Daniel, this article meanders too much. It overuses the word "thermonuclear".
Apple did not have to go "thermonuclear" on Android. Apple did not even need to compete against Samsung. Apple is at a stage of its development that the only competition to Apple is Apple itself.
And Apple simply had to do what it does best:
1. focus - it is the best company at focus.
2. focus on the customer experience
3. design for the customer experience
4. make the best products it can.
What automatically flows are:
1. profits
2. customers willing to pay higher prices for quality products
3. attract even tightwad and less affluent customers who are willing to pay higher prices for quality products.
Samsung is simply a pretender once Apple does what it does best.
Right on, I could not agree more, except for the "automatic" part.
Sam who?
All this "thermonuclear" blather is pure journalistic theatre that has no meaning within the realm of the highly focused and sensible stewardship that defines Apple under the leadership of Mr. Tim Cook. The only reason the phrase keeps getting parroted by journalists is because of an emotional attachment to Steve Jobs and his emotional reaction to Google's thievery that begat Android. That was an emotional reaction then and it did good theater on tech fan sites and in blogs at the time, and still does. It also ensured long term job security for lawyers and an unending stream of litigation and findings that will likely never result in any real money actually changing hands. Lots of noise with few tangible results.
Sam who?
Apple under Tim Cook is an entirely new animal. It's focused, it's precise, it's relentless, it's humble, it owns up to its mistakes, and it's only concerned about Apple and what Apple can do better for its customers and shareholders. Tim Cook's Apple may not engage in the kind of take-no-prisoners and in-your-face publicity campaigns that we came to admire and enjoy watching with Apple under Steve Jobs. But Tim Cook is by no stretch of the imagination any less effective when it comes to creating and executing on brilliant strategies and getting the most out of his resources. Tim Cook has been purposefully and meticulously staging Apple for the kind of success that it is enjoying today for several years. Tim Cook made sure that the machine was ready and it was just a matter of getting the right products into the machine's pipeline. None of this had anything to do with trying to one-up or crush an adversary, it's always been about Apple defining the market and then owning the market based on what Apple alone is able to deliver. It's never been about what some "Sam who" or "Goog who" or "Micro who" is doing or not doing or whether the "who crowd" is succeeding or failing. Under Tim Cook it's only ever been about what Apple is doing that is driving Apple.
Market share is meaningful only when it confers some advantage not attainable otherwise. This could be economies of scale in manufacturing costs, visibility to consumers, ecosystem lock-in, greater profits, etc. But Android gains no appreciable advantage from selling many more smartphones at the low-end of the market versus Apple. Apple sells sufficient numbers of its phones to achieve enormous clout and economies of scale and associated price discounts in the manufacture of its products. Apple is arguably more visible to consumers than Android in its position as the more desirable brand, so again, no market share advantage for Android. And the amounts of money earned by developers in the Apple ecosystem causes most developers to develop for iOS first, so no market share advantage to Android there either. Since Apple’s iPhone earns the majority of profits in the smartphone industry, with far less market share, even this metric doesn’t support an argument that market share has any meaning with respect to Apple’s position in this market.
It's sometimes hard for me to believe, but there's still the "it's just like when Windows PCs crushed the Mac...now Android is doing the same thing" crowd and when I read this article yesterday, that's what it made me think of. They continue beating the drum over marketshare, >80%, Android domination, etc. "Yeah, so what if Apple had their nice little quarter -- they're still losing!" Bottom line is we all know it's a ridiculous mantra yet it continues to get repeated by hack "journalists" and supported by so-called industry analysis firms like IDC. My hope is that Apple's successful strategy continues and allows them to be in a financial and market position to one day deliver a knockout blow to Samsung and/or Android. With a near $200B war chest and a strong ecosystem, Apple IMO could do something killer with that besides share buybacks (which are nice and somewhat necessary to settle the investment community) but I've always felt that there must be some other way for Apple to use that much dough...
<div class="quote-container" data-huddler-embed="/t/184569/apple-incs-thermonuclear-assault-on-samsung-vaporizes-androids-remaining-profit-pillar/40#post_2668812" data-huddler-embed-placeholder="false"><p><img src="webkit-fake-url://d1447a73-2276-4acb-a2df-5c79f1a29c63/image.tiff" /></p><p> </p><p>Quote:</p><div class="quote-block">Originally Posted by <strong>RadarTheKat</strong> <a href="/t/184569/apple-incs-thermonuclear-assault-on-samsung-vaporizes-androids-remaining-profit-pillar/40#post_2668812"><img alt="View Post" src="/img/forum/go_quote.gif" /></a><br /><br /><br />To authors of such articles, I say...<br /><br />Market share is meaningful only when it confers some advantage not attainable otherwise. This could be economies of scale in manufacturing costs, visibility to consumers, ecosystem lock-in, greater profits, etc. But Android gains no appreciable advantage from selling many more smartphones at the low-end of the market versus Apple. Apple sells sufficient numbers of its phones to achieve enormous clout and economies of scale and associated price discounts in the manufacture of its products. Apple is arguably more visible to consumers than Android in its position as the more desirable brand, so again, no market share advantage for Android. And the amounts of money earned by developers in the Apple ecosystem causes most developers to develop for iOS first, so no market share advantage to Android there either. Since Apple’s iPhone earns the majority of profits in the smartphone industry, with far less market share, even this metric doesn’t support an argument that market share has any meaning with respect to Apple’s position in this market.</div></div><p><br />It's sometimes hard for me to believe, but there's still the "it's just like when Windows PCs crushed the Mac...now Android is doing the same thing" crowd and when I read this article yesterday, that's what it made me think of. They continue beating the drum over marketshare, >80%, Android domination, etc. "Yeah, so what if Apple had their nice little quarter -- they're still losing!" Bottom line is we all know it's a ridiculous mantra yet it continues to get repeated by hack "journalists" and supported by so-called industry analysis firms like IDC. My hope is that Apple's successful strategy continues and allows them to be in a financial and market position to one day deliver a knockout blow to Samsung and/or Android. With a near $200B war chest and a strong ecosystem, Apple IMO could do something killer with that besides share buybacks (which are nice and somewhat necessary to settle the investment community) but I've always felt that there must be some other way for Apple to use that much dough...</p>
The last thing Apple needs is to deliver a knockout blow to android (Samsung maybe) unless windows is a viable competitor otherwise regulators will just ser Apple and iOS as a functional monopoly and before you know it they will be ordered to allow other app stores etc...
Apple needs Android to be a competitor and as long as Apple can continue to cream the top end android can have the bottom end
Seldom mentioned by the tech advisors and pundits is the way these devices (Smart phones and tablets) are counted. All of the Android device makers report "units shipped". Apple reports "units activated". If you look at market analytics you will see that Apple IOS devices dominate the internet. So where are all those reported shipped Android devices? Sitting in some warehouse? Sitting unsold in dealer inventory? Misleading shipment stats? Are we supposed to believe that users buy them and just toss them in a drawer and fail to activate them?
The fantasy of a dominant Android market share is collapsing like a house of cards under scrutiny. IMO, the tech industry pundits and paid experts (IDC, Gartner and Strategy Analytics, etc,) have been propagating this sham.
What they cannot deceive us about is the profitability. Money talks, BS walks.
Google doesn't care about this as much as HTC or Motorola does. I imagine they would love for Google Play to take off the way iTunes did, but it's not going to destroy what ultimately they've gained here. Google has an automatic "in" with 80% of the world. Where it's not automatic like the iPhone they have a relatively strong suite of apps on the App Store. They were happy to release their maps app during the Apple maps fiasco. That's neither here or there. The point is they are ubiquitous.
I think people here put to much weight on profitability. If the margins are good, the company is dominant. Google is ubiquitous, has vast access to information, and has positioned itself to be irreplaceable by most standards. You can't discount that. 20 years from now people will be happy with $200 smartphones and $300 computers, and Google will be right there chugging along serving its mission to collect and distribute information. Apple on the other hand has much more to lose.
There's also the possibility that Google continues to be disrupted and marginalized in search contexts where it isn't in control. Think searching for a restaurant in Yelp, or search inside Facebook, etc. Also, Facebook and others are beginning to claim meaningful share of total digital advertising dollars. There may come a day when Google won't be able to grow meaningfully, and that won't be a good day for the company or its shares.
On the other hand, there have for decades been in existence global computing, communications, and consumer electronics markets. And those markets will exist and flourish in the years and decades to come. Regardless of what people are doing on their devices, and who gets the lion's share of advertising dollars, application revenue and monthly access revenues, there will remain a huge global demand for the latest technology. Who is in a better position to deliver the best technology? That's right, the company with the largest profits to put into R&D, business tenets that serve its customers, the widest and deepest ecosystem, economies of scale to optimize unit costs and soak up the best suppliers and foundries, pushing competitors to scrape for the remaining 2nd tier suppliers, etc, etc. Plus, a culture of having been the underdog for three decades. My money is on Apple.
I think people here put to much weight on profitability. If the margins are good, the company is dominant. Google is ubiquitous, has vast access to information, and has positioned itself to be irreplaceable by most standards. You can't discount that. 20 years from now people will be happy with $200 smartphones and $300 computers, and Google will be right there chugging along serving its mission to collect and distribute information. Apple on the other hand has much more to lose.
Um it's a business. Profitability is more important than market share. that doesn't mean it's the only goal nor does it mean profit at all cost.
Many People aren't happy with $200 phones or $300 PCs now. What makes you think they would be in 20 years? iPhones and Mac increased sales again. I see, it's the old "Apple is doomed in the future" meme.
"Apple Inc's thermonuclear assault on Samsung .. " has been understood by everyone as resulting in the legal cases that have been going through the courts, briefly referenced in DED's mention that Samsung are still trying to get out of paying the billion dollars that a jury awarded.
Nowhere in Isaacson's report of Steve Jobs "expletive laden" rant about Android does it say that Jobs' assault would be solely through court cases. Other weapons might be used, including, perhaps, "making a better product".
It has been discussed elsewhere that the larger versions of Android phones were introduced partly because bigger screens were available and partly because they enabled larger batteries to be incorporated, to overcome battery drain caused by the Androids being "smarter phones" with higher power requirements. Even so, they couldn't really deliver the extra graphics and performance demanded by the bigger screens.
In other words, with iPhone 6, Apple was able to overcome the limitations of 2014's existing technology, in much the same way the original iPhone did 7 years earlier. This time around, demand was driven by owners attracted by the screen size of Android alternatives but disappointed in their performance.
We know that Steve Jobs was planning Apple products extending far out into the future, including the development of the iPhone 5, the first with a bigger display, so it's not hard to guess that even bigger displays were on the timeline.
Samsung is a great company, and it's only the victim here because of its reliance on Google's Android. Let's hope with Tizen it can break free and start to compete fairly with Apple.
And there are more cockroaches than humans. Market share isn't everything.
It means 80% of People prefer to buy Android phones. The 20% lemmings blindly choose the over priced, under performing, non customizable iphone. Apple serves this important market that is willing to over pay for an under-performing device.
Interesting article but I don't think there was any thermonuclear assault by Apple.
Apple is just doing what they believe in, focusing on the quality of their products and delivering the best experience for their customers. Because many people want bigger screen, so Apple makes a bigger screen phone.
As for Samsung and Google, they are also doing what they believe in. Make a quick buck now at the expense of the customers.
It means 80% of People prefer to buy Android phones. The 20% lemmings blindly choose the over priced, under performing, non customizable iphone. Apple serves this important market that is willing to over pay for an under-performing device.
Over priced? I agree. iPhone is not for everybody. Still, you get what you pay for.
Under performing? Take a look at iPhone 6 benchmarks. Absolute beast, there's no even comparison.
Non customisable? Once I'd have agreed with you. With iOS8, however, many improvements have been made under the customisation part: just look at the new third-party keyboards and the notification center, which now sports custom widgets. This is a great deal, I think that what iOS finally lacks compared to Android (always strictly speaking about customisation) are custom launchers. But who knows, if 3rd-party keyboards have made it so far... :-)
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 "thermonuclear" plan to strip Samsung of its Galaxy S and Note 4 profit engines.
Not really. The 64 bit came out last year and really isn't even mentioned in marketing. They don't really emphasise the GPU either although it is a good addition. TouchID also last year. Continuity is Mac only.
And yet Android still has an 80% market share of smartphones.
less than 50% of anything that could reasonably be considered a smart phone.
I wouldn't bet on that 80% continuing either. Android could well implode because it's manufacturers are making no money and it really is a sullied brand, synonymous with cheap.
Comments
It's unbelievable to me that you truly think this. It's just phones guys. Relax.
That sounds like something a fAndroid users with no legitimate comeback would say. Well done.
Daniel, this article meanders too much. It overuses the word "thermonuclear".
Apple did not have to go "thermonuclear" on Android. Apple did not even need to compete against Samsung. Apple is at a stage of its development that the only competition to Apple is Apple itself.
And Apple simply had to do what it does best:
1. focus - it is the best company at focus.
2. focus on the customer experience
3. design for the customer experience
4. make the best products it can.
What automatically flows are:
1. profits
2. customers willing to pay higher prices for quality products
3. attract even tightwad and less affluent customers who are willing to pay higher prices for quality products.
Samsung is simply a pretender once Apple does what it does best.
Right on, I could not agree more, except for the "automatic" part.
Sam who?
All this "thermonuclear" blather is pure journalistic theatre that has no meaning within the realm of the highly focused and sensible stewardship that defines Apple under the leadership of Mr. Tim Cook. The only reason the phrase keeps getting parroted by journalists is because of an emotional attachment to Steve Jobs and his emotional reaction to Google's thievery that begat Android. That was an emotional reaction then and it did good theater on tech fan sites and in blogs at the time, and still does. It also ensured long term job security for lawyers and an unending stream of litigation and findings that will likely never result in any real money actually changing hands. Lots of noise with few tangible results.
Sam who?
Apple under Tim Cook is an entirely new animal. It's focused, it's precise, it's relentless, it's humble, it owns up to its mistakes, and it's only concerned about Apple and what Apple can do better for its customers and shareholders. Tim Cook's Apple may not engage in the kind of take-no-prisoners and in-your-face publicity campaigns that we came to admire and enjoy watching with Apple under Steve Jobs. But Tim Cook is by no stretch of the imagination any less effective when it comes to creating and executing on brilliant strategies and getting the most out of his resources. Tim Cook has been purposefully and meticulously staging Apple for the kind of success that it is enjoying today for several years. Tim Cook made sure that the machine was ready and it was just a matter of getting the right products into the machine's pipeline. None of this had anything to do with trying to one-up or crush an adversary, it's always been about Apple defining the market and then owning the market based on what Apple alone is able to deliver. It's never been about what some "Sam who" or "Goog who" or "Micro who" is doing or not doing or whether the "who crowd" is succeeding or failing. Under Tim Cook it's only ever been about what Apple is doing that is driving Apple.
Rock on Apple, rock on.
Quote:
To authors of such articles, I say...
Market share is meaningful only when it confers some advantage not attainable otherwise. This could be economies of scale in manufacturing costs, visibility to consumers, ecosystem lock-in, greater profits, etc. But Android gains no appreciable advantage from selling many more smartphones at the low-end of the market versus Apple. Apple sells sufficient numbers of its phones to achieve enormous clout and economies of scale and associated price discounts in the manufacture of its products. Apple is arguably more visible to consumers than Android in its position as the more desirable brand, so again, no market share advantage for Android. And the amounts of money earned by developers in the Apple ecosystem causes most developers to develop for iOS first, so no market share advantage to Android there either. Since Apple’s iPhone earns the majority of profits in the smartphone industry, with far less market share, even this metric doesn’t support an argument that market share has any meaning with respect to Apple’s position in this market.
It's sometimes hard for me to believe, but there's still the "it's just like when Windows PCs crushed the Mac...now Android is doing the same thing" crowd and when I read this article yesterday, that's what it made me think of. They continue beating the drum over marketshare, >80%, Android domination, etc. "Yeah, so what if Apple had their nice little quarter -- they're still losing!" Bottom line is we all know it's a ridiculous mantra yet it continues to get repeated by hack "journalists" and supported by so-called industry analysis firms like IDC. My hope is that Apple's successful strategy continues and allows them to be in a financial and market position to one day deliver a knockout blow to Samsung and/or Android. With a near $200B war chest and a strong ecosystem, Apple IMO could do something killer with that besides share buybacks (which are nice and somewhat necessary to settle the investment community) but I've always felt that there must be some other way for Apple to use that much dough...
Apple have always realised you need to train the consumer so that know what they want. They do this better than anyone.
Except when consumers train Apple to what they want, and Apple does it not once but twice.
Apple needs Android to be a competitor and as long as Apple can continue to cream the top end android can have the bottom end
Seldom mentioned by the tech advisors and pundits is the way these devices (Smart phones and tablets) are counted. All of the Android device makers report "units shipped". Apple reports "units activated". If you look at market analytics you will see that Apple IOS devices dominate the internet. So where are all those reported shipped Android devices? Sitting in some warehouse? Sitting unsold in dealer inventory? Misleading shipment stats? Are we supposed to believe that users buy them and just toss them in a drawer and fail to activate them?
The fantasy of a dominant Android market share is collapsing like a house of cards under scrutiny. IMO, the tech industry pundits and paid experts (IDC, Gartner and Strategy Analytics, etc,) have been propagating this sham.
What they cannot deceive us about is the profitability. Money talks, BS walks.
Google doesn't care about this as much as HTC or Motorola does. I imagine they would love for Google Play to take off the way iTunes did, but it's not going to destroy what ultimately they've gained here. Google has an automatic "in" with 80% of the world. Where it's not automatic like the iPhone they have a relatively strong suite of apps on the App Store. They were happy to release their maps app during the Apple maps fiasco. That's neither here or there. The point is they are ubiquitous.
I think people here put to much weight on profitability. If the margins are good, the company is dominant. Google is ubiquitous, has vast access to information, and has positioned itself to be irreplaceable by most standards. You can't discount that. 20 years from now people will be happy with $200 smartphones and $300 computers, and Google will be right there chugging along serving its mission to collect and distribute information. Apple on the other hand has much more to lose.
There's also the possibility that Google continues to be disrupted and marginalized in search contexts where it isn't in control. Think searching for a restaurant in Yelp, or search inside Facebook, etc. Also, Facebook and others are beginning to claim meaningful share of total digital advertising dollars. There may come a day when Google won't be able to grow meaningfully, and that won't be a good day for the company or its shares.
On the other hand, there have for decades been in existence global computing, communications, and consumer electronics markets. And those markets will exist and flourish in the years and decades to come. Regardless of what people are doing on their devices, and who gets the lion's share of advertising dollars, application revenue and monthly access revenues, there will remain a huge global demand for the latest technology. Who is in a better position to deliver the best technology? That's right, the company with the largest profits to put into R&D, business tenets that serve its customers, the widest and deepest ecosystem, economies of scale to optimize unit costs and soak up the best suppliers and foundries, pushing competitors to scrape for the remaining 2nd tier suppliers, etc, etc. Plus, a culture of having been the underdog for three decades. My money is on Apple.
It is difficult to understand how Samsung can be defined as "Android's remaining profit pillar".
I'll be more specific.
Android phone shipments have increased 34% in 2014, and Android's market share has increased to 81% (up from 79% in 2013).
I can't wait to see Samsung sink, but let's not forget 2 things:
1. Samsung has already started to part ways with Android thanks to Tizen OS, and will follow that road if possible;
2. Android is a competitive market, and if Samsung's market share will fall, other OEMs will take advantage of that.
I really don't see any suffering at all in Android per se. I just see suffering OEMs (Samsung, HTC, Sony, Motorola), but OEMs ? Android.
Better keep that in mind for the future.
Um it's a business. Profitability is more important than market share. that doesn't mean it's the only goal nor does it mean profit at all cost.
Many People aren't happy with $200 phones or $300 PCs now. What makes you think they would be in 20 years? iPhones and Mac increased sales again. I see, it's the old "Apple is doomed in the future" meme.
Maybe Apple could just buy IDC and close it down ? The price wouldn't be even at the level of "rounding error" for Apple.
Great Analysis by DED [Again]
"Apple Inc's thermonuclear assault on Samsung .. " has been understood by everyone as resulting in the legal cases that have been going through the courts, briefly referenced in DED's mention that Samsung are still trying to get out of paying the billion dollars that a jury awarded.
Nowhere in Isaacson's report of Steve Jobs "expletive laden" rant about Android does it say that Jobs' assault would be solely through court cases. Other weapons might be used, including, perhaps, "making a better product".
It has been discussed elsewhere that the larger versions of Android phones were introduced partly because bigger screens were available and partly because they enabled larger batteries to be incorporated, to overcome battery drain caused by the Androids being "smarter phones" with higher power requirements. Even so, they couldn't really deliver the extra graphics and performance demanded by the bigger screens.
In other words, with iPhone 6, Apple was able to overcome the limitations of 2014's existing technology, in much the same way the original iPhone did 7 years earlier. This time around, demand was driven by owners attracted by the screen size of Android alternatives but disappointed in their performance.
We know that Steve Jobs was planning Apple products extending far out into the future, including the development of the iPhone 5, the first with a bigger display, so it's not hard to guess that even bigger displays were on the timeline.
Samsung is a great company, and it's only the victim here because of its reliance on Google's Android. Let's hope with Tizen it can break free and start to compete fairly with Apple.
And there are more cockroaches than humans. Market share isn't everything.
And there are more cockroaches than humans. Market share isn't everything.
It means 80% of People prefer to buy Android phones. The 20% lemmings blindly choose the over priced, under performing, non customizable iphone. Apple serves this important market that is willing to over pay for an under-performing device.
Apple is just doing what they believe in, focusing on the quality of their products and delivering the best experience for their customers. Because many people want bigger screen, so Apple makes a bigger screen phone.
As for Samsung and Google, they are also doing what they believe in. Make a quick buck now at the expense of the customers.
It means 80% of People prefer to buy Android phones. The 20% lemmings blindly choose the over priced, under performing, non customizable iphone. Apple serves this important market that is willing to over pay for an under-performing device.
Over priced? I agree. iPhone is not for everybody. Still, you get what you pay for.
Under performing? Take a look at iPhone 6 benchmarks. Absolute beast, there's no even comparison.
Non customisable? Once I'd have agreed with you. With iOS8, however, many improvements have been made under the customisation part: just look at the new third-party keyboards and the notification center, which now sports custom widgets. This is a great deal, I think that what iOS finally lacks compared to Android (always strictly speaking about customisation) are custom launchers. But who knows, if 3rd-party keyboards have made it so far... :-)
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 "thermonuclear" plan to strip Samsung of its Galaxy S and Note 4 profit engines.
Not really. The 64 bit came out last year and really isn't even mentioned in marketing. They don't really emphasise the GPU either although it is a good addition. TouchID also last year. Continuity is Mac only.
The big screen is the big thing here.
And yet Android still has an 80% market share of smartphones.
less than 50% of anything that could reasonably be considered a smart phone.
I wouldn't bet on that 80% continuing either. Android could well implode because it's manufacturers are making no money and it really is a sullied brand, synonymous with cheap.
Wouldn't make a difference whether they did or didn't "bully." The market speaks for itself. DED is just rubbing iHaters noses in it.