Samsung announces estimated $40B in revenue, $5B in profit for Q1 2012 - Page 2

Two different things:

Overpriced refers to the consumer purchase price. Both Samsung and Apple make phones that retail in the $600 range... or cheaper if you get them subsidized. In short... I can walk into a store and purchase a Samsung phone or an Apple phone for the same price.

A company's margin refers to how efficient they are in the development and manufacturing process. Apple can buy 60 million parts at one time if they have to... and they usually at a discount. And by not diluting their product line by pumping money into a bunch of dead-end products... they save even more money.

There's a big difference between developing 6 new phones a year... and only one new phone a year.

Apple still sells phones that are over one and two years old. That work was paid off years ago.

In contrast... introducing a new model every 3 months really eats into your margins when you factor in all the R&D that has to be done for each model. And when a particular phone is only sold for 6 months or less... that's a huge money pit.

I don't know the specifics of how much it costs to take a phone from conception to retail... but for some of the non-popular phones... are they even worth their while?

For instance... I've never even heard of the Samsung Illusion until I just saw it on Verizon's website... have they sold enough of them to cover development?

I'm sure they have... but you get my point. The more products you have to develop, build and support... the lower your margins will end up.

I love Samsung!

Good for you!

This is, of course, one of the most ridiculous oft-quoted statements on this forum.

Selling something is a fair exchange of a product for money. Overpriced would mean that they're charging more than someone would pay for the product. So the fact that Apple's sales are increasing at high double digit rates means that millions of consumers are happy to pay Apple's price - so they're not, by definition, overpriced.

Maybe you mean 'they're expensive' - which is a comparison between Apple's price and the competitor's price for similar products. But that's not true, either. The MacBook Air is easily competitive with other Ultrabooks (unless you look at the POS ones). The iPhone is right in line with other high-end phones. The iPad is about the same price (or lower) as equivalent tablets. The iMac and Mac Pro are comparable to equivalent machines. And the MacBook Pro is in line with other premium, quality laptops. So they're not expensive compared to the competition.

So I guess by 'overpriced', you mean "Mommy and Daddy won't increase my allowance enough to let me buy one.' That may be true. You simply need to get a job.


I love the 'logic' of that. Who cares what updates Google provides when the user has no access to them. The overwhelming majority of Android users are still stuck on Android 2.2 or below because they don't have access to anything newer for their phones. So from the customer's perspective, the updates might as well not exist. It really doesn't matter if you want to blame Google or the handset manufacturer or the carrier.


Uh huh. Fortunately, the rest of the world doesn't accept your theory. In fact, if anyone's market share is in danger, it would be Google. There are a number of factors on the horizon that could affect them:
- Lawsuits could block the sale of their products (or several OEMs' products). Or licensing fees could get expensive enough to increase the price of the phones
- Fragmentation is already chasing developers away.
- Samsung is going to do their own advertising. This risks creating more fragmentation and confusion in the market.
- Google's acquisition of Motorola could chase OEMs away or cause them to fork Android as Amazon did - causing even more fragmentation.
- Samsung is getting into the advertising business which means that Google's advertising revenues will be further degraded (and they're not that great to start with). Even now, every iOS sale that gets converted to an Android sale costs Google money.

Now, I don't predict that Android is going away any time soon, but the chances of them taking over the rest of the market are nonexistent.

At the same time you'd have to consider that Samsung actually produces many of the components used in it's products (buying from itself), and uses some of their own standards IP rather than needing to license it. In those two particular areas Apple is at a disadvantage.

Mike,

Thanks for your logical input. However, we both know the other camp will simply ignore this and move on to other arguments. Apple sucks/is doomed, remember?

Is Apple obligated to win everything? The company moves at a deliberate pace. They may just make good on becoming that trillion dollar company.

As for Samsung, good or bad, will be around for a long, long time.

All TRUE Samsung boycott members refuse to buy any Apple product that includes any Samsung components. We vote with our pocketbooks.

But in the meantime, Android is killing iOS phones in volume, and the platform on phones is growing MUCH faster than iOS. More and more people choose Android over iOS, and the proportions are growing.

Android continues to pull ahead, much faster than iOS. In market share, Android is winning. Indeed, it is pulling ahead, more and more every calendar quarter.

These are just facts. They cannot be denied.

There is no contradiction. Think of it as a couple in an unhappy marriage but have to live with each other. At least until the divorce can be finalized.

You can hate your spouse because of irreconcilable differences and still love your children.

And no, I am not holding my breath for this farce to be over.

Pulling ahead "MUCH" faster...

link please.

I bet Apple would trade its industry-leading profits for market share in a heartbeat.

While it is true that Samsung has a lot of phone models out, realize that a lot of the are just rebadges of one model for different carriers. For example, each of the 4 major US carriers got the galaxy s under a different name. The differences were mostly cosmetic, with some minor changes in radio hardware for the different networks. They share a majority of internals, so I can't imagine R&D would be too much for those models.

I really wish manufacturers would step away from doing this, as it does get confusing at times, and really dilutes brand image.

Too bad it hasn't helped Google's bottom line (yes their focus is on ads).

Let the pissing contest continue. Sadly it won't help with android product quality.

>>Originally Posted by I am a Zither Zather Zuzz
But in the meantime, Android is killing iOS phones in volume, and the platform on phones is growing MUCH faster than iOS. More and more people choose Android over iOS, and the proportions are growing.

Android continues to pull ahead, much faster than iOS. In market share, Android is winning. Indeed, it is pulling ahead, more and more every calendar quarter.

These are just facts. They cannot be denied.<<

But have many components that they DO make themselves.

You cant really say that about Apple. Design =/= make.

Besides the fact that I distrust your assertion as far as growth goes (can you provide a current, valid link?), you seem to equate marketshare with platform growth and that is just plain wrong. A platform grows not with just number of sold units but also with number of developers willing to put in man hours producing software for said platform. iOS is miles ahead of Android on that front.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...ne_market.html

And why would you want to? Samsung is Apple's bitch. Apple and others engineer the components and then Samsung assembles them. Your argument is akin to calling the MS Xbox a Foxconn Xbox because MS outsources the assembly of their products.

Bottom line: Neither Samsung nor Apple make OR design all the components in their systems.

1.7% for all vendors using Android OS compared to just the iPhone is MUCH faster to you? You and your ilk's arguments are fucking pathetic. At least try to form to a decent argument.

Apple gained 4.58% and Android gained 5.99%. (re: your link)

We're talking 1.41%!

Only in a delusional mind could that be considered "MUCH" faster.

As Solipsism pointed out... an army of many against an army of one... and that's the best they could do. Seriously sad and pathetic.

(Solipsism - SSquirrel calculated the actual percentages of growth in that thread)

I dislike seeing you resort to profanity to make a strong point (but then I'm anyone special). Your arguments are usually well written, supported by facts and make sense without using it.\

OK, I'll concede to your word definitions. It is not worth fighting over the meaning of a word.

Replace "much" with "significantly". You win.

Only in a delusional mind could the word "significantly" be used to replace "MUCH" with those sad pathetic numbers.

... and I don't give a shit if he uses profanity.

Everyone copies each other. Many of the latest iPhone features came from FragDroid. When the iPhone gets NFC, wallet, and turn-by-turn directions this year, they will be copying FragDroid. That's not an opinion, that's fact. So STFU and stop pretending that Apple is a victim and not a perpetrator.

And I don't give a good God damn if IH uses scatological language.

I began scatological studies when I started reading your comments.

Apple, and by extension, Apple customers, certainly ARE the victim. They always have been.

Mac sales are the victims of stupid IT departments. Apple has been victimized by the dishonest stealing of its tech first by M$, and now by Google. Steve was victimized by the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley.

Apple is a scrappy little company fighting the forces of corporate hegemony, fighting valiantly against the forces of darkness and evil.

It always has been, and always will be. Apple fights for truth and light, and is constantly victimized by the darkness and the lies of the status quo.

Apple customers are victims, who must always fight against everybody who is just plain wrong. The truth is a heavy burden, but Apple customers accept this, quietly and patiently, despite the onslaught of the jackals who cannot see the Truth.




/s

And I assume you also wouldn't care if he didn't so if there's any respect for other readers who prefer not to see it why resort to it if you don't care either way? Profanity is rarely necessary. In fact the more rarely it's used the more impactful it is when you do.

Electronic components are some of the lowest margin products in the world. So Samsung wouldn't have any advantage using their own components even if they got them at cost, because of the razor thin margins. When Apple buys components the IP is included in the price - you don't buy electronic parts and then add on a "per chip" license fee.

One big reason Samsung has low margins is because they sell a lot of feature phones and dumb phones. Devices with the slimmest margins of the mobile industry. They make larger margins on their high-end phones (getting close to Apple on many models) but the overall average is so low because Samsung sells almost 10 times as many feature/dumb phones as they do smartphones. Hence the low margins.



The lamest comment by the fandroids/haters. McDonald's sells more burgers than any other fast food company. But they are crap. Just like so many Android phones are crap - you just don't see them because no tech blogs bother to review phones like the Samsung Galaxy Europa (an Android phone with a 320x240 display running 2.1 Eclair) or the cheap Huawei phones (that sell in the millions).

Sorry to break it to you, but there's a reason why Andy Rubin never tells you the breakdown of those 800,000 (or whatever figure they're touting these days) activations per day of Android devices. It's because high-end products like the GS2 or Note represent a small chunk of the total with the rest being made up of budget devices.

As a developer this is why I don't waste time with Android anymore. The latest OS version breakdown?

2.9% - ICS
3.3% - Honeycomb
63.7% - Gingerbread
23.1% - Froyo

If Android is growing at a faster rate, then how come the adoption rates for the new OS versions are so low? Again, I hate to break the bad news to you but companies are still selling boatloads of brand new devices with Gingerbread and Froyo even though ICS has been out for almost 5 months now and Honeycomb much longer than that.

Do you even want to know the adoption rates for iOS upgrades?

Let's see now, as a developer I want to write my App to use all the newset features that ICS and iOS 5 provide. Do I write for a market with less than 3% adoption or one that's hit 75%? It's a no brainer. Perhaps Eric Schmidt should look at these numbers before he spouts off another stupid comment that Android development will pass iOS in 6 months (which is coming up on May 8th, BTW).

LOL. I was about to blow a gasket until I saw the /s.

Well played, sir.

Very Freudian. I hope that I haven't adversely affected your anal stage of development.

Apple sells more smartphones than any other consumer gadget company.

Apple sells more apps than any other app store.

Apple sells more tablets than any other gadget company.

Are you certain that you want to go down this road?

Not at all... I can spot an asshole from a mile away.

Apparently we can be off topic all we want... the mods don't seem to give a rat's ass about it.

Thanks. I've learned that the /s is often necessary here, and I try to remember it.

Editted, no benefit

My apologies

Apparently.

Cool. More scatological language. Twice in two sentences. Very telling.

Obviously it has meaning for you. Very telling.

"I know you are, but what am I?"

Lame.