When did we miss the moment when mid-budget smartphones began to lag slightly behind flagships? The changes started about two years ago. Even before the release of iPhone XR, it became clear that the mid-budget market was attracting consumers more than any other. People do not want too cheap devices, at the same time they do not want to buy expensive gadgets. The golden mean is what everyone is striving for, and not only Chinese manufacturers have begun to understand this.
Mid-range smartphones conquer the market
Qualcomm is currently offering the mid-budget Snapdragon 730G gaming processor. In terms of its capabilities, it is comparable to last year's flagship processors, and the new Snapdragon 76 5G will be even more powerful. If earlier flagships seemed much more productive, today this is no longer the case.
The same applies to the quality of cameras, in 2019 camera modules with 48 and 64 megapixels with pixel binning technology gained popularity. It allows you to combine several pixels into one, thanks to which photos receive more light and information. Xiaomi Mi The 550 € Note 10 with a 108MP camera outperforms the flagship Google Pixel 4 with Night Sight in night photography. If we compare the camera of a budget device with cameras of flagships, the difference will be negligible in good lighting.
In addition, manufacturers tend to update to new versions Android not only flagships, but mid-budget phones too. So, for example, Huawei will update to Android 10 35 phones, even now even budget phones Xiaomi work on MIUI 11, so the update problem in the case of inexpensive devices in 2020 has become irrelevant.
Medium-budget gadgets are not deprived of flagship features either. Taking Redmi K30, OnePlus 7T, Realme X2 Pro or Oppo Reno 3 Pro as an example, the devices got screens with refresh rates of 90 or 120 Hz. This feature should appear in the Galaxy S20 lineup, which will be shown on February 11th.
In addition, mid-range devices, along with flagships, offer Type-C ports, modern connections Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, LTE. In 2020, smartphones with Snapdragon 76 5G, Exynos 980 and Dimensity 800 processors will become popular – all these processors are designed for mid-budget devices and are equipped with 5G – a modem.
What to do with flagships?
If now many companies make the main profit precisely from the sale of flagship models, it cannot be ruled out that in 2020 the priorities of consumers will change significantly towards the mid-budget. In this case, manufacturers will need to either lower the cost of flagships or produce the highest quality mid-range devices.
The problem is that Chinese manufacturers are significantly dumping prices in order to increase market share. This is what Xiaomi does, selling smartphones with good hardware and AMOLED – screens for $ 200-250. The company compensates for the low cost by the presence of advertising in the shell MIUI. This is a good tactic and is used by other Chinese companies too, but it leads to a drop in sales of giants Samsung and Apple, which are used to making money on flagships. We propose to discuss this in Telegram.
Samsung and Apple already offer good cheap phones, but even these solutions have a hard time keeping up with Chinese products. The problem is that more and more people are starting to use the Internet to buy phones through manufacturers' websites. This is a game changer and makes mid-budget Chinese devices more attractive to consumers. By the way, although the OnePlus 7T is a flagship for us, for Westerners it is more of a mid-budget device worth $ 500-600.
It is not entirely clear who in the regions of Russia will buy the Galaxy Note 10 Plus for 89 thousand rubles. Yes, this is a stunning smartphone, the best I've ever seen, but 89 thousand, in my opinion, is not that amount that can attract a consumer even with the modern capabilities of the device.
It is interesting to know the opinion of the readers. Do you think it's worth buying a flagship in 2020 and do you think that mid-range smartphones have become trending on the market? Share your opinion in the comments below.