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Samsung held the largest slice of the global smartphone market by shipments during the first quarter of 2024, followed by Apple. Xiaomi has taken a tight grip on the third position, accounting for a market share of 14 in the first quarter of 2024.
Samsung and Apple smartphone sales
Smartphone vendors have been suffering from the events of the past couple of years, including the pandemic and the economic downturn. However, they all appear to be recovering, as shown by the recent increase in shipments. For instance, mostly based on the main line of Galaxy Series, Samsung's smartphone shipments totaled nearly 226.5 million units globally in 2023.
Next to Samsung, Apple is a major manufacturer of smartphones worldwide, with the company shipping more than 232 million iPhones worldwide in 2023 - a number that made Apple leading smartphone vendor for the first time ever. Apple’s sales tend to be very cyclical, peaking in the fourth quarter each year, much like in the fourth quarter of 2023, when they took the first spot in terms of units shipped globally with around 80.5 units.
Huawei falls outside the leading five vendors
While Apple and Samsung are typically the two major companies challenging for the top spot, Huawei had provided a strong challenge in recent years. Particularly, the Chinese company managed to climb the smartphone market ladder between 2011 and 2020, recording shipments of over 32 million smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2020. However, strong performances from rivals like Xiaomi and the effects of the U.S. trade ban have since seen Huawei fall outside the list of top five vendors by smartphone shipments.
The granddaughter of the L'Oréal founder, Francoise Bettencourt Meyers was the wealthiest woman in the world as of April 2024. She and her family's net worth was estimated at 99.5 billion U.S. dollars. Alice Walton was ranked second with over 70 billion U.S. dollars in net worth. By comparison, the richest man in the world had a fortune of over 258 billion dollars as of December 2023.
The most recent polling data from March 2024 puts the approval rating of the United States Congress at 15 percent, reflecting a slight increase from February's record low of the 118th Congress, which began in January 2023.
Congressional approval, particularly over the past few years, has not been high. Americans tend to see Congress as a group of ineffectual politicians who are out of touch with their constituents. The 118th Congress began in 2023 with a rocky start. The Democratic Party maintains control of the Senate, but Republicans took back control of the House of Representatives after the 2022 midterm elections. The House caught media attention from its first days with a contentious fight for the position of Speaker of the House. Representative Kevin McCarthy was eventually sworn in as Speaker after a historic fifteen rounds of voting. Despite the current Congress having a historic share of women and being the most diverse Congress in American history, very little has been done to improve the opinion of Americans regarding its central lawmaking body.
However, Americans tend not to have much confidence in many of the institutions in the United States. Additionally, public confidence in the ability of the Republican and Democratic parties to work together has decreased drastically between 2008 and 2022, with nearly 60 percent of Americans having no confidence the parties can govern in a bipartisan way.
According to data published by the National Bureau of Statistics of China in January 2024, the Chinese population decreased by 2.08 million people to around 1,41 billion in 2023. This was a stronger decrease than expected by the IMF, which underestimated China's population decrease already in 2022. China arrived at the turning point of its population growth earlier than expected by many observers, and current IMF estimates for the total population until 2029 very likely need to be adjusted downwards.
Population development in China
China had for a long time been the country with the largest population worldwide, but according to UN estimates, it has been overtaken by India in 2023. As the population in India is still growing, the country is very likely to remain being home of the largest population on earth in the near future. Due to several mechanisms put into place by the Chinese government as well as changing circumstances in the working and social environment of the Chinese people, population growth has subsided over the past decades, displaying an annual population growth rate of -0.15 percent in 2023. Nevertheless, compared to the world population in total, China held a share of about 18 percent of the overall global population in 2022.
China's aging population
In terms of demographic developments, the birth control efforts of the Chinese government had considerable effects on the demographic pyramid in China. Upon closer examination of the age distribution, a clear trend of an aging population becomes visible. In order to curb the negative effects of an aging population, the Chinese government abolished the one-child policy in 2015, which had been in effect since 1979, and introduced a three-child policy in May 2021. However, many Chinese parents nowadays are reluctant to have a second or third child, as is the case in most of the developed countries in the world. The number of births in China varied in the years following the abolishment of the one-child policy, but did not increase considerably. Among the reasons most prominent for parents not having more children are the rising living costs and costs for child care, growing work pressure, a growing trend towards self-realization and individualism, and changing social behaviors.
In the week spanning March 30 to April 5, 2024, STAR Sports 1 Hindi remained the leading television channel in India, with a weekly viewership of over 2.6 million average minute audience. The following two positions were occupied by general entertainment channels in Hindi and Telugu, namely Dangal and STAR Maa, with over two million viewers each. STAR Sports 1 Hindi was the sole sports channel to feature among the top television channels in India during that week.
In recent times, India's viewership demographics have undergone substantial transformations. Television viewership has declined across various age groups, with the largest viewer segment aged 31 to 50. This shift can be attributed to the increasing preference for connected TV and exclusive video streaming over traditional pay TV. Surveys indicate that urban consumers aged 25 to 34 are at the forefront of these changes, driving video streaming and influencing television consumption trends, reflecting the evolving viewer preferences in India.
OTT platforms in India have witnessed significant growth, providing a wide range of content options. India's leading OTT players, including Netflix and Amazon Prime, alongside homegrown platforms like JioTV and Hotstar, have saturated the market with international and local entertainment. Notably, YouTube was the leading streaming platform in the country in terms of unique visitors, surpassing all rivals.
As of March 2024, Amazon Japan's e-commerce website was the leading e-commerce site accessed in Japan, with almost 587 million visits. The subsidiary of the American technology company competes in the Japanese e-commerce market against the major business-to-consumer (B2C) retailers Rakuten and Yahoo Japan.
Luxembourg had the highest per capita GHG emissions in the EU-27 in 2022, at 14.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO₂e/cap). This was roughly double the EU-27 average that year. By comparison, Sweden had the lowest per capita emissions in 2022, at less than one tCO₂e/cap.
Nearly all EU-27 member states have experienced per capita emissions reductions over the past three decades. Luxembourg's per capita emissions, for example, have fallen by more than 50 percent when compared to 1990 levels. Overall, average EU-27 per capita emissions have dropped by roughly 35 percent since 1990, to 7.25 tCO₂e/cap.
In terms of overall emissions, Germany is by far the biggest GHG polluter in the EU-27, having generated some 780 MtCO₂e in 2022. This was almost equal to the combined emissions produced by France and Italy that year, and accounted for roughly one quarter of the EU-27's total net GHG emissions.
In 2024 Bayer Leverkusen won the Bundesliga for the first time, with the team going unbeaten in all competitions for over 40 matches. Previously, Bayern Munich had won the league every year since 2013.
In the last years, Mexico has positioned itself as the largest producer of vehicles in Latin America. In 2023, the North American country produced just over four million motor vehicles, followed by Brazil, where around 2.3 million units were produced. In addition, most of the motor vehicles produced in Mexico were light commercial vehicles.
The price of residential property in New Zealand was the highest in the Auckland region in March 2024, with an average sale price of around one million New Zealand dollars. The most populated city in the country, Auckland has consistently reported higher house prices compared to most other regions. Buying property in New Zealand, particularly in its major cities, is expensive. The nation has one of the highest house-price-to-income ratios in the world.
The residential housing market in Auckland is competitive. Prices have been slowly increasing; the Auckland region experienced an annual increase in the average residential house price compared to the same month in the previous year. The price of residential property in Auckland was the highest in North Shore City, with an average sale price of around 1.2 million New Zealand dollars.
Due to the rising cost of real estate, an increasing number of New Zealanders who want to own their own property are taking on mortgages. Most residential mortgage lending in New Zealand went to owner-occupier borrowers, followed by first home buyers. In addition to mortgage lending, under the KiwiSaver HomeStart initiative, first-home buyers in New Zealand can apply to withdraw all or part of their KiwiSaver retirement savings to assist with purchasing a first home. However, even with a large initial deposit, it may take decades for many borrowers to pay off their mortgage.
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