How Apple, Inc. went thermonuclear on Samsung, erasing Android's primary profit center

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  • Reply 61 of 315
    Well, Apple didn't set out to make a product that would hurt Samsung, but that's exactly what happened.

    That's my point. That's Apple doing what Apple does best.
    They say the best revenge is success.

    Many, many years ago I remember listening to Love Line with Dr. Drew and Adam Corolla. Adam said the best way to get back at shitty parents is not to act out and **** up your own life, but to become a huge such success and then ignore them.
    And the iPhone 6/6P serve up a huge portion of that.

    I wonder if now they'll start marketing a smaller device to work in market segments Apple isn't directly competing in.
  • Reply 62 of 315
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by patpatpat View Post





    I see the larger 6 and 6 plus as a definite improvement. Samsung dominated the large form factor segment until now.

    Of course it's an improvement, larger, more powerful, more features.

     

    The point I would disagree is, the design, my least fav so far:

    2g/3g - wow that phone is slick

    4 - holy cow, didn't know phones could be so premium looking, retina-damn.

    5 - meh, it's nice.

    6 - what the heck, it looks like an Oreo cookie filling squishing out.

  • Reply 63 of 315
    sog35 wrote: »
    Why isolate Apple mobile? Samsung mobile division includes tablets, laptops, and desktops.
    I didn't. Read my subsequent clarification.
  • Reply 64 of 315
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,386member
    Quote:


     Producing a large screen phone with adequate 64-bit CPU and leading GPU processing power to drive it, and then giving it clearly differentiated features including Touch ID and Apple Pay as well as Continuity features that tie it into the Mac desktop, iPad and the upcoming Apple Watch, were all elements of a plan to strip Samsung of its Galaxy S and Note 4 profit engines.


     

    Nope, these were elements of a plan to make best-in-class products. Did it have the side-effect of increasing iPhone sales and decreasing Samsung phone sales? Yes, but it's absurd to suggest this is somehow the primary motivation for Apple's engineering, feature, and design decisions. 

  • Reply 65 of 315
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by dasanman69 View Post



    Apple didn't build great products for its users. It did it to screw Samsung. Ummm yeah ok.



    Wrong. DED is just taking this choice opportunity to use some colorful language in his editorial.

     

    The fact of the matter is that SUCCESS is the best revenge. Apple is simply resolute as always in its efforts to succeed. No one including Steve really wanted expensive litigation. Apple simply held to its principles and kept producing great products, which was itself the only effective "attack" on Samsung. You can't sue a criminal, as they'll never pay.

     

    Apple has no intent to "screw Samsung" other than to simply let it screw itself, like any criminal will eventually do.

  • Reply 66 of 315
    Originally Posted by Entropys View Post

    aaple was made to improve its products because samsung was a competitive threat.

     

    I’ve always been of the belief that this is a false premise. While the statement “There is no reason to improve upon a selling product if there is no better alternative” sounds compelling on its own, reality makes it laughable.

  • Reply 67 of 315
    foggyhillfoggyhill Posts: 4,767member

     

    You do know buddy that Samsung made 90% of its profit on the high end phones. Those are the ones Apple affects (and also LG, which is making inroads), not the chinese... For now. Eventually though they will also go high end, no question about it.

  • Reply 68 of 315

    Samsung will reverse their downward spiral with THIS.  It's bound to be a big seller and break the trend of Samsung making lots of products that no one uses.  :rolleyes: <img class=" src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" />

  • Reply 69 of 315
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Entropys View Post



    This is just a glorious demonstration of how capitalism works. competition drives continuous improvement and increased production that in turn is desired by consumers. aaple was made to improve its products because samsung was a competitive threat. Now it remains or be seen if samsung can keep up. Here is how it was seen sixty years ago, before we went and got all Keynesian:




    Someone in Termite Terrace wanted to educate, very rad Looney Toons find. 

  • Reply 70 of 315
    entropysentropys Posts: 4,267member
    Yeah I always thought looney tunes was just for laughs, but there is an actual lesson in there.

    [QUOTE]Originally Posted by Entropys View Post
    aaple was made to improve its products because samsung was a competitive threat.

    I’ve always been of the belief that this is a false premise. While the statement “There is no reason to improve upon a selling product if there is no better alternative” sounds compelling on its own, reality makes it laughable.[/QUOTE]

    Well, I suppose a producer could always improve their products by competing with themselves or even out of a sense of craftsmanship, but the truth is that progress and productivity would be much, much slower and the economy that much less overall. It would be against the interests of a monopoly to make rapid changes and improvements to a product as the development costs would erode profitability, regardless of how profit could be measured.

    a clear real world example of the difference is outcomes is the existence of BMWs in west Germany and Ladas in East germany before the fall of the iron curtain? Same cultural background, one company competed with a heap of car companies, one had the market to itself.
    Must be a capitalist conspiracy
  • Reply 71 of 315

    Honestly, I'd love for Apple to have some stronger competition in the "design" department from their strongest challenger.  If for no other reason, to put some pressure on Apple to continue making the best looking devices on the market.  I'm just so unimpressed by the look of Samsung's phones.  I always have been.  Visually, I just think they are so bland!  Given that Apple puts so much emphasis on design and form factor, it's always irritated me that iPhones are most commonly compared to Samsung phones.  There's just no comparison in terms of overall appearance.  Right now, I think HTC and Moto have the best looking Android phones on the market.  The new Nexus is actually gorgeous!  I'd really love to see someone else grab up Samsung's throne while they're struggling to turn profit.  Better looking competitors only benefit Apple in the long run.

  • Reply 72 of 315
    Is it just me or does anyone else here think that Apple folded on its own statement that a couple of years ago Apple was touting that their iphone 5 screen size was the BEST size? And now it's released iphone 6 which is the size of galaxy and iphone 6 plus which is similar size to note? I don't buy how you always make it look like Apple NEVER copies or borrows features and technology from elsewhere. A lot of the incorporated new killer features were brought on by third party developers in the jailbreak market as well - look at mission control on ios for example - that was available via jailbreak market long before it was incorporated in the new ios.

    The articles on this website, compared to a few years ago, are getting WAY TOO BIASED. I like reading insider news but piece like this just takes away that objectivity and fairness completely out of it..
  • Reply 73 of 315
    jd_in_sbjd_in_sb Posts: 1,600member
    Samsung is also slowly losng Apple's iohone components business, More billions gone.
  • Reply 74 of 315

    As much as I would like to think that Samsung's last quarter woes was due to Apple, I couldn't help but feel that this article was published 3 months too early.  I would go as far as to predict Samsung's current quarter (to be reported 3 months later) would plunge again and it would be due to Iphone 6 and 6 plus. 

     

    Did iphone 5s or the lack of availability of iphone 6 and 6 plus in the last quarter contributed largely to the huge profitability plunge? 

     

    The main reason for Samsung's woes in the last quarter was simply the fact that Samsung's so-called premium smart phones could not even compete against other Android makers.  On many western Android websites and forums, the no. 1 preferred Android phone models have been Sony and HTC for several months. 

     

    To the Android users, anything that looks like a 5" or bigger screen, with the no. 4 (for Quad cores) and no.3 (for 3 gb RAM) appearing in the specs lists are considered premium Android phones.  In this regards, even the many LG, Huawei, Oppo or Xiaomi models would be considered "premium" android phones with just 1/3 or 1/4 the price of a similar Samsung phones.

     

    Samsung phones could not even compete with Sony, HTC, LG or Xiaomi.

     

    If we are talking about Samsung premium models lackluster sales in China, then the reasons would definitely be the other Android makers.  The so-called cheap Xiaomi phones have capabilities or specs close to Samsung premium phones with just 1/4 of the price tags.  Other than the more affluent, brand-conscious and discerning consumers, most Chinese would have opted for Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo rather than Samsung.

     

    From this current quarter onwards, with iphone 6 and 6 plus, the real "thermonuclear" is coming.

  • Reply 75 of 315
    It can spend lots of money trying to look different, but in the end Android is all about serving up ads for Google, not for enabling individual licenses to make money.

    This is the major reason there are so few people making significant money from Android handsets. Android was intiially sold as "open" to all the handset manufacturers but since then Google has been slowly eroding the openness of all the key services on the platform, so while it's true that the core OS is still open and anybody is free to fork it as they like (see Amazon with FireOS) a lotl of the major apps and services that people want to run on it - Google Play Store, Google Maps, etc are very much a closed shop and very much in Googles control.

    Android without these google services is crippled from a user perspective and as Amazon are finding out - even while running their own competing app store - these are the services that people want / expect and if they aren't there then you won't be selling many devices.

    I also think it is very disingenuous to rule out Xiaomi from the equation completely - they may not be taking as big a chunk from Samsung's bottom line as Apple is at the high end of the market, but just in China alone they appear to be taking several million small chunks from it's lower end phone sales leaving Samsung under attack and being beaten at both ends of the market.
  • Reply 76 of 315
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Benjamin Frost View Post





    How do you define mobile? If you include laptops, it will probably lower the margin slightly.



    I believe the MacBook Air 11" model has a fairly large margin as well, almost 50% now, which is partially why I kind of resent the Air for not having at least a 1080p screen, especially when ChromeBooks are now shipping with them. The IPad Air 2 base model costs only 250 dollars to make which is also interesting.

  • Reply 77 of 315
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by sog35 View Post





    Its not Xiaomi thats killing Samsung. Its Apple. Apple is stealing tens of millions of high end sales from Samsung.

     

    I think you have it backwards. The market was Apple's in the first place and it was the serial copyist Samsung who stole sales and IP from Apple.

  • Reply 78 of 315
    I may get slated for this. But if they can sort out the hardware, I see Apple's competition in the future coming from Microsoft (Formerly Nokia) phones.

    They own their Eco-System and the hardware and Microsoft can throw money at it like its chump change.
  • Reply 79 of 315
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DaveMcM76 View Post





    This is the major reason there are so few people making significant money from Android handsets. Android was intiially sold as "open" to all the handset manufacturers but since then Google has been slowly eroding the openness of all the key services on the platform, so while it's true that the core OS is still open and anybody is free to fork it as they like (see Amazon with FireOS) a lotl of the major apps and services that people want to run on it - Google Play Store, Google Maps, etc are very much a closed shop and very much in Googles control.



    Android without these google services is crippled from a user perspective and as Amazon are finding out - even while running their own competing app store - these are the services that people want / expect and if they aren't there then you won't be selling many devices.



    I also think it is very disingenuous to rule out Xiaomi from the equation completely - they may not be taking as big a chunk from Samsung's bottom line as Apple is at the high end of the market, but just in China alone they appear to be taking several million small chunks from it's lower end phone sales leaving Samsung under attack and being beaten at both ends of the market.

     

    I don't think people care as much as you think about Google services. I personally don't have a single Google app installed on my Kindle HDX and use MoboGenie as my app store. There are much better alternatives to Google apps. The same goes with all of my Chrome devices, the only two services that I use are Google Drive as there is no way to get around that as it's embedded into the system, it's the primary location of all data and Google Mail. Though even if I used more of their services, there are no ads displayed when using; Google Docs, Gmail, Google+, etc. Well, okay Gmail does have a tab called Promotions, but this is just a search criteria for you your inbox and can be deleted, there's also tabs for Social, Family and Work. The rest of my web apps consist of things like; Office Online; Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, OneNote and OutLook, Adobe Photoshop (yes, Photoshop is now available as a web app for Chrome devices and it's actually pretty good) and others, zero ads in any of them. The only place I have seen any actual ad's is on Google Search and that's only when I search for things that can be bought, if you type in for example, "Elephant", Search will only display information about a Elephant on the right hand side, my daughters educational model doesn't show ad's period, Google's Ad services is disabled by default and cannot be turned back on. So your statement about it being all about the ads is actually not entirely correct

  • Reply 80 of 315
    solipsismysolipsismy Posts: 5,099member
    relic wrote: »
    I believe the MacBook Air 11" model has a fairly large margin as well, almost 50% now, which is partially why I kind of resent the Air for not having at least a 1080p screen, especially when ChromeBooks are now shipping with them. The IPad Air 2 base model costs only 250 dollars to make which is also interesting.

    The MBAs will go Retina when the technology is available at a given price point for a given performance level with a given battery life. Anything that doesn't measure up won't work, so going for 1080p, just because, isn't going to happen. At this point I don't expect the MBA to get the needed overhaul until Broadwell, and perhaps some other major advancements in power efficiency in other components, like battery and/or display panel types.
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