Sure, do you have any data to back up your claims? Considering Samsung doesn't publish their sales/shipment unit, like Dilger, you seem to be pulling numbers out of your a**.
You expect to see some bias in an article published in Appleinsider, but this one needs to be called out. The main finding of the article is actually quite interesting, but much of the backup is misleading.
For example, "Over the last fiscal year, Apple reported sales of 150 million iPhones. Unlike Samsung, Apple is not reporting an end to high end sales growth. Instead, Apple's high end is growing faster (26 percent) than than the overall phone industry (7 percent), according to CNET."
You could be led to believe that Apple is growing much faster than the smartphone industry, because that's where Apple competes, but that's not the case. The 7% quoted is for the entire mobile phone industry, which includes 'feature phones'. The growth for smartphones from the quoted article is 45%. Comparing 26% growth to 7% versus 45% could lead to different conclusions!
Another example, "That's a serious problem for Samsung, which makes about two thirds of its total profits from smartphone sales. Apple also relies very heavily upon iPhone sales, but it also has profitable Mac, iPad and iTunes, software and service related businesses, which generate ten times the profit of Samsung's struggling Chromebook netbook, Android tablet and Windows PC sales."
This is just plain stupid. Samsung is a widely diversified company, selling everything from Washing Machines to TVs to Semiconductors.
Apple is much more focused and has a relatively limited set of products, many of which are interconnected, meaning a loss in one area will affect another.
"the overall phone industry" is an actual industry.
"the smartphone industry" is an arbitrary definition of a type of products which excludes some simple phone-only devices and includes some simple phone-only devices.
You seem to be trying to be confused here, because comparing Apple’s growth to only the phones running Android, rather than either all phones or all phones of a certain class gives you a meaningless number you seem to find comforting.
"Comparing 26% growth to 7% versus 45% could lead to different conclusions!" Yes, exactly, and you’re free to remain puzzled and ignorant if you want to ignore the facts laid out for you and cling to Strategy Analytics propaganda designed to flatter Samsung.
It won’t help you predict what’s about to happen, nor help you choose a phone, or really anything other than remain confused. Your choice.
"Samsung is a widely diversified company, selling everything from Washing Machines to TVs to Semiconductors." - yeah except all those other businesses are only narrowly profitable. Did you miss the part about +60% of all of Samsung Electronics profits coming from the sale of one product? Apple has multiple high profit businesses that are nearly as big as iPhone. Samsung’s dishwashers and TVs aren’t similarly profitable, but are capital expensive and serve as competitive distractions from where the real money is. That’s the point.
"Samsung is a widely diversified company, selling everything from Washing Machines to TVs to Semiconductors." - yeah except all those other businesses are only narrowly profitable. Did you miss the part about +60% of all of Samsung Electronics profits coming from the sale of one product? Apple has multiple high profit businesses that are nearly as big as iPhone. Samsung’s dishwashers and TVs aren’t similarly profitable, but are capital expensive and serve as competitive distractions from where the real money is. That’s the point.
yeah except all those other businesses are only narrowly profitable. Did you miss the part about +60% of all of Samsung Electronics profits coming from the sale of one product?
The article says two thirds of Samsung's profits come from smartphone sales. You're now saying that 60%+ of Samsung Electronics profits come from smartphones.
Which one is it? Samsung (as a whole group) or Samsung Electronics? You've made two very different claims.
That's the advantage Android has, they can jump ship to whatever hardware platforms offers best in class. (Note : I did not see any battery usage benchmarks on the baytrail yet, anyone ?)
Most? The page you linked had the Bay Trail only beat the A7 in 2 of the 4 tests. That would not be "most" by any stretch. And in the cases it did beat the A7 it did so only by 13% and 20% which is pretty small considering the Bay Trail SoC in those benchmarks has a 12% higher base clock speed, a burst clock speed that is 84% higher than the A7 max clock speed, double the L2 cache size, having double the cores and having a peak memory bandwidth that is nearly triple the A7. By specs alone that Bay Trail should have won every benchmark by far wider margins.
I agree Samsung is dominating the other OEMs but I'm pretty sure that they (HTC, Motorola, LG, and Sony) together sell more than 50% of Samsung's volume of high-end phones, which is how much they would need to sell to outsell the iPhone.
If they were, they would be making profit, right? Unless those companies are so incompetent they can't make money on high-end phones.
The article says two thirds of Samsung's profits come from smartphone sales. You're now saying that 60%+ of Samsung Electronics profits come from smartphones.
Which one is it? Samsung (as a whole group) or Samsung Electronics? You've made two very different claims.
Why don’t you do the math and come back and report rather than just trolling. It’s public data.
Ah gotcha. So battery life doesn't really matter to you in the first place since all smartphones need to be charged pretty much every night anyway.
Ah, gotcha. Let's twist the discussion away from the actual topic (that Samsung sells tons of low-end junk phones) and try to make it about something that's not relevant at all - as long as we can find a way to bash Apple somehow.
You can recompile for the x86 ndk (or use emulation, but this has a performance hit), not a big deal, and comparable to offering 32 and 64 bit binaries on iOS. And ofcourse you have to use the NDK in the first place (most games do, most apps don't)
The fact that to develop for Android you have to choose between two different systems (NDK or Java/Dalvik) is a joke, and will really cause a problem when you have both ARM and x86 versions. Then add possible 64bit into the equation and suddenly Apple's platform looks positively brilliant.
Surprised your Australian S4 didn't get the 4.3 update already as it's been rolled out to international devices for some time according to the link. I'll assume it must be a Telstra holdup, especially since they're saying the 4.3 update for the year older Galaxy S3 won't be offered until sometime between Nov. and Dec. If accurate most US S3 models will have received the update before you guys in Australia do.
EDIT: About that basic phone you linked: The latest Android version, KitKat, would work just fine on it despite the poor internals and ridiculously minimal memory. No thanks to Samsung.
Compared to my three year old iPhone 4 which had iOS 7 on day one.
My S4 is with Vodafone, it is now two Android releases behind at least it might get KitKat one day, unlike my Galaxy Nexus.
Android developers have to cater to the majority of Android phones, i.e. low specced phones running old versions of Android, which is why there is such a disparity between App Store and Play revenues, that and these low specced "smartphones" are being used just like the feature phones they replacing, as shown in countless usage studies.
That is Android "market share" in a nutshell, a useless metric, deliberately misused to mislead in a grand display of deception.
[QUOTE]That's a sugar coated version of what Samsung reported in its latest quarterly earnings report, where it clearly stated: "total shipments [of smartphones were] up QoQ led by increased sales of mass-market models," but "high-end model shipments stayed at similar level QoQ."
In stark contrast, Apple's iPhone sales were up 26 percent over the year ago quarter, setting a new volume record for the September quarter. [/QUOTE]
It is grossly (intentionally?) unfair to contrast Samsung's sequential QoQ growth figure with Apple's YoY growth figure. Obviously, Apple's QoQ growth was also low (33.8m vs. 31.2m). What we do know about Samsung's annual growth rate is that Samsung recorded 24% YoY revenue growth and 19% YoY operating profit growth in their "Mobile" division, much higher than their QoQ growth figures.
"the overall phone industry" is an actual industry.
"the smartphone industry" is an arbitrary definition of a type of products which excludes some simple phone-only devices and includes some simple phone-only devices.
You seem to be trying to be confused here, because comparing Apple’s growth to only the phones running Android, rather than either all phones or all phones of a certain class gives you a meaningless number you seem to find comforting.
"Comparing 26% growth to 7% versus 45% could lead to different conclusions!" Yes, exactly, and you’re free to remain puzzled and ignorant if you want to ignore the facts laid out for you and cling to Strategy Analytics propaganda designed to flatter Samsung.
It won’t help you predict what’s about to happen, nor help you choose a phone, or really anything other than remain confused. Your choice.
"Samsung is a widely diversified company, selling everything from Washing Machines to TVs to Semiconductors." - yeah except all those other businesses are only narrowly profitable. Did you miss the part about +60% of all of Samsung Electronics profits coming from the sale of one product? Apple has multiple high profit businesses that are nearly as big as iPhone. Samsung’s dishwashers and TVs aren’t similarly profitable, but are capital expensive and serve as competitive distractions from where the real money is. That’s the point.
You have a very unorthodox view on this, but I won't dismiss it out of hand. I will point out a few errors in your logic however.
All the major market research firms use the term Smart Phones and do break out numbers separately for that category versus Feature Phones. It's a somewhat interesting view you have though that the categorization is arbitrary. If I take your view, then Apple would have only 7.2% of the market according to IDC and would be growing faster than the industry. Where you've definitely taken a wrong turn is your statement that "It won’t help you predict what’s about to happen".
This clearly is wrong. The precise reason why the numbers are broken out in this manner is to help predict what is going to happen. There are some very good numbers on Feature Phone versus Smart Phone broken down by country, which when matched with the various vendors selling Smart Phones into those countries help predict future sales. It's much harder to do this if the numbers are all lumped together. Would like to hear your views on how you think it should be split, albeit it's a bit late now to change the entire industry!
Your statement "+60% of all of Samsung Electronics profits coming from the sale of one product?" is wrong. It's an entire segment, namely Samsung IM (IT & Mobile Communications). I think you missed the point I was making, namely that Samsung Corp (the Chaebol) is a far more diversified company/group of companies than Apple is, and is therefore more resilient to future margin decreases in the Smart Phone sector. Indeed in the past quarter, they achieved record profits in part due to increased profitability in their Semiconductor business which helped offset weaker profits in other areas (and this is still within Samsung Electronics). I do agree however, that the profitability of their non-electronics businesses are relatively small.
No, my expectation of the combined sales of 4 companies doesn't speak at all to profitability.
How can you tell how much they sold when they don't release numbers? What you can go on is the profit they make. Those companies aren't making profi so they aren't selling a lot of high end phones.
You have a very unorthodox view on this, but I won't dismiss it out of hand. I will point out a few errors in your logic however.
All the major market research firms use the term Smart Phones and do break out numbers separately for that category versus Feature Phones. It's a somewhat interesting view you have though that the categorization is arbitrary. If I take your view, then Apple would have only 7.2% of the market according to IDC and would be growing faster than the industry. Where you've definitely taken a wrong turn is your statement that "It won’t help you predict what’s about to happen".
This clearly is wrong. The precise reason why the numbers are broken out in this manner is to help predict what is going to happen. There are some very good numbers on Feature Phone versus Smart Phone broken down by country, which when matched with the various vendors selling Smart Phones into those countries help predict future sales. It's much harder to do this if the numbers are all lumped together. Would like to hear your views on how you think it should be split, albeit it's a bit late now to change the entire industry!
Your statement "+60% of all of Samsung Electronics profits coming from the sale of one product?" is wrong. It's an entire segment, namely Samsung IM (IT & Mobile Communications). I think you missed the point I was making, namely that Samsung Corp (the Chaebol) is a far more diversified company/group of companies than Apple is, and is therefore more resilient to future margin decreases in the Smart Phone sector. Indeed in the past quarter, they achieved record profits in part due to increased profitability in their Semiconductor business which helped offset weaker profits in other areas (and this is still within Samsung Electronics). I do agree however, that the profitability of their non-electronics businesses are relatively small.
Where do you draw the line between smart phone and feature phone?
How can you tell how much they sold when they don't release numbers? What you can go on is the profit they make. Those companies aren't making profi so they aren't selling a lot of high end phones.
First off, you're confusing profits with revenues. If I knew the revenues brought in by sales, then I could estimate the sales numbers. Profitability takes into account expenses. These companies could be making revenues hand over fist but report losses if their expenses are greater than sales. When accounting rules come into play, profitability becomes less and less meaningful because companies are required to subtract phantom expenses like depreciation and capital losses from their revenues (there is no cash leaving a company when it accounts for depreciation or when an asset decreases in value).
That aside, I don't know how many phones these companies sold. I just think that there's very little chance that the four next largest Android OEMs aren't combining to sell 50% of the high-end phones that Samsung sells. Doesn't it seem unlikely to you that each of HTC, Motorola, LG, and Sony wouldn't on average sell 1/8 of what Samsung sells? I think that sounds pretty unlikely.
That's the advantage Android has, they can jump ship to whatever hardware platforms offers best in class. (Note : I did not see any battery usage benchmarks on the baytrail yet, anyone ?)
Why would Samsung jump ship to Intel when they are already making hundreds of millions of ARM chips for themselves (Qualcomm) and Apple (A series), and many other smartphone and tablet vendors.
Samsung owns a chip foundry, so why would they pay double or triple for Intel chips that only running a little faster, in artificial benchmarks?
Do you think HTC, LG, Sony want to pay double or more for Intel chips, when most users won't feel the difference? Most of these companies can barely make, if any money from their phones.
I understand your point that Android can run on Intel chips, but there is no financial incentive to do so in the current market.
Just bc something can be done, doesn't mean it will be done.
Cost/Benefit - there is none today, and not until Intel cuts pricing, which won't happen.
Samsung will build their own 64-bit ARM v8 chips rather than use Intel's chips.
It would be very simple if SAMSUNG would actually report sales figures for business units like a real corporation. Calling them current gen smartphones/smartphones or whatever is not a real corporate goverance. REPORT SALES FIGURES or have the analysts ask for numbers and ask why they can't or won't reveal them? Is it because their mouths are full of jumbo shrimp that they can't ask that question? EVERY quarter Apple reports the EXACT number of iphones, ipads, ipods and macs sold. Why does Samsung, Google, Amazon have only vague answers or rely on analysts to announce numbers (the same companies who said WIN PHONES will be #1 in 2014?) Numbers shoudl be counted as ZERO except reported by the companies themselves.
First off, you're confusing profits with revenues. If I knew the revenues brought in by sales, then I could estimate the sales numbers. Profitability takes into account expenses. These companies could be making revenues hand over fist but report losses if their expenses are greater than sales. When accounting rules come into play, profitability becomes less and less meaningful because companies are required to subtract phantom expenses like depreciation and capital losses from their revenues (there is no cash leaving a company when it accounts for depreciation or when an asset decreases in value).
That aside, I don't know how many phones these companies sold. I just think that there's very little chance that the four next largest Android OEMs aren't combining to sell 50% of the high-end phones that Samsung sells. Doesn't it seem unlikely to you that each of HTC, Motorola, LG, and Sony wouldn't on average sell 1/8 of what Samsung sells? I think that sounds pretty unlikely.
I'm not confusing revenue with profit. High end phones should generate more profit. No ifs, ands or buts about it. Does it also seem unlikely that Sammy and Apple combine for almost all the profit in mobile? But they do.
I'm sure the other vendors are selling some high end phones, but not at the level Apple and Sammy are.
I agree Samsung is dominating the other OEMs but I'm pretty sure that they (HTC, Motorola, LG, and Sony) together sell more than 50% of Samsung's volume of high-end phones, which is how much they would need to sell to outsell the iPhone.
I doubt that but regardless, which of those four companies will still be selling phones in 5 years? If had to pick two, it would be Moto backed by Google, and LG backed by its conglomerate industry parent.
I wonder if Samsung makes more from Android than Google (across all OEMs)?
I'm not confusing revenue with profit. High end phones should generate more profit. No ifs, ands or buts about it. Does it also seem unlikely that Sammy and Apple combine for almost all the profit in mobile? But they do.
I'm sure the other vendors are selling some high end phones, but not at the level Apple and Sammy are.
You're definitely confusing profits with revenues for the exact reasons I wrote before. Revenues are perfectly correlated with sales. Profits are only somewhat correlated with sales. If you had said that high-end phones generate higher gross income, no ifs, ands, or buts about it, then you'd be right. After you get your gross income, though, you subtract expenses to get profits. When you see the charts showing company profits, those charts aren't showing you profit margins per device, gross margins on operations, or sales revenues. They show you profit, which is revenues minus expenses by definition.
If profitability was perfectly correlated with sales, then HTC must have been buying phones from consumers. How else could they have a loss by your definition?
Comments
he is Dilger
You expect to see some bias in an article published in Appleinsider, but this one needs to be called out. The main finding of the article is actually quite interesting, but much of the backup is misleading.
For example, "Over the last fiscal year, Apple reported sales of 150 million iPhones. Unlike Samsung, Apple is not reporting an end to high end sales growth. Instead, Apple's high end is growing faster (26 percent) than than the overall phone industry (7 percent), according to CNET."
You could be led to believe that Apple is growing much faster than the smartphone industry, because that's where Apple competes, but that's not the case. The 7% quoted is for the entire mobile phone industry, which includes 'feature phones'. The growth for smartphones from the quoted article is 45%. Comparing 26% growth to 7% versus 45% could lead to different conclusions!
Another example, "That's a serious problem for Samsung, which makes about two thirds of its total profits from smartphone sales. Apple also relies very heavily upon iPhone sales, but it also has profitable Mac, iPad and iTunes, software and service related businesses, which generate ten times the profit of Samsung's struggling Chromebook netbook, Android tablet and Windows PC sales."
This is just plain stupid. Samsung is a widely diversified company, selling everything from Washing Machines to TVs to Semiconductors.
Apple is much more focused and has a relatively limited set of products, many of which are interconnected, meaning a loss in one area will affect another.
"the overall phone industry" is an actual industry.
"the smartphone industry" is an arbitrary definition of a type of products which excludes some simple phone-only devices and includes some simple phone-only devices.
You seem to be trying to be confused here, because comparing Apple’s growth to only the phones running Android, rather than either all phones or all phones of a certain class gives you a meaningless number you seem to find comforting.
"Comparing 26% growth to 7% versus 45% could lead to different conclusions!" Yes, exactly, and you’re free to remain puzzled and ignorant if you want to ignore the facts laid out for you and cling to Strategy Analytics propaganda designed to flatter Samsung.
It won’t help you predict what’s about to happen, nor help you choose a phone, or really anything other than remain confused. Your choice.
"Samsung is a widely diversified company, selling everything from Washing Machines to TVs to Semiconductors." - yeah except all those other businesses are only narrowly profitable. Did you miss the part about +60% of all of Samsung Electronics profits coming from the sale of one product? Apple has multiple high profit businesses that are nearly as big as iPhone. Samsung’s dishwashers and TVs aren’t similarly profitable, but are capital expensive and serve as competitive distractions from where the real money is. That’s the point.
"Samsung is a widely diversified company, selling everything from Washing Machines to TVs to Semiconductors." - yeah except all those other businesses are only narrowly profitable. Did you miss the part about +60% of all of Samsung Electronics profits coming from the sale of one product? Apple has multiple high profit businesses that are nearly as big as iPhone. Samsung’s dishwashers and TVs aren’t similarly profitable, but are capital expensive and serve as competitive distractions from where the real money is. That’s the point.
FALSE
yeah except all those other businesses are only narrowly profitable. Did you miss the part about +60% of all of Samsung Electronics profits coming from the sale of one product?
The article says two thirds of Samsung's profits come from smartphone sales. You're now saying that 60%+ of Samsung Electronics profits come from smartphones.
Which one is it? Samsung (as a whole group) or Samsung Electronics? You've made two very different claims.
Or they simply jump ship to Intel baytrail z3770 and its successors which currently trump the A7 in most benchmarks.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/5
That's the advantage Android has, they can jump ship to whatever hardware platforms offers best in class. (Note : I did not see any battery usage benchmarks on the baytrail yet, anyone ?)
Most? The page you linked had the Bay Trail only beat the A7 in 2 of the 4 tests. That would not be "most" by any stretch. And in the cases it did beat the A7 it did so only by 13% and 20% which is pretty small considering the Bay Trail SoC in those benchmarks has a 12% higher base clock speed, a burst clock speed that is 84% higher than the A7 max clock speed, double the L2 cache size, having double the cores and having a peak memory bandwidth that is nearly triple the A7. By specs alone that Bay Trail should have won every benchmark by far wider margins.
If they were, they would be making profit, right? Unless those companies are so incompetent they can't make money on high-end phones.
The article says two thirds of Samsung's profits come from smartphone sales. You're now saying that 60%+ of Samsung Electronics profits come from smartphones.
Which one is it? Samsung (as a whole group) or Samsung Electronics? You've made two very different claims.
Why don’t you do the math and come back and report rather than just trolling. It’s public data.
Ah gotcha. So battery life doesn't really matter to you in the first place since all smartphones need to be charged pretty much every night anyway.
Ah, gotcha. Let's twist the discussion away from the actual topic (that Samsung sells tons of low-end junk phones) and try to make it about something that's not relevant at all - as long as we can find a way to bash Apple somehow.
You can recompile for the x86 ndk (or use emulation, but this has a performance hit), not a big deal, and comparable to offering 32 and 64 bit binaries on iOS. And ofcourse you have to use the NDK in the first place (most games do, most apps don't)
The fact that to develop for Android you have to choose between two different systems (NDK or Java/Dalvik) is a joke, and will really cause a problem when you have both ARM and x86 versions. Then add possible 64bit into the equation and suddenly Apple's platform looks positively brilliant.
Update schedule here:
http://www.ibtimes.com/android-43-jelly-bean-update-leaked-release-schedule-us-samsung-galaxy-models-suggests-verizon
Surprised your Australian S4 didn't get the 4.3 update already as it's been rolled out to international devices for some time according to the link. I'll assume it must be a Telstra holdup, especially since they're saying the 4.3 update for the year older Galaxy S3 won't be offered until sometime between Nov. and Dec. If accurate most US S3 models will have received the update before you guys in Australia do.
EDIT: About that basic phone you linked: The latest Android version, KitKat, would work just fine on it despite the poor internals and ridiculously minimal memory. No thanks to Samsung.
Compared to my three year old iPhone 4 which had iOS 7 on day one.
My S4 is with Vodafone, it is now two Android releases behind at least it might get KitKat one day, unlike my Galaxy Nexus.
Android developers have to cater to the majority of Android phones, i.e. low specced phones running old versions of Android, which is why there is such a disparity between App Store and Play revenues, that and these low specced "smartphones" are being used just like the feature phones they replacing, as shown in countless usage studies.
That is Android "market share" in a nutshell, a useless metric, deliberately misused to mislead in a grand display of deception.
In stark contrast, Apple's iPhone sales were up 26 percent over the year ago quarter, setting a new volume record for the September quarter. [/QUOTE]
It is grossly (intentionally?) unfair to contrast Samsung's sequential QoQ growth figure with Apple's YoY growth figure. Obviously, Apple's QoQ growth was also low (33.8m vs. 31.2m). What we do know about Samsung's annual growth rate is that Samsung recorded 24% YoY revenue growth and 19% YoY operating profit growth in their "Mobile" division, much higher than their QoQ growth figures.
If they were, they would be making profit, right? Unless those companies are so incompetent they can't make money on high-end phones.
No, my expectation of the combined sales of 4 companies doesn't speak at all to profitability.
"the overall phone industry" is an actual industry.
"the smartphone industry" is an arbitrary definition of a type of products which excludes some simple phone-only devices and includes some simple phone-only devices.
You seem to be trying to be confused here, because comparing Apple’s growth to only the phones running Android, rather than either all phones or all phones of a certain class gives you a meaningless number you seem to find comforting.
"Comparing 26% growth to 7% versus 45% could lead to different conclusions!" Yes, exactly, and you’re free to remain puzzled and ignorant if you want to ignore the facts laid out for you and cling to Strategy Analytics propaganda designed to flatter Samsung.
It won’t help you predict what’s about to happen, nor help you choose a phone, or really anything other than remain confused. Your choice.
"Samsung is a widely diversified company, selling everything from Washing Machines to TVs to Semiconductors." - yeah except all those other businesses are only narrowly profitable. Did you miss the part about +60% of all of Samsung Electronics profits coming from the sale of one product? Apple has multiple high profit businesses that are nearly as big as iPhone. Samsung’s dishwashers and TVs aren’t similarly profitable, but are capital expensive and serve as competitive distractions from where the real money is. That’s the point.
You have a very unorthodox view on this, but I won't dismiss it out of hand. I will point out a few errors in your logic however.
All the major market research firms use the term Smart Phones and do break out numbers separately for that category versus Feature Phones. It's a somewhat interesting view you have though that the categorization is arbitrary. If I take your view, then Apple would have only 7.2% of the market according to IDC and would be growing faster than the industry. Where you've definitely taken a wrong turn is your statement that "It won’t help you predict what’s about to happen".
This clearly is wrong. The precise reason why the numbers are broken out in this manner is to help predict what is going to happen. There are some very good numbers on Feature Phone versus Smart Phone broken down by country, which when matched with the various vendors selling Smart Phones into those countries help predict future sales. It's much harder to do this if the numbers are all lumped together. Would like to hear your views on how you think it should be split, albeit it's a bit late now to change the entire industry!
Your statement "+60% of all of Samsung Electronics profits coming from the sale of one product?" is wrong. It's an entire segment, namely Samsung IM (IT & Mobile Communications). I think you missed the point I was making, namely that Samsung Corp (the Chaebol) is a far more diversified company/group of companies than Apple is, and is therefore more resilient to future margin decreases in the Smart Phone sector. Indeed in the past quarter, they achieved record profits in part due to increased profitability in their Semiconductor business which helped offset weaker profits in other areas (and this is still within Samsung Electronics). I do agree however, that the profitability of their non-electronics businesses are relatively small.
How can you tell how much they sold when they don't release numbers? What you can go on is the profit they make. Those companies aren't making profi so they aren't selling a lot of high end phones.
Where do you draw the line between smart phone and feature phone?
How can you tell how much they sold when they don't release numbers? What you can go on is the profit they make. Those companies aren't making profi so they aren't selling a lot of high end phones.
First off, you're confusing profits with revenues. If I knew the revenues brought in by sales, then I could estimate the sales numbers. Profitability takes into account expenses. These companies could be making revenues hand over fist but report losses if their expenses are greater than sales. When accounting rules come into play, profitability becomes less and less meaningful because companies are required to subtract phantom expenses like depreciation and capital losses from their revenues (there is no cash leaving a company when it accounts for depreciation or when an asset decreases in value).
That aside, I don't know how many phones these companies sold. I just think that there's very little chance that the four next largest Android OEMs aren't combining to sell 50% of the high-end phones that Samsung sells. Doesn't it seem unlikely to you that each of HTC, Motorola, LG, and Sony wouldn't on average sell 1/8 of what Samsung sells? I think that sounds pretty unlikely.
Why would Samsung jump ship to Intel when they are already making hundreds of millions of ARM chips for themselves (Qualcomm) and Apple (A series), and many other smartphone and tablet vendors.
Samsung owns a chip foundry, so why would they pay double or triple for Intel chips that only running a little faster, in artificial benchmarks?
Do you think HTC, LG, Sony want to pay double or more for Intel chips, when most users won't feel the difference? Most of these companies can barely make, if any money from their phones.
I understand your point that Android can run on Intel chips, but there is no financial incentive to do so in the current market.
Just bc something can be done, doesn't mean it will be done.
Cost/Benefit - there is none today, and not until Intel cuts pricing, which won't happen.
Samsung will build their own 64-bit ARM v8 chips rather than use Intel's chips.
I'm not confusing revenue with profit. High end phones should generate more profit. No ifs, ands or buts about it. Does it also seem unlikely that Sammy and Apple combine for almost all the profit in mobile? But they do.
I'm sure the other vendors are selling some high end phones, but not at the level Apple and Sammy are.
I doubt that but regardless, which of those four companies will still be selling phones in 5 years? If had to pick two, it would be Moto backed by Google, and LG backed by its conglomerate industry parent.
I wonder if Samsung makes more from Android than Google (across all OEMs)?
I'm not confusing revenue with profit. High end phones should generate more profit. No ifs, ands or buts about it. Does it also seem unlikely that Sammy and Apple combine for almost all the profit in mobile? But they do.
I'm sure the other vendors are selling some high end phones, but not at the level Apple and Sammy are.
You're definitely confusing profits with revenues for the exact reasons I wrote before. Revenues are perfectly correlated with sales. Profits are only somewhat correlated with sales. If you had said that high-end phones generate higher gross income, no ifs, ands, or buts about it, then you'd be right. After you get your gross income, though, you subtract expenses to get profits. When you see the charts showing company profits, those charts aren't showing you profit margins per device, gross margins on operations, or sales revenues. They show you profit, which is revenues minus expenses by definition.
If profitability was perfectly correlated with sales, then HTC must have been buying phones from consumers. How else could they have a loss by your definition?