This 4G network is still a couple years away before most people will be on it and see a difference. What we're seeing now is the carriers trying to out market each other even before the products ready.
Most of the carriers still have to perfect their 3G network, ATT would be a perfect example as would T-Mobile.
No, they won't. The average person doesn't read specs, they look at price, availability at the time of purchase, and whatever emotional connection they make with the device.
People aren't buying Android phones because they get excited by the latest mobile CPU, as much as tech blogs and enthusiasts like to salivate over same. They buy Android phones because they went to the Verizon store and they wanted to upgrade and that's what was there. Sure, the sales guy is right there to assure them that the more expensive choice goes to 11, but that's the case regardless of what's under the hood.
How many people give a shit, or even know, what's in the current iPhone compared to what's in the latest wonder Android phone? They care if their battery goes dry before they can get through a day, they care if video plays without dropping frames, they care if the UI feels reasonably fluid and doesn't have weird stutters and pauses that make the machine more difficult to use.
Apple will call their next processor whatever they want, but what they'll talk about is the experience. They'll make a big deal about their in-house development effort, how its the fastest bestest iPhone ever, Steve will say "this thing really screams" during his keynote, and all of it will be couched in terms that make head to head spec comparisons irrelevant.
How do I know all this? Because that's what they've always done, and it seems to work great for them. I have no idea why people continue to imagine that Apple is worried about "specs" compared to the competition, or that the general buying public is following the hyperventilation at Endgadget or Gizmodod over dual core mega giga. It's demonstrably untrue. My guess is that a fairly high percentage of Android users don't even know, or care what OS is running on their phone and just dig having a functional browser.
Excellent explanation. Couldn't agree more.
You should post more often since you turn a phrase so well.
It's also convenient that Apple rolled out an app store 6 months prior to get Mac apps all curated and prepared to go onto iOS (w/ only cocoa support, no carbon, java, etc...) This was their "nice" way of getting developers to switch all apps over to using cocoa only so that they are portable to iOS and will be handled by different UIs for different situations (iPhone, iPad, ATV, Desktop). I think this year will be too early still though, but iOS 6 will be the time it will be brought forward I think, iOS 5 seems a bit early still [but I'm always open for Apple to surprise us]!
Very good point, the Mac App Store with its conditions helps bridge the two platforms by coercing developers to maintain a compatible code-base.
Microsoft are trying to do this sort of thing with their ARM support but they haven't thought it through (as usual). They have gone the route of making standard Windows for ARM and SOC hardware, breaking x86 compatibility with the intention that their Win 7 UI will work on smaller tablets and any apps developed for it can be seamlessly developed for the desktop x86 version.
Apple's way makes more sense. Break off a branch of the desktop OS, optimise it for mobile use, rethink the UI entirely. Build a successful revenue model for developers. Bleed enough changes back into the desktop OS and bridge the gap. Once you bridge the gap to the point where there's no differentiation between them, you win the OS war if you have a better mobile product. That point is when you can run a desktop app in a similar way to a standard desktop. With dual 1GHz CPUs, optimised software and a GPU more powerful than a Playstation 2 and the Radeon 9200 in the old powerbook, you reach that point:
Its possible Apple could be working with Qualcomm secretly on a world radio that will be exclusive to Apple for some short amount of time. Apple has done things like this before.
It would be much more Apple's style to create one iPad and one iPhone that works on all networks.
Yes, that would be very Apple like!
Quote:
Originally Posted by samab
Carriers are already paying $400 for iphone subsidies --- they are not going to pay for the extra $20 for a world iphone which their own subscribers never going to use.
Apple will not have to charge the anybody extra!
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism
Economy of scale doesn’t work for “world mode” phones with Qualcomm’s history of licensing. They charge a lot for the current iPhone and they charge even more for CDMA/EVDO. To put it all into one phone may mean Apple pay a huge percentage of each phone to Qualcomm. With most of the world on GSM/UMTS and no need or interest in using CDMA/EVDO it would likely be a waste of money.
Right now, Apple pays 5% for each iPhone to Qualcomm. Correction, Foxconn pays 5% of the price they “sell” the iPhone to Apple. This lowers the price Apple pays to Qualcomm by half. Qualcomm isn’t too happy about this workaround and Apple is clearly trying to pay Qualcomm as little as possible.
If your 5% per iPhone charge is correct (and I have no reason to doubt that it is) -- it just means that Apple and Qualcom are playing by a negotiated agreement.
Most likely, the agreement was negotiated with Qualcom in a position of some strength.
But things are different
AAPL Market Valuet$ 319,663,143,360:
QCOM Market Valuet$ 84,185,784,520
Say Apple were to go to Qualcom and say something like this:
1) We want to make a PoP SOC that includes:
--- Dual Core Cortex A9 at 1 GHz or better
--- OpenCL-capable GPU
--- Cell radios and bands for all communications networks
2) We plan to include this chip (and its follow-on) in the following iDevices for the next 12-24 months, est. next 12 mos:
--- 60 million iPhones
--- 40 million iPads
3) We plan to include this chip without cell (and its follow-on) in the following iDevices for the next 12-24 months, est. next 12 mos:
--- 40 million iPod Touches
--- 10 million iPads
--- 4 million AppleTVs
--- 4 million new devices/computers
4) We are willing to do the R&D, pay for setup, and pay in advance for 75 million units.
Very good point, the Mac App Store with its conditions helps bridge the two platforms by coercing developers to maintain a compatible code-base.
Microsoft are trying to do this sort of thing with their ARM support but they haven't thought it through (as usual). They have gone the route of making standard Windows for ARM and SOC hardware, breaking x86 compatibility with the intention that their Win 7 UI will work on smaller tablets and any apps developed for it can be seamlessly developed for the desktop x86 version.
Apple's way makes more sense. Break off a branch of the desktop OS, optimise it for mobile use, rethink the UI entirely. Build a successful revenue model for developers. Bleed enough changes back into the desktop OS and bridge the gap. Once you bridge the gap to the point where there's no differentiation between them, you win the OS war if you have a better mobile product. That point is when you can run a desktop app in a similar way to a standard desktop. With dual 1GHz CPUs, optimised software and a GPU more powerful than a Playstation 2 and the Radeon 9200 in the old powerbook, you reach that point:
Very well put. I think the next few years in Apple's development are going to be extremely interesting.
As I see it, there have been four credible contenders for building a post iPhone platform: Palm, RIM, Google and MS.
The first three chose to do an end run around the desktop environment by using web technologies-- Google building on their largely cloud based and advertising funded service model and RIM and Palm responding with what I suspect was a fairly pragmatic mandate to deploy something quickly with developer friendly underpinnings. In contrast with Apple, that's not really a "best possible customer experience" approach, being simply an extension of economic imperatives in Google's case and a "we need to get something out the door now" response in the case of the other two (not that Palm and RIM didn't and haven't created perfectly nice environments, just that speed of deployment seems to have trumped a lengthy process of considering what a fully mobile future might look like).
Then there's Microsoft, the only other incumbent with an existing (indeed, prohibitively dominant) desktop OS. And yet they've chosen to continue to run a separate code base as their mobile offering and now talk of porting Windows per se to mobile hardware in yet another offshoot.
So Apple alone is the position of deploying a single OS which scales from the smallest to largest devices and which bodes to become increasingly unified across all of its iterations. Google continues to make claims for a web enabled future in which the browser is the OS and Google's servers provide all the computing power and integration you could possible want. RIM hopes they can use a new embedded OS running AIR apps to get some traction, and MS seems a bit doomed to shoot itself in the foot.
I kind of like Apple's chances here. Whereas devices that rely on a custom, bolted on desktop environment (such as the the Motola Atrix, I suspect there will be more) seem to be a more of a curiosity than a legitimate way forward, Apple can (and probably will) offer a seamless mobile to desktop OS. I don't think anyone else is in a position to do that, a fact that is going to become increasingly evident over the next 10 years.
If your 5% per iPhone charge is correct (and I have no reason to doubt that it is) -- it just means that Apple and Qualcom are playing by a negotiated agreement.
Most likely, the agreement was negotiated with Qualcom in a position of some strength.
But things are different
AAPL Market Valuet$ 319,663,143,360:
QCOM Market Valuet$ 84,185,784,520
Say Apple were to go to Qualcom and say something like this:
1) We want to make a PoP SOC that includes:
--- Dual Core Cortex A9 at 1 GHz or better
--- OpenCL-capable GPU
--- Cell radios and bands for all communications networks
2) We plan to include this chip (and its follow-on) in the following iDevices for the next 12-24 months, est. next 12 mos:
--- 60 million iPhones
--- 40 million iPads
3) We plan to include this chip without cell (and its follow-on) in the following iDevices for the next 12-24 months, est. next 12 mos:
--- 40 million iPod Touches
--- 10 million iPads
--- 4 million AppleTVs
--- 4 million new devices/computers
4) We are willing to do the R&D, pay for setup, and pay in advance for 75 million units.
5) We want a better agreement than 5% per unit
Got any ideas?
This is a prime example of where Apple's industry influence and $50B cash hoard could be put to good use.
Might that get confusing with the Cortex A8 given that this "A8" is likely based on the Cortex A9?
I certainly hope that is the case. The Cortex A8 is yesterday's news. Anything without an A9 (preferably dual CPU core) would definitely be a disappointment, especially considering that the Tegra 2 SoC is now about to come to market in a variety of devices.
Steve really needs to wake up and provide micro USB (3) connectivity, an HDMI out and Micro-SD card slot for the transfer of "other stuff", be it video, music, images, data or whatever. I can see carrying a card with my movies & TV on it of a much greater quantity than would be possible on the device itself.
This 4G network is still a couple years away before most people will be on it and see a difference. What we're seeing now is the carriers trying to out market each other even before the products ready.
Most of the carriers still have to perfect their 3G network, ATT would be a perfect example as would T-Mobile.
AT&T should have more than a few major markets fully 4G capable this year. How long before 4G makes it onto the highways and byways of America remains the major question in my mind. It is one thing to have 4G "around town", but people travel and want and expect it, at the least, on the major Interstate Highways.
Comments
Most of the carriers still have to perfect their 3G network, ATT would be a perfect example as would T-Mobile.
No, they won't. The average person doesn't read specs, they look at price, availability at the time of purchase, and whatever emotional connection they make with the device.
People aren't buying Android phones because they get excited by the latest mobile CPU, as much as tech blogs and enthusiasts like to salivate over same. They buy Android phones because they went to the Verizon store and they wanted to upgrade and that's what was there. Sure, the sales guy is right there to assure them that the more expensive choice goes to 11, but that's the case regardless of what's under the hood.
How many people give a shit, or even know, what's in the current iPhone compared to what's in the latest wonder Android phone? They care if their battery goes dry before they can get through a day, they care if video plays without dropping frames, they care if the UI feels reasonably fluid and doesn't have weird stutters and pauses that make the machine more difficult to use.
Apple will call their next processor whatever they want, but what they'll talk about is the experience. They'll make a big deal about their in-house development effort, how its the fastest bestest iPhone ever, Steve will say "this thing really screams" during his keynote, and all of it will be couched in terms that make head to head spec comparisons irrelevant.
How do I know all this? Because that's what they've always done, and it seems to work great for them. I have no idea why people continue to imagine that Apple is worried about "specs" compared to the competition, or that the general buying public is following the hyperventilation at Endgadget or Gizmodod over dual core mega giga. It's demonstrably untrue. My guess is that a fairly high percentage of Android users don't even know, or care what OS is running on their phone and just dig having a functional browser.
Excellent explanation. Couldn't agree more.
You should post more often since you turn a phrase so well.
It's also convenient that Apple rolled out an app store 6 months prior to get Mac apps all curated and prepared to go onto iOS (w/ only cocoa support, no carbon, java, etc...) This was their "nice" way of getting developers to switch all apps over to using cocoa only so that they are portable to iOS and will be handled by different UIs for different situations (iPhone, iPad, ATV, Desktop). I think this year will be too early still though, but iOS 6 will be the time it will be brought forward I think, iOS 5 seems a bit early still [but I'm always open for Apple to surprise us]!
Very good point, the Mac App Store with its conditions helps bridge the two platforms by coercing developers to maintain a compatible code-base.
Microsoft are trying to do this sort of thing with their ARM support but they haven't thought it through (as usual). They have gone the route of making standard Windows for ARM and SOC hardware, breaking x86 compatibility with the intention that their Win 7 UI will work on smaller tablets and any apps developed for it can be seamlessly developed for the desktop x86 version.
Apple's way makes more sense. Break off a branch of the desktop OS, optimise it for mobile use, rethink the UI entirely. Build a successful revenue model for developers. Bleed enough changes back into the desktop OS and bridge the gap. Once you bridge the gap to the point where there's no differentiation between them, you win the OS war if you have a better mobile product. That point is when you can run a desktop app in a similar way to a standard desktop. With dual 1GHz CPUs, optimised software and a GPU more powerful than a Playstation 2 and the Radeon 9200 in the old powerbook, you reach that point:
Its possible Apple could be working with Qualcomm secretly on a world radio that will be exclusive to Apple for some short amount of time. Apple has done things like this before.
It would be much more Apple's style to create one iPad and one iPhone that works on all networks.
Yes, that would be very Apple like!
Carriers are already paying $400 for iphone subsidies --- they are not going to pay for the extra $20 for a world iphone which their own subscribers never going to use.
Apple will not have to charge the anybody extra!
Economy of scale doesn’t work for “world mode” phones with Qualcomm’s history of licensing. They charge a lot for the current iPhone and they charge even more for CDMA/EVDO. To put it all into one phone may mean Apple pay a huge percentage of each phone to Qualcomm. With most of the world on GSM/UMTS and no need or interest in using CDMA/EVDO it would likely be a waste of money.
Right now, Apple pays 5% for each iPhone to Qualcomm. Correction, Foxconn pays 5% of the price they “sell” the iPhone to Apple. This lowers the price Apple pays to Qualcomm by half. Qualcomm isn’t too happy about this workaround and Apple is clearly trying to pay Qualcomm as little as possible.
If your 5% per iPhone charge is correct (and I have no reason to doubt that it is) -- it just means that Apple and Qualcom are playing by a negotiated agreement.
Most likely, the agreement was negotiated with Qualcom in a position of some strength.
But things are different
AAPL Market Value
QCOM Market Value
Say Apple were to go to Qualcom and say something like this:
1) We want to make a PoP SOC that includes:
--- Dual Core Cortex A9 at 1 GHz or better
--- OpenCL-capable GPU
--- Cell radios and bands for all communications networks
2) We plan to include this chip (and its follow-on) in the following iDevices for the next 12-24 months, est. next 12 mos:
--- 60 million iPhones
--- 40 million iPads
3) We plan to include this chip without cell (and its follow-on) in the following iDevices for the next 12-24 months, est. next 12 mos:
--- 40 million iPod Touches
--- 10 million iPads
--- 4 million AppleTVs
--- 4 million new devices/computers
4) We are willing to do the R&D, pay for setup, and pay in advance for 75 million units.
5) We want a better agreement than 5% per unit
Got any ideas?
Very good point, the Mac App Store with its conditions helps bridge the two platforms by coercing developers to maintain a compatible code-base.
Microsoft are trying to do this sort of thing with their ARM support but they haven't thought it through (as usual). They have gone the route of making standard Windows for ARM and SOC hardware, breaking x86 compatibility with the intention that their Win 7 UI will work on smaller tablets and any apps developed for it can be seamlessly developed for the desktop x86 version.
Apple's way makes more sense. Break off a branch of the desktop OS, optimise it for mobile use, rethink the UI entirely. Build a successful revenue model for developers. Bleed enough changes back into the desktop OS and bridge the gap. Once you bridge the gap to the point where there's no differentiation between them, you win the OS war if you have a better mobile product. That point is when you can run a desktop app in a similar way to a standard desktop. With dual 1GHz CPUs, optimised software and a GPU more powerful than a Playstation 2 and the Radeon 9200 in the old powerbook, you reach that point:
Very well put. I think the next few years in Apple's development are going to be extremely interesting.
As I see it, there have been four credible contenders for building a post iPhone platform: Palm, RIM, Google and MS.
The first three chose to do an end run around the desktop environment by using web technologies-- Google building on their largely cloud based and advertising funded service model and RIM and Palm responding with what I suspect was a fairly pragmatic mandate to deploy something quickly with developer friendly underpinnings. In contrast with Apple, that's not really a "best possible customer experience" approach, being simply an extension of economic imperatives in Google's case and a "we need to get something out the door now" response in the case of the other two (not that Palm and RIM didn't and haven't created perfectly nice environments, just that speed of deployment seems to have trumped a lengthy process of considering what a fully mobile future might look like).
Then there's Microsoft, the only other incumbent with an existing (indeed, prohibitively dominant) desktop OS. And yet they've chosen to continue to run a separate code base as their mobile offering and now talk of porting Windows per se to mobile hardware in yet another offshoot.
So Apple alone is the position of deploying a single OS which scales from the smallest to largest devices and which bodes to become increasingly unified across all of its iterations. Google continues to make claims for a web enabled future in which the browser is the OS and Google's servers provide all the computing power and integration you could possible want. RIM hopes they can use a new embedded OS running AIR apps to get some traction, and MS seems a bit doomed to shoot itself in the foot.
I kind of like Apple's chances here. Whereas devices that rely on a custom, bolted on desktop environment (such as the the Motola Atrix, I suspect there will be more) seem to be a more of a curiosity than a legitimate way forward, Apple can (and probably will) offer a seamless mobile to desktop OS. I don't think anyone else is in a position to do that, a fact that is going to become increasingly evident over the next 10 years.
Yes, that would be very Apple like!
Apple will not have to charge the anybody extra!
If your 5% per iPhone charge is correct (and I have no reason to doubt that it is) -- it just means that Apple and Qualcom are playing by a negotiated agreement.
Most likely, the agreement was negotiated with Qualcom in a position of some strength.
But things are different
AAPL Market Value
QCOM Market Value
Say Apple were to go to Qualcom and say something like this:
1) We want to make a PoP SOC that includes:
--- Dual Core Cortex A9 at 1 GHz or better
--- OpenCL-capable GPU
--- Cell radios and bands for all communications networks
2) We plan to include this chip (and its follow-on) in the following iDevices for the next 12-24 months, est. next 12 mos:
--- 60 million iPhones
--- 40 million iPads
3) We plan to include this chip without cell (and its follow-on) in the following iDevices for the next 12-24 months, est. next 12 mos:
--- 40 million iPod Touches
--- 10 million iPads
--- 4 million AppleTVs
--- 4 million new devices/computers
4) We are willing to do the R&D, pay for setup, and pay in advance for 75 million units.
5) We want a better agreement than 5% per unit
Got any ideas?
This is a prime example of where Apple's industry influence and $50B cash hoard could be put to good use.
Apple's SOC is fully optimized for its specific software and hardware needs. While everyone else is using generic off the shelf SOC.
ohh ic gotcha!
Might that get confusing with the Cortex A8 given that this "A8" is likely based on the Cortex A9?
I certainly hope that is the case. The Cortex A8 is yesterday's news. Anything without an A9 (preferably dual CPU core) would definitely be a disappointment, especially considering that the Tegra 2 SoC is now about to come to market in a variety of devices.
Steve really needs to wake up and provide micro USB (3) connectivity, an HDMI out and Micro-SD card slot for the transfer of "other stuff", be it video, music, images, data or whatever. I can see carrying a card with my movies & TV on it of a much greater quantity than would be possible on the device itself.
This 4G network is still a couple years away before most people will be on it and see a difference. What we're seeing now is the carriers trying to out market each other even before the products ready.
Most of the carriers still have to perfect their 3G network, ATT would be a perfect example as would T-Mobile.
AT&T should have more than a few major markets fully 4G capable this year. How long before 4G makes it onto the highways and byways of America remains the major question in my mind. It is one thing to have 4G "around town", but people travel and want and expect it, at the least, on the major Interstate Highways.