After a hiatus of 1 week, it’s with nice pleasure that I welcome myself again to being the creator of NextPit’s weekly ‘Winners and Losers’ column. For these studying this text for the primary time, the aim of this weekly sequence is to present you an summary of the important thing developments on this planet of know-how prior to now seven days. And within the course of, we additionally choose two entities who we expect are ‘Winners’ or ‘Losers’ for the week.
Our choose for the Winner this week was a quite straightforward one. Xiaomi – for launching, I don’t know what number of telephones. The selection was unanimous, and nearly everybody at group NextPit voted in favour of the Chinese language electronics model. The loser of the week was additionally a unanimous alternative - Qualcomm - which misplaced its crown of being the most important smartphone SoC vendor of 2020 to MediaTek. As all the time, earlier than we speak about these two firms, allow us to shortly check out among the different notable tech happenings of the week passed by.
Among the many most talked-about developments, this week was the information in regards to the cancellation of a smartphone generally known as the OnePlus Nord SE. Now, it’s notable that OnePlus has by no means publicly admitted to having been engaged on this gadget. This cellphone was first ‘revealed’ by leakster Max Jambor who revealed that the OnePlus Nord SE was a pimped up OnePlus Nord with 65W charging and a barely greater battery. Anyway, the information is that the OnePlus Nord SE just isn’t occurring.
Staying with OnePlus, our second main spotlight of the week was the truth that OnePlus Nord N100 obtained a much-needed software program replace this week. The brand new software program variant is numbered Oxygen OS 10.5.8 within the EU and 10.5.6 in North America. Aside from the February 2021 Android safety patch, this replace additionally comes with a number of enhancements by way of energy consumption and general system stability. Should you haven’t obtained the replace but, fret not. It’s on its manner!
The Samsung Galaxy Buds Professional could be model new. However this week noticed hints about Samsung reportedly engaged on its successor already. Per an APK teardown of the Galaxy Wearable app by the great of us at AndroidPolice, we kind of know that Samsung is presumably readying a prodigy dubbed the Galaxy Buds 2.
One other main growth this week was the announcement of the Poco X3 Professional for the Indian market. The distinction in costs between India and Europe for a similar cellphone is kind of vital. In Europe, the Poco X3 Professional begins at EUR 296, whereas in India, you solely have to shell out Rs 18,999 (EUR 260). One of many few events the place I really feel fortunate to be dwelling in a creating nation.
This week was additionally a harbinger of fine information for smartphone SoC fans. Arm Ltd - the British semiconductor and software program design firm - introduced the arrival of a brand new Arm structure referred to as Armv9 that guarantees higher SoC efficiency on future cellular SoCs. For nicely over a decade, all Arm-based chipsets had been based mostly on ArmV8 structure. We’re, subsequently, on the cusp of a significant efficiency enhance by way of CPU and GPU efficiency throughout the board on each Android, iOS and macOS platforms.
Winner of the week: Xiaomi for its extravagant launch occasion
It’s not all the time that we choose a Winner for the only real purpose that they launched a brand new smartphone. Nevertheless, we needed to make an exception this week for Xiaomi. This week noticed the corporate announce the launch of a bunch of recent merchandise in a mega launch occasion that spanned two days! What can also be notable is the truth that all of the merchandise appear to be extraordinarily good. The record of merchandise introduced by Xiaomi this week
- Mi 11 Extremely - absolutely the top-tier flagship smartphone from Xiaomi
- Mi Combine Fold - Xiaomi’s first-ever foldable smartphone that you just and I should buy
- Mi 11 Professional - A professional model of the prevailing Mi 11, which we reviewed
- Mi 11 Lite - A Mi 11 however skimps on some options, makes use of a lower-tier SoC and subsequently, ‘Lite’.
- Mi 11 Lite 5G - A model of the Mi 11 Lite with 5G help
- Mi 11i - One other Lite model - however this time with a flagship SoC
- Mi Band 6 - An improved Mi Band 5
Aside from these, the corporate additionally introduced a bunch of recent laptops and even an AC. Each these merchandise, nonetheless, shall solely be accessible in China for now. Xiaomi additionally took this occasion as a chance to announce its intentions to turn out to be a participant within the electrical autos house.
Loser of the week: Qualcomm, as a result of MediaTek shipped extra SoCs than them in 2020
Our choose for the loser of the week is definitely Qualcomm. The American semiconductor firm was for a extremely very long time essentially the most dominant participant within the smartphone SoC house. Whereas it nonetheless manages to take care of that lead in the case of the flagship SoC house, the identical can’t be mentioned in regards to the reasonably priced and mid-range SoC house.
In response to reviews, MediaTek reportedly shipped 351.8 million smartphone chipsets in 2020, which is a rise of 113.8 million over 2019. This surge in shipments additionally signifies that it now holds a worldwide market share of 27.2%, in comparison with simply 17.2% in 2019. Spectacular or not? It stays to be seen if MediaTek manages to proceed with its development trajectory in 2021 as nicely. Do you suppose Qualcomm will claw again on this yr?
Nicely, that brings us to the top of this week’s ‘Winners and Losers’. O you agree with our picks? It’s Okay should you don’t, however in that case, do tell us why within the feedback beneath!
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