iPhone drops to 23.8% smartphone market share, Android jumps to 17% - Page 9

What 3 GS issues? I have every model of iPhone, and have the latest applicable version of iOS (including the 4.2 beta) installed on all.

There was a problem on the 3G running slow, but that was fixed.

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Every major rev of the iPhone OS started out buggy, with some pretty serious performance problems... 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and now 4.0. It's fixed in the point releases. It is why I don't install major version releases right away. Seasoned iPhone users are well aware of this, and it isn't something new, as you seem to contend.

I've yet to have a problem with any of the revs. And the sparse performance problem reports are well, sparse. The myth of "Apple sucks at rev 1" is just that, a myth. Not perfect but actually pretty damn good overall.

Doesn't that imply that people that are open, inquisitive and try to look at many viewpoints to find out the closest possible truth instead of being critiqueless fanboys (but still fans of Apple and their many of their products) are then by all accounts Anti-Apple trolls?

So me not bying an iPhone (due to the high price of 940 USD and two year carrier lock to a carrier that I don't want due to horrible customer service and higher prices than competition to boot) would make me a troll as well just because I like Apple products, own several but sometimes bring out potentials upsides from competitors or point out deficiencies in iPhone?

Quite a strong black&white viewpoint if that is the case....

Regs, Jarkko

That's not the case at all. IMO, a troll is someone who goes on fansite of company "A" and spends all his time trying to tear down that company while promoting company "B". The occasional piece of constructive criticism is healthy ... but the constant whining and bitching about everything serves no purpose at all .... except maybe to make me homesick.

Jarkko, it seems you didn't get my attempt at humor in my posts ... no problem. My point was simply this: To me, it's really funny when an obvious troll, judging by their posting history, goes off on, yet another rant against Apple, but tries to throw us off the track by listing, and in some cases posting pictures, of all the Apple stuff they own. I always question why somebody who always complains about the same company, over and over again, would keep buying from that company. That's not very logical, wouldn't you agree?

Maybe they're like the guy who, when asked why he keeps banging his head against a stonewall, replied .... because it feels so good when I stop! .....

Well said.

I've been giving some thought to trollers and the like, who claim to have every piece of Apple gear, and every Android phone. In fact, I've challenged a couple of these posters-- especially the cell phones! How can they afford multiple contracts, ETFs, etc.?

As you said, one such [apparent] Apple-hating troll when questioned if he had an iPad and several other tablets-- published several images displaying current posts from the thread displayed on the devices in question.

What's going on? If you hate a device so much that you bad mouth it publicly-- why not just sell it and move on. Or, Why have several devices that perform like functions?

Often you can track these trolls-- they join and start bitching when a new product (the iPad, for instance) is announced, before it even is available. Then they seem to be an early adopter (buyer) just so they can bitch some more.


I am beginning to think these are funded OR efforts by Apple's competitors.

It is not unusual for a company to buy a competitor's device to reverse-engineer, determine capabilities, costs, etc. * That's just good business!

* I sold a $5,000 competitive 68000-based desktop computer to Andy Hertzfeld while he was working on the original Mac (about 6 months before the announcement)... we both knew where it was going and for what purpose. We sold Apple computers to IBM, and UBM computers to Apple...

What I think may be happening with these "trolls-who-own-everything" is they are funded to take it a step further-- a concerted effort to disparage the competition (in this case Apple), on the forums.

If true, this is underhanded, at best.

In 32 years of observing Apple, I have never seen Apple do this sort of thing.

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Dick, I agree with you but let me take it a step further. I think there are only 3 logical explanations for "troll like" behavior.

One: Jealousy: This person, for whatever reason, does not buy, (in this case) Apple, but at the same time is pissed at those who do, especially when Apple's success continues to increase. They seem to think that Apple's success somehow points to a poor decision on their part. They cannot even understand why some of us love Apple products so much we could be termed as fans, which, of course, is short for fanatical. This reason suggests, to me, a person who lacks confidence.

Two: As you said, the action of some competitors who have failed to keep up and have to pay people to badmouth their competition ... kind of like the "negative campaigning" of a lot of politicians nowadays. Pathetic behavior, imho.

Three: This one I'll throw out for your consideration, and I admit it is a bizarre, but not an impossible reason.

Since AI is a website that depends on advertisement (hits) for it's $$$$ and since these outrageous troll like posts seem to want to do nothing but "stir up the waters" and invite replies, one could easily consider that Kasper, or whoever is in charge of AI, not only condones, but maybe even encourages, pays or even creates these posts to increase web hits that translates into money. Like I said, bizarre, but not unthinkable ... except I would sure not like it to be the reason. Perhaps you can think of others?

Good one. Got your point and do agree. I guess I just picked on your post after being fed up by the critiqueless fanboys (which you apparently are not) calling many sensible people with a real point trolls just because they dare to critisize Apple or applaud a competitor when it's due every now and then.

For example I love what Apple did to the mobile phone industry with the iPhone, look at the innovations it forced for the whole industry!. I do critisize the high price and carrier lock of the iPhone. And as I am not a shareholder, high margins for me as a consumer mean a ripoff. Some here would call this critique blasphemy or being a troll.

Apologies if I hit the wrong target.

Regs, Jarkko

Jarkko ... Absolutely no need to apologize.

As for your quote about high margins ..... that is your honest opinion based on your personal situation and even 'tho I disagree with it I respect that you have a valid and personal reason for that opinion.

I would only say this about "high margins". Sometimes margins can be misleading, for instance, in the case of MSFT .... their margins, the last time I looked, were higher than Apple, yet nobody seems to be bothered about that.

If you compare both companies, certain things jump out at you:

MSFT is, primarily a software company while Apple is primarily a hardware company ... and the actual physical production of hardware is most certainly going to be more expensive, the more hardware you produce, relative to your entire sales output ... computers vs software discs, for example.

I'm also convinced, until somebody can show me different, that Apple spends a larger amount on R&D and more on actual design than most other computer companies. All of these dollars have to be "built into" the final selling price of their various devices. If higher margins are what it takes for Apple to continue to delight and amaze me then I am all for it. My only problem is that I can't always fit what I'd like into my budget ... but that is my fault, not the fault of Apple.

One company strives to innovate and lead the industry, while the other one is happy to copy and, in most cases, follow, while spending huge dollars on advertising (1/2 of a billion $$$ in their upcoming campaign)

While both companies are successful (if you look only at profits) I'll still stay with Apple.

Cheers ... newbee

I don't think you are being a troll at all. But I would like you to consider this.

Consumers pick the price (and thereby the margin) - not the manufacturer.

What I mean by that is that every company is obliged to set a price point which will maximise revenue.
If the manufacturer picks too high a price, one the market considers too high, demand is crushed and they and the maker loses unit sales and profits.
Conversely, if the manufacturer picks too low a price, the market will buy lots of units, but the increased sales volume does not make up for the lost revenue.

This is just basic economics.

It's clear that the manufacturer has to select a price-point at a sweet-spot that closely matches a value the audience expects. Within the market there is a consensus in terms of what a product is worth - and the manufacturer has to price an item close to that consensus.
In other words it's the market that sets the price for every item. And any manufacturer that tries to short-change, or rip-off the market will pay dearly in terms of profits.

There's no sign that this is happening with Apple. Sales volumes as well as profits are increasing.

So with that in mind, Apple's relatively large margins means just one thing; According to the market, Apple has a high value-add. According to the market, the resulting products are worth a lot more than the mere cost of the components.

A low margin means that according to the market, the product maker is adding little to the base value of the components.

Discuss!

C.

Funny, I say good things about WP7 and haven't been flamed yet. Perhaps there's a delivery issue?


The 799 € is the "retail" price. That's about the average price of an unlocked iPhone 4 across Europe. Price on contract is 579 €...not the greatest but requires a 1 year contract, not 2.

http://www.geekersmagazine.com/wp-co...ne-4-costs.png

Buy one from Singapore for 496€ because it isn't Apple ripping you off but Sonera. Then use a TeleFinland SIM which I hear is cheaper than the Sonera ones. Odd, aren't they the same company or something?

Either way, the cost here in the US are far lower on contract.

Neither have I. I just reacted (possibly overso) when this troll-calling reached its heights, where it seemed it was headed in the direction that any opposite views would be marked as such. Again apologies if I overreacted.

The 576 is for 2 years. 1 year is 600. 696 vs. 720 (940USD) for the 32GB. So basically a 2/month addon. Not too bad for a year's shortening no. But you still get the higher contract prices so that all adds up. And I do understand that the pricing is mainly up to Sonera from an Apple baseline. The exclusivity OTOH is Apple's doing.

Personal opinion: I believe that if there was pricing transparency and better competition in the US between operators (i.e. easier to change between operators via less fixed length contracts, compatible tech etc.) you'd also be seeing more of the true price of the phones. Now your highish contract prices and single carrier subsidising the phone hides part of the phone's cost. Latter may benefit the customer when the operator truly subsidises a exclusive phone to get customers but the former does not. The Latter is likely to go away or diminish when TMO gets the iPhone.

I prefer the transparent model, where you buy a phone and a contract separately. You know what you are paying for much more easily.

And for newbee: Mostly I agree on Apple's innovativeness etc. But my wallet disagrees at the counter. Same goes for MSFT. I don't buy Office, I use Openoffice due to MSFTs ripoff pricing even though their product is the better one.

Regs, Jarkko

Last check Apple spend around 1 to 1.5 billion a year in R&D (maybe a couple of % of revenue). Microsoft's spend on R&D is around 9 billion (around 14% of revenue).

Of course Apple only have a tiny handful of products compared to Microsoft, and even a smaller amount if you look at the logical similarities of each product (i.e. the new Apple TV, the iPod touch, the iPad and the iPhone 4 are all very similar).

So I think it's fair to say that Apple's R&D spending is very targeted (for the last few years my guess would be almost exclusively iOS based), whereas Microsoft's is spread pretty well over a lot of different areas.

If these figures are accurate, and I have no reason to doubt you, then all I can say is MSFT is not getting very good bang for it's buck ... an updated version of windows, a failed kin and a, yet to be released, kinect. I guess 9 billion just doesn't buy what it used to.

Not sure.
In the UK all carriers now offer iPhones.
Competition has meant that the contract terms have improved and the price point of the subsidised phone on contract is actually fallen.

For example...
A 32GB iPhone 4- With a 2 year contract costs £189. ( 225 Euro)

C.

uhh...they didnt pioneer visual voicemail dude. Sprint has had it since before the iphone inception.

Well that depends on how you look at it. Microsoft don't seem to get the same ROI on their R&D as Apple do, nor would I expect them to as they have very different product libraries.

Microsoft's bread and butter is Windows licences, and Windows exists because it's part of the Office\\Windows\\Server stack. So if Microsoft need to churn, say $50 million, into researching how to improve the next version of BizTalk Server, it would seem to be a good use of their funds... even though you (or 99.9% of the population for that matter) have no idea of what the heck BizTalk Server is!

At the end of the day money spent on R&D is good for employees, good for business and good for the economy as a whole so it's hard to find a reason to complain when a company dedicates such a high percentage of its revenue toward this area.

Apple is consistently perceived as a highly inventive company, and yet as a proportion of profits, spends much less on R&D than other seemingly less inventive companies.

Nokia spends far more on R&D than Apple.
As a proportion of profits, the Nokia R&D spend seems unjustifiable.

C.

I should have responded earlier, maybe you'll see this, but who knows.

Anyways, limited data from Verizon is as much a bummer as it is from AT&T. Luckily for me though, I got in before this happens. So in the context of me looking for a phone right now, Verizon seemed better.

Verizon apps and their app store are meaningless. 10 minutes after owning my phone, I rooted it, and took all the verizon bloatware off (which made my battery life AMAZING.) BTW, I've never owned an Android phone before, so that should tell you how easy it is to root the galaxy s.

Finally, I did get suckered by the visual voicemail, BUT, you can unsubscribe from it. You're not stuck with it. I think I will unsubscribe simply because I hardly ever get voicemails to begin with.

Anyways, the point remains: If AT&T had unlimited data, I'd have an iphone 4.

There is a difference between spending a lot of money foolishly and a smaller amount wisely. The R&D model MSFT is following seems to follow the ad model they follow. Remember Jerry and Bill?

I think MSFT is following the same philosophy all the way down line and I think it happens because they make so much money from windows that they don't have to "try harder".
They seem to make money in spite of themselves, not because of their ability to always "be right".

Get Google Voice for this. You can set it up to take over your Verizon voicemail so that anyone who calls your normal cell phone number (as opposed to your Google Voice number) and leaves a voicemail will be picked up by Voice. You can then use the app to view them all in an inbox format.

Bonus in that it transcribes the voicemail after a few minutes. It's fairly accurate if the speaker's using English. Extremely comical if it's any other language.

R&D spend is a funny thing, sometimes it comes up with great ideas... sometimes not so much.

I'm sure it looked like Motorola was pouring money into a black hole for years and then suddenly they come out of nowhere and sell 110 million Razr's. I'm sure it looks again like they are pouring money into a black hole, then one day they might have another Razr moment.

One thing is for sure, you can't use Apple in the most successful period in their almost quarter of a decade existence as the yard stick for how much should or shouldn't be spent on R&D and the ROI to expect.

If a company cuts their R&D budget in the bad times then they are basically digging their own grave.

One day Apple won't be such a market leader and won't see the ROI on their R&D that they do at the moment, and when that happens I would expect them to not slash their R&D budget but maintain or even increase it in the anticipation of their next "iOS" moment.

You are a funny chap!

After learning that Microsoft push 14% of their revenue back into R&D you've come to the conclusion that they are resting on their laurels and not trying hard enough!

There is nothing negative about Microsoft's R&D spend, and it's impossible to spin any other way.

They are in the position they are now not because of sheer blind luck, but because of the continued effort to improve and extend their enterprise stack, and their R&D spend is a big part of that.

Sure they haven't had any "iOS" moments in recent years like Apple have... but think about it, how many companies have?

I'm not.
Apple consistently spends a low proportion of revenue on R&D




C.

No, he said they spent money horribly ineffectively. Are you trying to earn the Tulkas Award for Lack of Reading Comprehension?



I disagree, they bleed R&D money, yet for the last 10 years their stock price has only gone sideways, which is a loss compared to inflation and their market share is eroding in many places.


No, they are where they are because of IIS server lock-in and customers fear that they cannot use their data without a MS IIS upgrade. As a business strategy, that is quite successful in the short to mid term, but the model has started to show cracks: first with Blackberry, now with iPhone. IT shops aren't quite as afraid of non-MS business stacks anymore, and that's not a good thing for MS.

Look at all that, nothing in there that shows any R&D leadership at all. Search failed once, maybe Bing will do OK this second time around. XBox does OK and makes money across the entire ecosystem, but not spectacular for how much they paid to develop it. And how many times have they started the OS from scratch? Only to do so again when it became obvious they really didn't start from scratch in the first place? Lots o' $$ down the drain there.

They are trying hard, only they haven't got a soul and vision to guide them. The MS R&D effort is a complete money pit the way it is currently executing.

Learn to let it go Hiro. You were called on your BS (or dishonest posts, whichever it was). I understand your feelings were hurt by being publicly shown to be using 'less than accurate' facts, but it was months ago, hopefully you would have moved on. Remember the lesson your teacher tried to provide to you.

Having said that, I actually agree with your post this time. Well done!

Sure, you are free to decide what is best for you. After using the iPhone for three years the clear reality is that unlimited data is not really needed. I look over my data usage history and most of the time my phone is connected to WiFi. So I have no problem taking a lower phone bill for limited data.


Rooting your phone isn't a realistic solution for most people. Is certainly at the height of bad customer experience. The far majority of people are going to be forced to have Verizon's app store.


I could not see living without visual voicemail. I could never go back to listening to every message to try to find an old message. Verizon is nickel and diming its customers by charging for it.


Unless WiFi is absent from you life, or you've jail broken your phone to have unlimited tethering. Unlimited data isn't absolutely necessary.

Rooting your phone is being made easier and easier lately with one-touch apps. But yes, it's a path that the "normal" user probably won't go down.

Verizon will have its store there, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the user will be forced to use it. Most Android phones have 8+ GB of storage plus an addition 16 GB on a microSD card. The Verizon apps can't possibly take up more than a 100 MB. And having the app draw be separate from the home screens means you can pretty much ignore whatever apps Verizon pre-installed.


I agree. Which is why Google Voice is your friend.

I would call this lowering the bar.

Its completely ridiculous for people to root their phone and use GV to get around Verizon's tyrannical practices.

I agree with you about Verizon's practices. But since they're probably not going to change, we might as well make use of the tools we have.

However, I don't see why it's lowering the bar to use GV. It's a free service/app that requires no rooting. And the way it's so nicely integrated into Android phones, I see it as a step up from anything that Verizon may offer.

No, it's completely ridiculous for people to believe that Google's GV is a gift from God.

Google is bigger than the carriers, has more money than the carriers and is basically lobbing grenades all over the place.

Haven't you heard, Google is the big devil now. The carriers are just trying to make a realtive "honest" living.

Nice attempt champ, try reading his whole post next time!

Why do you think I awarded him a 'reading comprehension' award? Call him out on 'facts' and see how quickly he disappears.

Well sir! I commend you on your consistency, not your reading comprehension!

A single quoted pair of words conveniently separated from the rest of their their context does not your case make.

Opportunistic reading like that is why politics is so screwed up today. It is impossible to carry on normal discourse when the minority of the participants decide they are going to use non-standard, self-serving rules of grammar parsing.


I have to admit, i peeked at Tulkas' post despite having him on ignore. I see he is consistent as ever, no content, just drivel. I do feel sorry for him that he still doesn't get Mr. Weingarden's words, they are quite accurate. How he came up with the fact that a class motto was a conversation is mysterious though. Maybe it's that making things up again thing, I dunno. Maybe The Wino was warning us all about his ilk, and their self delusions.

Interesting that he thinks he awarded anything for reading comprehension, I just made the Tulkas Award for Lack of Reading Comprehension up based on his track record, guess his memory is just as good too? [It's priceless I tell you! ]

Well back to ignoring him, I hope he keeps spreading the word of The Wino though, it is a fitting and self inflicted boomerang!

Cheers.

Now you've said you piece it may be best if you just zip it and avoid further embarrassment.

Take you (sic) fake sentiment and cram it up your disingenuous arse. Smilies are not legitimate cover for ass-hattedness.

I call BS. 4 GTX295's will run $2600 all on their own. Add 64GB or RAM and add another $1400-$3300 depending on his motherboard. You don't even have a motherboard to slap them on and you can already buy 1 or 2 Mac Pros if you don't go nuts configuring it.

The other problem with that article is Google would make almost all of that money on any smartphone, it doesn't have to be android. So the incremental revenue generated by Android compared to the revenue Google would generate even without developing Android is more likely to be so small as to be round-off error.

Not disingenuous at all. You embarrass yourself with the way you act.

Simple as that.

I have a small question....does the Android have enought Apps like the Iphone 4 does....?