.2% without the contribution of Huawei and Xiaomi.

These two manufacturers show the most substantial growth compared to the previous year. Huawei once again confirms his second place, behind Samsung and ahead of Apple. The Chinese manufacturer sold 52 million smartphones in the third quarter and grew by 43% compared to the previous year. Over the period, Huawei enjoyed a 13.4% market share, up almost four points. His competitor Xiaomi is still a step back from the podium. With 33 million mobile phones sold between July and September, the company grew by 23% in volume. Xiaomi smartphones accounted for 8.5% of global smartphone sales in the third quarter.

smartphone market shares

Samsung is losing shares, Apple sales mark a stop

Samsung is in a completely different dynamic and is suffering from the rise of it’s Chinese competitors. The South Korean giant sold 73 million smartphones over the period and is still far ahead of its pursuers. However, this figure is down 14% from 2017, and Samsung lost 2.4 percentage points of market share. Chaebol suffers from disappointing sales of its flagship products, the Galaxy S9, S9+ and Note9, while its price positioning in the mid-range segment is struggling to compete with that of Chinese manufacturers.

Apple is limiting the damage with steady sales in the third quarter of 2018. The Californian company has delivered 45 million of his iPhones worldwide, maintaining it’s market share at around 11.8%. The fourth quarter figures will probably be more interesting to watch, with the new iPhone Xs and Xs Max series being released at the end of the period under review, while the iPhone Xr arrived at the end of October.

The Game Plan – Web Hosting for Small Businesses Made Easy

As an entrepreneur, web hosting has become one of the most important things to have. Web Hosting is a company service where your storage center found online houses all the information, videos, images, , and other content that involves your website.

There are 3 types of Web Hosting, and in order to choose the right one, you must understand them all.  Here’s an easy explanation:

Shared Hosting:

If you are an owner of multiple websites this is the right one for you. This type of web hosting is one of the cheapest, in other words, if you don’t count with a high budget, this is the best option for you, with 3-6$ a month.

However, if you are a “Power user” and need the full control of the website, this is not the one for you. One of the disadvantages of this server has to share resources with other accounts on the server so you may not always get the best or fastest results when it comes to website load time.

Nevertheless, shared hosting often includes an easy control panel for the user, being this one the most appreciated and common.

Dedicated Hosting:

This server is full-on dedicated to only one website. So, if you’re looking for a server to have all the control this is definitely the one you should go for. Due to the exclusivity of this server, it is one of the most expensive hosting services out there, costing up to $100/month.

It’s not recommended to start off with this server if you don’t have a high budget. However, you can start with the shared hosting to gain more platforms and to let your name be heard, and then upgrade to the dedicated hosting.

VPS Hosting

Virtual private server hosting, or VPS, it is a dedicated hosting within a shared hosting environment.  This server lets you to expand faster, starting up with a small traffic you can easily become a large traffic website. However, due to how fast growing it is, it’s more expensive than a dedicated hosting.

Knowing where you should start and where you are as a company, it’s a very important thing for your website. Knowing the difference between these three web hosting services, it should be easier to choose the right one for your company.

Whether you are a low or high point on your website, you have plenty of options where you can start.

Robotics: Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work

Robotics and their impact

Robotics have had a profound effect on many industries and daily life. From security guards to chefs, customer service agents to one-man armies in battle – robotics technology has revolutionized many aspects of our lives.

Robotics technology is evolving at a breathtaking rate, thanks to advances in hardware, electronics and software. Explore how this emerging industry could impact your business operations as well as everyday life, and uncover its many applications.

Industrial Robots

Industrial robots are employed to automate complex production tasks in factories and manufacturing facilities. They help increase productivity and reduce labor costs by replacing repetitive, low-value tasks that cause physical strain, fatigue and injury to human workers.

Robots also help improve safety by eliminating tasks that could be hazardous, dirty or dull. Many manufacturing operations are adopting robot technology to reduce injury risks and ensure their products meet high-quality standards.

Industrial robot arms are composed of links and joints. These can either be prismatic (movement around a vertical axis) or rotary (rotation about the horizontal axis).

The end effector or end-of-arm tooling (EOAT) is responsible for manipulating product by moving, orienting and clamping or unclamping it. EOATs vary in type, size and application; many incorporate sensors to help the system locate and handle various types of items.

Medical Robots

Robotics in healthcare is a major focus for medtech companies, as they can improve patient outcomes and minimize medical errors. They may be utilized for drug delivery, wearable devices, rehabilitation tools or even new prostheses.

The market for medical robots is expected to experience steady growth in the future due to factors such as an increase in chronic diseases and an aging population.

Medical robots have many potential applications, but one area in particular holds great promise: minimally invasive surgery. With this technology, these procedures become less invasive and precise while decreasing infections.

Intuitive Surgical is currently the leader in this market, but it’s becoming increasingly competitive. Other medtech companies are investing more and more into R&D to gain an edge in the robotic surgical systems space.

Surgical robots offer surgeons greater precision, as they can stabilize the position of instruments during surgery so that they are less likely to move or come out of alignment. This frees up the surgeon’s hands, allowing them to focus on their patients and complete operations faster.

Robotics in Education

Robotics in education is an ever-expanding field that seeks to educate students of all ages. Teachers can utilize robots as teaching assistants, personal tutors and small group leaders to enhance their lessons while treating students without judgment.

Robots can also be employed to meet the educational needs of homeschooled students and those with special needs. By acting as virtual avatars, robots make learning more accessible for those unable to physically attend school due to disabilities or low income families.

Introductory programmable robots are an ideal choice for younger learners. They’re generally kid-friendly and enable students to experiment with inputs and outputs without needing prior coding knowledge.

Robotics in Public Spaces

When robots are introduced into public places, people need to have faith that they are secure and competent. This kind of trust should be similar to that which people have with professional service providers.

Governments should create laws and regulations for the safe use of public robotics in a similar fashion to how they set standards for traffic, construction materials or footpath widths. Doing so would not only promote productivity but also public safety (Boucher 2016).

Ideally, human-robot interactions will be beneficial to all parties involved. This is achievable when policymakers promote ongoing explorations into the spatial context of robot use, its advantages and potentials for co-creation.

Dark patterns: five site techniques to trap Internet users

We present you the 5 techniques that we consider to be the best ones to increase your CTR in your online marketing campaigns. This selection is, of course, subjective and we might have forgotten some of them.

Creating urgency and FOMO

“High demand!” “Only 1 more room available”. Travel sites are full of worrying references suggesting that you will miss the hotel of your dreams and ruin your holidays if you don’t hurry to get out the Credit Card.

Booking even pushes the defect to display out of stock offers. A particularly twisted idea since this information is of no use to you and will stress you out a little more. But of course, that’s what it’s all about.

The trap of the infinite thread

The economic model of some sites (social networks, media, etc.) pushes them to want to keep the Internet user in their premises as long as possible.

How to do this? Offer him new content without interruption. It is the principle of automatic video launch on Netflix (which can be disabled). Or the infinite thread of social networks. Indeed, these tools are convenient. But there is a downside.

Unreadable Terms and Conditions

Passing on small sensitive conditions of use without lying to the Internet user? It couldn’t be easier.

All you have to do is explain all this in a nice paving stone, size 8, without any line spacing or paragraphs. Of course, we avoid putting any heading or illustration that could air the text and make the user want to stay on it. And we place a pretty green “Accept” button to help him quickly escape from this textual hell. It works every time.

The roach motel

“Roach motel” is what they call sites that, like a cockroach trap, let their target in but not out. Other companies do not hesitate to use this type of technique to prevent their users from unsubscribing from a paid service.

It may seem like they are just poorly designed sites. But make no mistake about it. If you have to go through 15 sections and go through 5 confirmation steps to unsubscribe, it’s no coincidence. Online businesses know that, due to lack of time or discouragement, many of us will give up, vowing to come back the next day. Then procrastinate for six months by going back so many times by then.

What if we delete the Refuse button?

Social networks can be blamed for a lot of things, but certainly not for being unimaginative. To encourage us never to refuse to share our personal data, they have become masters of ambiguous wording.

For example, in 2016, when Facebook was trying to get as many people as possible to accept SMS integration, it did not think it was appropriate to ask whether or not they wanted to enable this feature. Instead, the social network sent this very ambiguous pop-up that gave the impression that we had no other options than to press OK.

The Huawei case – understanding an unprecedented crisis

Huawei has been in the eye of the storm for a few months already, the Chinese mobile phone giant being accused by the Trump administration of spying on US interests. But things have accelerated and escalated since the official ban last week preventing the Chinese giant from dealing with any company that “could endanger national security.”

Since Google announced that it would stop its commercial relations with the Chinese giant, things have been going on; statements have multiplied, decisions taken have been postponed, negotiations have resumed, other options have bloomed. It makes this case extremely confusing.

Can Huawei get by without Google?

Faced with the crisis, Huawei organized himself. The group’s representative before the European authorities, Abraham Liu, thus ensures that different teams of the group work hand in hand with Google to respond to the American embargo. Huawei was granted a three-month stay until August 19. It allows them to refine their alternative. For several months now, the Chinese giant has been working in secret on its response to be able to do without its American counterpart.

For the moment, Huawei is focusing on negotiating with Google.

But at the same time, the group is working hard to find a plan B, developing its competing operating system. According to CNBC, it could be ready in China before the end of the year. This system would be available internationally in early 2020. According to the Chinese daily Global Times, the OS called HongMeng is in the testing phase. It was developed in 2012.  At Huawei, they are somewhat optimistic. But there are no equivalent applications, that’s the problem. Afterward, Huawei is thinking about the possibility of providing smartphones with an Android OpenSource version, free for users to then install Google services.

Huawei has also been secretly working on a proprietary application store for several months. But it will be challenging to compete with the Google Play Store. Since the beginning of 2018, the Chinese giant has been knocking on the door of application developers, but also European telecom operators with attractive proposals. The idea is to expand the store’s catalog and promote its deployment as quickly as possible.

Can other smartphone manufacturers be affected?

The United States first targeted ZTE and then Huawei. They are both smartphone manufacturers, but above all, they are major telecom players. Huawei generates 48% of its revenue from smartphones but has become a key player in the infrastructures required for 5G. The other Chinese manufacturers do not work in the Telecom sector. The Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus do not yet play in the same category.

And last but not least, their founder is not a former army officer, member of the Chinese Communist Party! A Chinese actor who prefers to keep his name secret pointed out to us that he had no connection with the Chinese government. They are nevertheless outside any reply. Not easy, especially if China reacts by boycotting Apple products, for example. We can imagine the rest very well. Donald Trump was able to be unpredictable!