📱 Smartphone makers’ premium push

Looks like an iPad… actually a cellphone. China’s top phone manufacturers are upping their game as they fight for a bigger share of the $450B industry. Honor — formerly a Huawei subsidiary — rolled out its $1,700 foldable Magic Vs phone onto the global stage this week (it was previously available in China). And rival Xiaomi, the world’s third-biggest smartphone seller, showed off its nearly $1,400 13 Pro, which sports super-fast charging and a telephoto camera.

• Xiaomi released its first phone in 2011 and it now makes up about 13% of the entire smartphone market (up from 2% in 2017).
• Still: Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy phones made up an overwhelming 92% of the high-end-smartphone market last year.

Battle of the pros… China-based Huawei was the world’s #1 smartphone seller as recently as 2020. But the effects of US sanctions, issued in 2019, knocked its 2021 sales down by almost a third. Enter Apple, which ramped up its must-have phone features like film-worthy camera tech and AirDrop file sharing to lure younger consumers and fetch premium prices abroad. So far it’s worked: Apple’s worldwide share of high-end phones (think $800+) grew to 76% last year, up from 65% in 2018.

It's not a bug… it's a feature. Social star Snap said it's adding an AI chatbot to its $4-a-month Snapchat+ subscription service. Dubbed “My AI,” the bot’ll be powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT, and it apparently writes haikus and recommends gift ideas. Snap warned users of My AI's "many deficiencies" and said the bot could be tricked into saying almost anything. Think: less a serious search solution, and more an entertaining app companion. But when it comes to revenue, entertainment's no plaything.

Putting an AI cherry on top… of a subscription sundae. Snapchat+ has 2M paying subscribers, and it brought in $28M after launching last year. While Snap said it eventually plans to offer My AI to all its 750M users, for now the chatbot is a differentiator for Snap's subscription biz as it looks to move away from ad-dollar dependence. Snap isn't the only ad-reliant social mammoth now offering subscriber-only perks:

• Blue it: Twitter relaunched its $8-a-month Twitter Blue in December with editable tweets and check marks. As of last month, it had about 180K subscribers.
• Veribuyed: Earlier this month Meta said it would charge users $12 a month to be verified on Facebook or Instagram.

• SoLong: The solana blockchain slowed to a crawl for nearly 20 hours over the weekend after a botched update. The so-called ethereum killer came under scrutiny last year after experiencing a prolonged outage.
• Buyotech: Pfizer's reportedly looking to buy cancer-drug maker Seagen. The deal would be huge: Seagen's valued at $30B. Pfizer's been on an acquisition spree: last year it bought two major pharmas for a combined $15B.
• Screened: Movie-theater owners are spending big on upgrades like laser projectors and Dolby sound systems. The premium push comes as the number of US silver screens decreased by 3K to fewer than 40K since 2019.
• Roomy: Apartment rents fell six months straight (through last month) for every major US metro area. With 500K new rentals expected to be listed this year, the covid-squeezed market may have finally cooled.
• Steamed: HBO Max's parent co, Warner Bros. Discovery, sued rival streamer Paramount last week. WB alleges Paramount breached a $500M exclusivity deal when it played "South Park" on its own platform.

• Earnings expected from Eventbrite, Warby Parker, AMC Entertainment, Duolingo, Rivian, HP, JM Smucker, Ross, Target, Urban Outfitters, Cracker Barrel, Virgin Galactic, SeaWorld, and Norwegian Cruise Line

Authors of this Snacks own ethereum and solana.

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