"The iPhone, on the other hand, currently accounts for two-thirds of the mobile phone industry’s total profit. Mobile carriers need the iPhone today. Computer stores did not need the Mac.
It’s easy to pick and choose the numbers you want to back up the theory you prefer. So if you’re rooting for Android to dominate the industry, it is tempting to focus on unit sale market share, and to attribute Windows’s historical dominance to its massive unit sale market share. But you can flip that around, and argue that because I am rooting for the iPhone, I cherry pick the data to fit the story I want to see unfold — and so I say profit share is what matters, not unit sales, only because that’s the figure that puts Apple’s position in the best light.
But I like the odds that I’ll be proven right. Money is how you keep score, because it’s the one thing whose value everyone agrees upon. That’s what money is."
I am at a loss to understand what on earth you're on about. It seems like some random "oh poor Android" rant.
The reason carriers need the iPhone has nothing to do with Android's market share or Apple's profits. It's about carrier's profits. And the fact that much of it comes from users who call a lot, text a lot and use a tonne of data. Which just happens to correlate with the iPhone demographics.
I don't believe that Samsung or any Android manufacturer has caught Apple in profits. All the numbers we have seen is from Samsung are dubious at best.
Strange, my Appleinsider link, from a few days after yours, shows that Samsung have closed the gap massively over the last year or so and was within 3 percentage points at the end of last quarter, a whole two months ago and just before the new iPhone announcement. Not generally a big sales period for Apple.
They've been publishing that data for years and never once questioned it before. I wonder what happened that got one of their staff so riled up about the issue? Oh yes, probably Samsung overtaking Apple in smartphone profit share.
Are you emotionally invested in Samsung's success (or Apple's failure)? Because if so, Gizmodo's right over there dude. I come to HN to read insightful analysis, not to read a bunch of people Grubering about whatever imaginary tribe they think they belong to.
Yeah, very true. My grumpiness gets the best of me sometimes.:(
I guess I wish the HN response to a Gruberish article would be people analyzing it for what it is, not people gloating about how they think their team is, uh, winning or whatever, then arguing about the numbers that they think proves it. Maybe the post I was responding to was some sort of pro-Android Gruber parody or something. If that's the case, then it was awesome, because it really captured some very subtle nuances about how that brand of commentary operates.
I'm just fascinated by the myth-making that surrounds Apple.
How could anyone read an Apple pundit claim that profit is the only metric that matters and not nearly die of cognitive dissonance after so many years of excuses/reasons why beleaguered Apple's Mac OS 9 and X was better. And yet it's par for the course.
And now here's an article which claims to be about Ballmer (a figure of fun for the Apple crowd) but is really about how Apple is morally superior for not being capitalist!?
It's hilarious, fascinating and a bit sad. And strange to be at the inflexion point where they go back to all the stories from the Windows vs Mac OS days e.g. they've already cast both Google and Samsung, to play Microsoft's role as the evil villain who copied all their good ideas and didn't deserve success.
And have you read the Appleinsider piece that gets trotted out to defend Apple's profit share lead? It's a very, very odd read. But you mention that Apple have not got the profit lead anymore and you get several links to it, and several repetitions of the "Samsung numbers are dodgy" talking point. It's a very organised media bubble.
And the "Google copied Apple" trope is such garbage. Danger, Inc. was the innovator here, releasing their first Hiptop/T-Mobile Sidekick 5 years minus 3 months before the iPhone. Danger co-founder Andy Rubin left them a year later (let's hear it for non-compete unenforceablity in California!) to co-found Android, Inc., which was bought by Google in another couple of years, still 2 years prior to the iPhone's release.
There's no way in hell the first Android phone could have been released 5 quarters after the iPhone without it being long in gestation.
And here you are, pretending not to have been proven wrong about Samsung's profit share, elsewhere in the same thread.
The linked article is not claiming apple is morally superior. It is claiming that Apple is strategically different, and highlighting Ballmers's focus on short term profitability as a mistake.
Amazon is another example of the same thing.
You seem to be obsessed with bashing Apple and some putative 'apple crowd'. If you calm down and read what has been written you'll see that nobody else here is bashing anyone or making derisive assertions about other groups of people.
Nope. Completely different analysis from a different group. You'll notice one claimed that Samsung was now in the lead while the other had the same trend but thought Samsung was still slightly behind.
It's still clearly a totally false comparison, combining Samsung's other businesses with their Android businesses and comparing that with just the iPhone.
Time to revisit this piece now that Samsung (and therefore Android) profit share has caught up with market share enough to overtake Apple:
http://daringfireball.net/2011/09/winning
"The iPhone, on the other hand, currently accounts for two-thirds of the mobile phone industry’s total profit. Mobile carriers need the iPhone today. Computer stores did not need the Mac.
It’s easy to pick and choose the numbers you want to back up the theory you prefer. So if you’re rooting for Android to dominate the industry, it is tempting to focus on unit sale market share, and to attribute Windows’s historical dominance to its massive unit sale market share. But you can flip that around, and argue that because I am rooting for the iPhone, I cherry pick the data to fit the story I want to see unfold — and so I say profit share is what matters, not unit sales, only because that’s the figure that puts Apple’s position in the best light.
But I like the odds that I’ll be proven right. Money is how you keep score, because it’s the one thing whose value everyone agrees upon. That’s what money is."