Bar yourself from Appleinsider as you said if the Apple share didn't reach $150 at the end of 2015. Be a man to keep your promise.
Is my presence bothering? And who the heck was the person betting against me? Those people are long gone. So why should I get banned for a bet that no one else is on the other side of the bet?
It's called integrity. All the regulars saw you make that promise so it matters not if the other posters are no longer around.
I never understood the bullishness around Xiaomi becoming a services company. How many companies are profitable selling cheap hardware? And what we're all these services Xiaomi was going to make money off of to cover the cheap hardware?
Outside of China, No one wants to use any other services other then Google's. Samesung keeps trying, their MILK service is yet another failure. There's very little money to be made selling Android hardware. Xiaomi is no threat. They sell Millions of these cheap phones and make very little money in profits. What does that get you? So you try to create your own services to make money after the sale and that doesn't work. You throw on Adware and other 3rd party crap to make money after the sale and that pisses your users off, especially those that want pure Android.
Google won't let you sell FORKED versions of Android while at the same time selling phones with Google's services. So while selling only inside China, that's not a issue. Google has almost zero presence in China anyway, trying to sell outside if China also is another issue. It's one of the reasons Amazon's phones failed. It's forked Android. No access to Google's services that people want. Besides being over priced.
I like to say, Android (Everyone) sells a ZILLION phones and break even. Apple sells 1 iphone and makes a $50 profit. Who won? Well fandroids will say Android did, they sold 1 zillion phones. The people got cheap phones. Everyone else would say Apple WON, they actually made a $50 profit and only had to sell 1 phone to do it!!!! You can scale this up and say Android sold 10 zillion phones to Apples 10 phones. Who Won? Android still broke even and Apple made $500. This is pretty much what's going on with Apple making around 94% of the Smartphone profits. Samesung making around 13%, which is more then 100%, which means others are losing money!!!
Xiaomi is no threat to Apple. They're not a big threat to Android outside of China. For some strange reason when they announce their profits and it's way below what people think, they're all surprised for some reason. Surprise, you sell your phones making razer thin profits and in the end didn't make much money. That's how real math works.
All of this just creates populations of disillusioned customers who then realize what they really want is an iPhone, which exhibits none of the issues you mention. Just as Tim Cook indicated, Android is acting as training wheels for future iPhone owners. And with more and more iPhones out there, each getting rave reviews by its owner, who is there advocating for the iPhone when one of their friends has troubles with an Android phone, there's going to be a tipping point beyond which very big numbers of iPhones are demanded. IOS is already a standard in every way that's meaningful. A future may well exist where it takes the majority of global unit sales. Far from peak iPhone, Apple might actually just be getting started, ready to flip the switch whenever needed with a mid-priced model that sweeps up a huge new segment of the market. The clock is ticking. Apple's hour approaches.
Mortality and population growth imply 10 million new iPhone users are minted annually.
World population: 7,400,000,000
Global average lifespan: 71 years
The above numbers imply an annual death rate from old age of 104 million people. If world population growth were flat - not growing or shrinking - that implies a birth rate of 104 million per year to replace those who died from old age. But world population is growing by about 80 million per year, a total of 184 million new births per year.
For a modern technology product like the iPhone, we can assume that few of the very elderly are customers, meaning Apple is losing few customers to death each year, but gaining new prospective customers (those newborns of a couple decades ago who are now old enough to carry their first smartphone). That number is not 184 million, because population growth and global population were both smaller two decades ago, so perhaps 140 million people are currently turning 20 each year. Assuming half will buy smartphones, 85% of those will initially buy an Android, that leaves 70*.15, or about 10 million newly minted iPhone customers each year. And 60 million new Android customers Apple will eventually attempt to recruit to the iPhone.
What did Jobs say about death? Life's greatest invention.
Xiaomi's main problem was the loss of subsidies from Intel for using x86 CPUs in their low end phones.
Huawei is essentially in the same boat and Android will soon be on life support as Samsung's mobile profits are also under duress.
Google services are absent in China. But if I were the CEO of Xiaomi, I would demand a subsidy from Google for selling a phone with Google services or I would put a Google tax on phones sold outside of China. I definitely would do the same if I were to run Samsung.
I actually would lock up the phone to Google services unless the "tax" were paid. Or I would get out of the market all together like IBM did with their PC division.
Samsung builds excellent hardware. Their screens put the ones in the latest iPhone to shame. Despite that, I refuse to switch over to a spyware OS. It's time for Samsung to focus on building components and leave the assembled devices to Apple.
It's called integrity. All the regulars saw you make that promise so it matters not if the other posters are no longer around.
Tell me this. Lets say you bet on a boxing match. You lost. But then the news comes out the match was fixed. Would you still pay your bet to your friend? Hell no. Now tell me if Apple's share price was not fixed last year? Tell me their was no manipulation. Of course their was. I'm not paying a bet on a 'game' that was fixed. And I'm refusing to pay a bet on a stock that was obviously manipulated and not allowed to reach its fair value.
If you complain all the time that boxing matches are fixed and still bet on it your a numpty or in this case a person with no honesty, credibility or honour.
All clueless 'journalist' who know nothing about technology.
So first it was Samsung that was going to kill iPhone. Then Xiaomi? They both failed. Who's next? Looks like Wall Street and the Apple hater media has given up on their White Knight to kill Apple. Now they simply say we have reached 'peak iPhone'
Have to agree with you. It has gotten out of hand. Someone could start back producing bag phones from the 90's and CNBC would find an analyst to claim it as a threat to Apple. It's so funny how the media has ignored the implosion of Samsung. Just goes to show I order to beat Apple you have to do more than clone the iPhone.
Xiaomi's behavior is basically China in a nutshell: lure businesses in with the promise of a large market, then rob them blind and start with the knockoffs. And laugh at the naive belief that the laowai business has court standing. Oh, and tariff the hell out of foreign products.
At least when Japan copped stuff from America, they improved on the source material greatly.
Comments
Mortality and population growth imply 10 million new iPhone users are minted annually.
Huawei is essentially in the same boat and Android will soon be on life support as Samsung's mobile profits are also under duress.
Google services are absent in China. But if I were the CEO of Xiaomi, I would demand a subsidy from Google for selling a phone with Google services or I would put a Google tax on phones sold outside of China. I definitely would do the same if I were to run Samsung.
I actually would lock up the phone to Google services unless the "tax" were paid. Or I would get out of the market all together like IBM did with their PC division.
Samsung builds excellent hardware. Their screens put the ones in the latest iPhone to shame. Despite that, I refuse to switch over to a spyware OS. It's time for Samsung to focus on building components and leave the assembled devices to Apple.