What really matters...

[voonyx]

But again, that’s not even the real story either. The real story is the number briefly highlighted in Dediu’s chart above, but more fully explored a few days ago here: Apple captured two thirds of available mobile phone profits in Q2.

Take a moment to let that sink in. Apple now controls over 66 percent of all the profits amongst the major players in the mobile space. HTC, RIM, LG, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung Motorola, and Nokia combined for the other 33 or so percent of profits in the space (with a few of them: Nokia, Motorola, LG, and Sony actually losing money).

Apple, the company “losing” the great mobile race to Android, is destroying all the Android manufacturers combined when it comes to profits. You know, the money you get to keep at the end of the day. In business terms, really the only thing that matters.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...matters-most/2011/08/03/gIQAhsFGrI_story.html

Like I said a few days ago...Apple is happy to give "marketshare" to Android, because every other success metric known to man belongs to them. In a 300 to 1 battle, I'm sure they're quite ok with their lost marketshare.

 

[ChazUK]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.4; en-gb; Nexus S Build/GRJ22) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)

I'd guess that Google are more than happy with the extra user data that will assist in serving advertisements and helping them learn usage patterns of each user.

It's been a clever ruse by Google when you think of it.

Give out a free OS, maintain control by licencing closed source components with the free OS, receive masses of user data that assists with their core business, make some OEM's happy with a competitive OS which they can control (HTC Sense, TouchWiz, Blur e.t.c).

Both Apple and Google knew that Mobile was where the next big boom was going to happen and have taken advantage at the cost of the big boys.

Microsoft floundered, Nokia let Symbian rot to eventually become Microsoft's puppy.

Its a shame to see Palm WebOS and MeeGo suffer as they are.

Apple taking such a huge cut in profits is incredible. How and what the competition will do to try to wrest some of that back will be interesting if they can.

 

[voonyx]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.4; en-gb; Nexus S Build/GRJ22) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)

I'd guess that Google are more than happy with the extra user data that will assist in serving advertisements and helping them learn usage patterns of each user.

It's been a clever ruse by Google when you think of it.

Give out a free OS, maintain control by licencing closed source components with the free OS, receive masses of user data that assists with their core business, make some OEM's happy with a competitive OS which they can control (HTC Sense, TouchWiz, Blur e.t.c).

Both Apple and Google knew that Mobile was where the next big boom was going to happen and have taken advantage at the cost of the big boys.

Microsoft floundered, Nokia let Symbian rot to eventually become Microsoft's puppy.

Its a shame to see Palm WebOS and MeeGo suffer as they are.

Apple taking such a huge cut in profits is incredible. How and what the competition will do to try to wrest some of that back will be interesting if they can.

No definitely, I'm not implying that Google is unhappy. Like you said, they deal with data and they're getting plenty of it with Android, and its not like they're on the brink of bankruptcy or something. I was just pointing out just how unbelievable it is that a company can make such a ridiculous amount of profit in such an economic climate.

Many people like to say Apple is floundering, losing customers or in trouble, but they really are a testament to business. It's almost unreal how much money they make year in year out.

The bottom line, which is always going to be money (no matter how much people want to believe its not), belongs to Apple. Marketshare is great, but it really and truly is the only metric where Android wins, and in my opinion it's a very, very skewed metric.

Apple wrote the book on business, the other companies are still reading the cover!