Earnings reports for smartphone/tablet related companies

[Grieve]

I'm wondering if so many of the phone companies are doing bad because they are to a point to where the phones aren't going to get that much better so people just keep the phones they currently have.

The theory is that we've hit "smartphone saturation" in the West, so people are upgrading existing smartphones, but new buyers aren't there. The only growth (feature phone users switching to smartphones) is in the developing world, where they will only buy very cheap phones (which is why low-end Android phones are doing so well).

I'm not sure I buy it - apparently there are still 41% of adult Americans on feature phones, for example. I think, as usual, analysts were just way over-optimistic, setting up companies to "fail", and making the shareholders suffer.