I often scratch my head when commenters try to call Apple a monopoly and anti-competitive inside their own ecosystem. Apple is a company who, while it is the largest company in the world by market capitalization, has a minority market share in just about every market in which it participates. So you can’t install any apps outside the App Store? How is Apple being anti-competitive when you can literally walk across the street and get an Android phone for FREE from any of a dozen cellphone stores and load anything you want to on your new phone? The “It’s my device and I can do anything I want with it” crowd always tries to peddle its twaddle about Apple being a monopoly that should be broken up. Gimme a break. I’m hoping the SCOTUS shuts this down but who knows.
It isn't as simple as that. If you look at things from a vendor perspective, Apple is far from small fry and can effectively have monopolistic behaviour on key components and their availability. It is attempting to secure key components right now which could have a disastrous effect on smaller players.
Apple as an OS platform is not a monopoly but the company can be monopolistic in creating the hardware platform that the OS runs on from a supply chain perspective.
That is monopsony behavior, not monopoly behavior, and is quite legal.
You probably aren't aware that all of those profits that Apple generates make it quite easy for Apple to purchase massive future supplies of NAND and LPDDR memory at guaranteed volumes and pricing. As Apple uses an estimated 30% of the world's supply, capturing large supplies of components is a necessity. This goes as well for a number to tentpole feature components like FaceID and customized OLED displays.
It is also the case that since Apple build such large volumes of few models, they often cannot take advantage of boutique technologies that are in limited supply. Hence why so many Android OS users are always bragging about their leading features, though curiously, always in limited edition models that find few buyers.
I said monopolistic behaviour. You may label it as you wish but definitely not monopsony. Apple doesn't have the clout to be that on an industry level but it can operate in a monopolistic way at a vendor level and have a negative effect on competition. Having more money is irrelevant and could even be counterproductive. Having too much money to support your behaviour can be considered a factor in any competition ruling.
As for 'boutique technologies', it is precisely Apple's cash hoard that makes them entirely doable on iPhones. It simply chooses not to. As for tent pole features like FaceID, I will remind you that there is nothing new in the mechanics for FaceID hardware. As launched, it was little more than another biometric option (more secure but TouchID was more than secure enough for payments to begin with) with a couple of extras. Honor demoed its own solution (including amoji-like tongue recognition) weeks after Apple's, using the same basic idea but taken to another level. Something that had clearly been in the works for some time. Apple's (and Huawei's) advantage was in the processing - the NPU. Honor later revealed that implementing it today would push the price of the handset up too far and they were already investing in the triple camera array. They also took things beyond Face ID biometric authentication and into sub millimetre precision, small object 3D modelling including hand removal and avatars etc). Not forgetting of course that FaceID only debuted on one of the three new phones which represents a fraction of its overall sales.
Huawei/Honor already had a stunningly fast facial recognition system and AI to handle different aspects related to its use (revealing notifications, eye tracking to turn off screen etc).
"Kuo's predictions come on the heels of a report that estimated Apple to have a two-year head start over the Android camp in what is becoming a 3D sensing arms race. Suppliers of VCSEL modules and optical filters said they are unlikely to reach production levels adequate for wide adoption until 2019.
Apple, on the other hand, gobbled up parts supply for iPhone X and inked an exclusive deal with key manufacturer Finisar in 2017, promising a substantial leg up on the competition.
Even if companies like Huawei shift from structured light to ToF, supply will continue to be constrained as the two technologies share a number of components including hard to get VCSEL arrays."
Your team Huawei is currently using its front facing camera, not VCSEL. Fast, but is it as secure as Face ID?
I've already answered you - multiple times - on this subject and just didn't want this thread to go too far off course.
Huawei has been in the VCSEL industry for far longer than Apple, and has had far more dealings with Finisar than Apple could dream of. Finisar was even one of Huawei's Golden Core partners. Their VCSEL relationship goes back more than a decade! Parts are not the problem for Huawei. If we talk about the broader Android industry, that is a different matter. Cost is the problem, and I provided you with a link in that other thread to an interview with a Huawei executive that said exactly that!
I even gave you the background information on their reasoning.
It looks like Apple is going to be buying something on the order of 120 to 140 million next generation VCSEL components from Finsar's new production facility for this fall's iPhones. Is that the kind of "far more dealings with Finisar than Apple could dream of" that you are talking about?
You are so full of shit.
Ah, now it's shit. Maybe it's you who should try harder.
Let me put things a different way. In spite of iPhone X and AirPod sales, VCSEL production is still higher in the optical communications area than the smartphone sector. Surprised? Finisar is far from the only company making VCSELs. There are lots (with others beginning to enter the market) and Huawei has business with more than Finisar. Apple has put money on the table to increase capacity for its own needs. Do you think Huawei (one of the most vertically integrated companies on the planet) could not do the same? Really? Philips Photonics has even said it can double or even treble its capacity for 2018 if necessary. All this just off the top my head.
Huawei has stated that it doesn't want to increase the cost of its phones unnecessarily. It decided to put more focus on the camera and AI and they now have arguably the best smartphone of 2018 and it breaking records at a price point hundreds of dollars below the iPhone X. In hindsight, what would iPhone X users prefer: FaceID - at a cost - or equivalent features from the P20 Pro for $300 less?
That's a burning question for all iPhone X owners.
Sales for Huawei P20 Lite, P20, and P20 Pro, first 3 months:
"Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show Asia, Huawei’s smartphone chief, Kevin Ho, revealed exactly how well the P20 lineup is performing in comparison to previous-generation P-line devices, with him confirming that sales are up an impressive 81% over those of last year’s P10 series. To be specific, the popular Huawei P20 trio has shipped over 6 million units during the first three months of sales, a significant increase over the 3.3 million devices registered by the P10, P10 Plus, and P10 Lite during the same period. Despite the impressive performance, though, Mr. Ho didn’t clarify how the sales were distributed between the three devices, although it's safe to assume the P20 Lite accounts for the highest number of shipments due to its relatively low price. Additionally, however, it "
Breaking their own sales records maybe, but certainly not yet approaching iPhone sales numbers.
Their is no "burning question for iPhone X owners". The iPhone market is, as I have stated before, not the Android OS market, so your "arguably the best smartphone of 2018" isn't that, if for no other reason that it isn't part of Apple's ecosystem, another failure of your focus only on hardware. I doubt that many iOS users would even be tempted by the P20 Pro, and that only for the triple lens system. Since the rumors are that Apple will have that in 2019, I'm guessing that almost all iPhone users will wait for the triple lens version.
Oh, and you forgot to mention that the iPhone X comes with "arguably" the best screen on a smartphone, its only competition being the Samsung Galaxy and Note.
As for the VCSEL, I'm guessing that the components for FaceID are not equivalent to the components for telecom equipment, so your point is null. It this weren't true, then one would think that other companies would want access to VCSEL so that they could make their own FaceID "halo" feature, but that hasn't happened.
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https://www.phonearena.com/news/Huawei-P20-sales-numbers_id105758
"Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show Asia, Huawei’s smartphone chief, Kevin Ho, revealed exactly how well the P20 lineup is performing in comparison to previous-generation P-line devices, with him confirming that sales are up an impressive 81% over those of last year’s P10 series. To be specific, the popular Huawei P20 trio has shipped over 6 million units during the first three months of sales, a significant increase over the 3.3 million devices registered by the P10, P10 Plus, and P10 Lite during the same period. Despite the impressive performance, though, Mr. Ho didn’t clarify how the sales were distributed between the three devices, although it's safe to assume the P20 Lite accounts for the highest number of shipments due to its relatively low price. Additionally, however, it "
Breaking their own sales records maybe, but certainly not yet approaching iPhone sales numbers.
Their is no "burning question for iPhone X owners". The iPhone market is, as I have stated before, not the Android OS market, so your "arguably the best smartphone of 2018" isn't that, if for no other reason that it isn't part of Apple's ecosystem, another failure of your focus only on hardware. I doubt that many iOS users would even be tempted by the P20 Pro, and that only for the triple lens system. Since the rumors are that Apple will have that in 2019, I'm guessing that almost all iPhone users will wait for the triple lens version.
Oh, and you forgot to mention that the iPhone X comes with "arguably" the best screen on a smartphone, its only competition being the Samsung Galaxy and Note.
As for the VCSEL, I'm guessing that the components for FaceID are not equivalent to the components for telecom equipment, so your point is null. It this weren't true, then one would think that other companies would want access to VCSEL so that they could make their own FaceID "halo" feature, but that hasn't happened.