I feel so exclusive being in the .1% that simply thinks unit sales is by far the most useless metric for any business. It simply doesn't matter. High units for little revenue is a terrible business model, most if not all investors should care about that. The same is true of profitability.
You must not know much at all about business then. Do you think advertisers and app developers don't care about unit sales? You wouldn't want to be in the banking business making fractions of a percent, but on hundreds of billions of dollars? Sorry to inform you but, there are plenty of stable and profitable businesses that operate on high volume, low margin strategies to make way way more than you ever will. In fact, one of the most remarkable things about Apple's latest stretch is their ability to maintain their margins. Usually high margin businesses have a much shorter day in the sun before their margins drop, or they simply fail.
Wow! This is utterly amazing! I know it's competition and good for the consumer, but schmidt/google really screwed over Stevo by getting the inside scoop while sitting on apple's board. Just think how much apple would've sold without android phones pretending to be just as good as the iPhone? Oh well, I know I should just get over it and move on. But it was a dirty deal none the less!
I think Apple will be flying far ahead MS in revenue for this holiday quarter. A milestone.
Getting ahead of MS in net income is a harder task as MS? nets about 35% while Apple is 22% due to the nature of their core markets. I think sometime this calendar year Apple will also best MS in income. Another milestone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AIaddict
Anyone selling commodities, or advertising. For example, Google is not interested in the revenue or profits from the sales of Android phones, they don't get any of it. They do care about unit sales of Android because that drives ad impressions and use of Google search and other products, which in turn is a revenue driver for Google.
Excellent point and rebuttal to my query. I should have worded it more clearly to include the context of the handset market.
Did you forget you sarcasm quotes?????? The only thing that matters to investors is how much money a company is making - its why then invest. Small unit count with high ROI is much much much (put as many as you like) more interesting to investors than high unit count with low ROI.
Investors that put money into 'eyeballs' or 'clicks' only do so because they believe the business model will eventually turn those into large ROIs. If it doesn't say bye-bye to your money.
Uh no. Investors look at reward vs risk. They invest a tremendous ammount of money in low return, low risk investments like government bonds, investment grade corporate bonds, utilities and so forth. Things with low rates of return and low growth potential. Much much more money than is invested in high margin high growth companies.
Historically, investors following value investing strategies have outperformed those who invest in high growth stocks, over the long haul. Betting on a Google, Apple, Amazon etc. is risky and while there can be huge rewards, you can also lose plenty, if not everything. Most tech companies that show a lot of promise fail. Apple almost did.
I think Apple will be flying far ahead MS in revenue for this holiday quarter. A milestone.
Getting ahead of MS in net income is a harder task as MS? nets about 35% while Apple is 22% due to the nature of their core markets. I think sometime this calendar year Apple will also best MS in income. Another milestone.
Microsoft's day has passed barring a sudden change out of Redmond. The tablet market is in its infancy, and quite frankly, the iPad and it soon to appear competitors are barely scratching the surface of their potential. In a few years the CPU power will be higher, there will be better connectivity to 3rd party devices, and the OS's will evolve to allow them to perform more and more of the tasks that currently require a PC. And most of them will be running OS's that don't come from MS (baring the unforseen ability of MS to actually get back in the game). The paradigm shift of pocket and tablet computing will erode MS's revenue and margins, so rather than it being a "harder task" to beat MS's income, I think it will simply be a slower task, with much of the "hard work" being shared by Apple, Google, RIM, and many of the companies that used to be MS's partners including Intel, IBM, HP, Dell, etc.
Yes, what you also wrote is too true, but slowly, although gathering much pace, the worm turns, and it is Apple leading the way.
I have to use a PC at work, here is how a typical days goes by:
1. Boot up (with a few minutes)
2. Okay, Outlook is down for the zillionith time, re-boot
3. Still down, notify help desk, "yes we know there is a proble, looking into it:
4. Communicator is down, when its not, get missed calls, ghosts at the other end
Maybe I'm holding the receiver wrong lol !
5. If I'm call that week, I lug the wonderful brilliant and amazing Dell laptop home
"Dad why are you bringing that piece of crap (our code for PCs) into our home ? The kids ask
6. It takes 5 mins and 7 secs to boot the Dell (my 10 year old G4 takes 15 secs) and my
5 year old MBP takes about 45 secs, go figure ?
I HATE everything M$, why ? Because they make garbage its that simple, and most people are sucked into a vacuum of zero class, poor design, crappy quality, non-existant support, and an OS that was devised by a person in a straight jacket.
I'm am SO HAPPY when I can use my Macs, the same sentiment from my high school son, as the school mainly has PCs that either don't work, or are so full of M$ rot, that they need to be thrown out. Why oh why are schools in Australia purchasing windoze machines, when Macs are MUCH cheaper over time. No windoze rot, no viruses, better security, brilliant UI, robust design - perfect for kids, elegant, ease of use, hold their resell value much better, and last far longer than PCs. I am still amazed and frustrated with schools.
I hear u WH. My GF works in the school system and some D**kh**d purchaser went for cheap MS machines that she says are just about unusable! We have macs at home and she thinks I'm a genius for introducing her to them! Needless to say I'm not a genius! Best and enjoyed reading your comments!
PS. Best app I bought is TomTom gps really enjoying it! $35! Really recommend it over a stand alone unit! (no affiliation, just a great app) best
Microsoft's day has passed barring a sudden change out of Redmond. The tablet market is in its infancy, and quite frankly, the iPad and it soon to appear competitors are barely scratching the surface of their potential. In a few years the CPU power will be higher, there will be better connectivity to 3rd party devices, and the OS's will evolve to allow them to perform more and more of the tasks that currently require a PC. And most of them will be running OS's that don't come from MS (baring the unforseen ability of MS to actually get back in the game). The paradigm shift of pocket and tablet computing will erode MS's revenue and margins, so rather than it being a "harder task" to beat MS's income, I think it will simply be a slower task, with much of the "hard work" being shared by Apple, Google, RIM, and many of the companies that used to be MS's partners including Intel, IBM, HP, Dell, etc.
Possibly, but we have to keep in mind that MS is still making record revenue and profits (still more profit than Apple) despite their lack of mindshare. They even had a recent, huge success with the Kinect. I don?t think we?ll know the state of MS until they start to actually drop in revenue and profit YoY.
These might be the signs of MS weakening but they are well entrenched and make more profit in a non-holiday quarter than Apple?s market value was when they trimmed the fat and reorganized themselves to get back on track. In other words, MS will have to many more misteps than they have until they are in a place like Palm, Moto and others.
PS. Best app I bought is TomTom gps really enjoying it! $35! Really recommend it over a stand alone unit! (no affiliation, just a great app) best
If I didn?t own the app I?d think you had an affiliation with TomTom the way you pimp this app. It?s really great. The new instance OTA maps updates with v1.6 are great.
If I didn’t own the app I’d think you had an affiliation with TomTom the way you pimp this app. It’s really great. The new instance OTA maps updates with v1.6 are great.
Thanks, S...yep! I'm very interested in what everyone else is enjoying as far as Apps! Just throwing it out there! I know u know this, S, but the more I can get my IPhone to do, makes for less gadgets I have to "worry" about! Sold all my cameras, gave away all my iPods, didn't have to buy a stand alone Gps! The iPhone 4 is so f'ng cool!
PS. A great app for runners is the Nike + gps. You don't have to wear the "Thingy" in ur shoe anymore! Sorry off topic!
I figured Nokia's market share would be challenged by the increase of cheap Android smartphones. They'll build Android smartphones for less and less money since there's no licensing fees. Why buy a Nokia dumb-phone when you can get some Android smartphone for the same price? The industry changed so fast on Nokia, I don't know if they'll ever be the same. I know that some company has to produce cellphones for third-world nations, but if Nokia has a hard time selling high-end smartphones, where are the profits going to come from. They keep saying everything is alright, but it certainly doesn't look that way as Android smartphones have taken mid-priced market and are soon working their way down to the low-end market. Apple seems to have the high-end in its back pocket, so where does Nokia go from here? There's a huge market of cellphone users out there, but with two huge companies with money to spare grabbing everything, it gets tougher for the slow to move companies and the companies that can't spend lots of money for R&D.
It's really amazing that Apple was able to change an entire industry in a few years and it wasn't even a market that Apple had any experience in. Cellphones were cellphones but Apple managed to change them into hand-held computers that did double duty as cellphones. I guess the Palm Treo could do those things, too, but Palm couldn't follow through with the touch interface.
I think Apple will be flying far ahead MS in revenue for this holiday quarter. A milestone.
Getting ahead of MS in net income is a harder task as MS? nets about 35% while Apple is 22% due to the nature of their core markets. I think sometime this calendar year Apple will also best MS in income. Another milestone.
Excellent point and rebuttal to my query. I should have worded it more clearly to include the context of the handset market.
With the introduction of the Verizon iPhone, I figure Apple would easily jump ahead. I'm sure the Verizon iPhone is going to be in great demand by present Verizon users and I'll bet there'll be defectors from T-Mobile and Sprint wanting iPhones. If the iPad is geared up for 3 million units a month production and is available around the world, that would have to be an immense jump in revenue. There's still a wild card with the Maiden, N.C. data center. Apple is going to pull some announcement linked to it that will probably blow everyone away.
With the introduction of the Verizon iPhone, I figure Apple would easily jump ahead. I'm sure the Verizon iPhone is going to be in great demand by present Verizon users and I'll bet there'll be defectors from T-Mobile and Sprint wanting iPhones. If the iPad is geared up for 3 million units a month production and is available around the world, that would have to be an immense jump in revenue. There's still a wild card with the Maiden, N.C. data center. Apple is going to pull some announcement linked to it that will probably blow everyone away.
Yep, C. It's going to be very exciting. The new ipad, Lion and the iPhone 5, too! Can't wait!
Nokia made big money in the smartphone space with great hardware. But they didn't keep up with Apple in the smartphone software race and now they're toast.
Remember that little fact every time you hear a hater say that Apple just sells "shinier devices." I'm sure Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo does.
You must not know much at all about business then. Do you think advertisers and app developers don't care about unit sales? You wouldn't want to be in the banking business making fractions of a percent, but on hundreds of billions of dollars? Sorry to inform you but, there are plenty of stable and profitable businesses that operate on high volume, low margin strategies to make way way more than you ever will. In fact, one of the most remarkable things about Apple's latest stretch is their ability to maintain their margins. Usually high margin businesses have a much shorter day in the sun before their margins drop, or they simply fail.
Of course Google needs unit sales to ensure that they are on as many handhelds as possible to generate the ad business they need to survive. Likewise it is inaccurate to say that Apple doesn't care about units sold. But your analogy to the banking industry, of which I have a fairly deep background is completely off-base for the purposes of your argument.If anything you needed to look at ROI for any given instrument - the higher the ROI the better the profitability and the more resources available to offer through the instruments - investments, mortgages etc. In fact your analogy fails at exactly the same place the finance industry nearly failed not so long ago. [EDIT:]For example, banks offer accounts to manage money through, some pay a small interest rate, most have some kind of fees associated with them. Categorically they have many many more bank accounts than they have investment funds, loans or mortgages, however the loans, funds and mortgages makes a much higher return than the bank accounts per unit - which is why banks didn't object when the Banking Act was pushed through to allow insurance companies and investment firms to offer bank accounts as well, and why they do not particularly concern themselves with competition from credit unions for accounts.
So yes high volume, low margin can be a viable business model and has served Michael Dell (for example) and scores of others well during the initial phases of PC market growth. But you are seeing now the maturing of the PC market, and the Dell model leaves no room for switching to the more viable moderate volume higher margin strategy. That fact is demonstrated in Apple's continued double-digit growth in a slowly flattening market growth curve. It was demonstrated in the car industry as well. Convention wisdom in the past has been to cut margins to maintain marketshare - the proverbial "race to the bottom". As you lower margins you become increasingly vulnerable to market fluctuations in parts prices, you have to (as Dell did a decade ago by laying off their design team and other staff) reduce overhead to keep your costs as low as possible and so on. You have to go lowest commodity price on your parts, your quality suffers and you lose marketshare, through customer dissatisfaction.
Why do you think Apple has the highest customer satisfaction rating in the industry? Why do you think they have the highest retention and loyalty? Compare to companies like Honda, Mercedes Benz, Volvo. There are reasons behind these successes and they aren't due to the high volume/low margin model.
Uh no. Investors look at reward vs risk. They invest a tremendous ammount of money in low return, low risk investments like government bonds, investment grade corporate bonds, utilities and so forth. Things with low rates of return and low growth potential. Much much more money than is invested in high margin high growth companies.
Historically, investors following value investing strategies have outperformed those who invest in high growth stocks, over the long haul. Betting on a Google, Apple, Amazon etc. is risky and while there can be huge rewards, you can also lose plenty, if not everything. Most tech companies that show a lot of promise fail. Apple almost did.
You need to be clearer here with your example. The investors you are talking about are risk averse investors of the institutional variety - fund managers and the like. You are lumping together a multitude of different investors under only one rubric, which unwise and misleading. Like saying there are fish in the ocean - true, but hardly representative of the actual diversity and relative populations*. And investors look not just at reward versus risk, there are many other factors that going into investment decisioning - health of the market, segment performance, segment maturity, long-term and short-term performance, company management, supply-side resources, internal viability, and so on. Your last paragraph is chock-a-block with questionable truisms that I have no desire to address at this point.
*there are approximately 2 million known different species of marine life in the world's oceans. Of that number, there are 15,304 known species of fish and 194,696 to 214,696 known species of animals and plants, which are critical elements in the ecosystem that supports the fish species. Just in case you were curious.
Like saying there are fish in the ocean - true, but hardly representative of the actual diversity and relative populations*.
*there are approximately 2 million known different species of marine life in the world's oceans. Of that number, there are 15,304 known species of fish and 194,696 to 214,696 known species of animals and plants, which are critical elements in the ecosystem that supports the fish species. Just in case you were curious.
Comments
I feel so exclusive being in the .1% that simply thinks unit sales is by far the most useless metric for any business. It simply doesn't matter. High units for little revenue is a terrible business model, most if not all investors should care about that. The same is true of profitability.
You must not know much at all about business then. Do you think advertisers and app developers don't care about unit sales? You wouldn't want to be in the banking business making fractions of a percent, but on hundreds of billions of dollars?
Wow! This is utterly amazing! I know it's competition and good for the consumer, but schmidt/google really screwed over Stevo by getting the inside scoop while sitting on apple's board. Just think how much apple would've sold without android phones pretending to be just as good as the iPhone? Oh well, I know I should just get over it and move on. But it was a dirty deal none the less!
I think Apple will be flying far ahead MS in revenue for this holiday quarter. A milestone.
Getting ahead of MS in net income is a harder task as MS? nets about 35% while Apple is 22% due to the nature of their core markets. I think sometime this calendar year Apple will also best MS in income. Another milestone.
Anyone selling commodities, or advertising. For example, Google is not interested in the revenue or profits from the sales of Android phones, they don't get any of it. They do care about unit sales of Android because that drives ad impressions and use of Google search and other products, which in turn is a revenue driver for Google.
Excellent point and rebuttal to my query. I should have worded it more clearly to include the context of the handset market.
Did you forget you sarcasm quotes?????? The only thing that matters to investors is how much money a company is making - its why then invest. Small unit count with high ROI is much much much (put as many as you like) more interesting to investors than high unit count with low ROI.
Investors that put money into 'eyeballs' or 'clicks' only do so because they believe the business model will eventually turn those into large ROIs. If it doesn't say bye-bye to your money.
Uh no. Investors look at reward vs risk. They invest a tremendous ammount of money in low return, low risk investments like government bonds, investment grade corporate bonds, utilities and so forth. Things with low rates of return and low growth potential. Much much more money than is invested in high margin high growth companies.
Historically, investors following value investing strategies have outperformed those who invest in high growth stocks, over the long haul. Betting on a Google, Apple, Amazon etc. is risky and while there can be huge rewards, you can also lose plenty, if not everything. Most tech companies that show a lot of promise fail. Apple almost did.
I think Apple will be flying far ahead MS in revenue for this holiday quarter. A milestone.
Getting ahead of MS in net income is a harder task as MS? nets about 35% while Apple is 22% due to the nature of their core markets. I think sometime this calendar year Apple will also best MS in income. Another milestone.
Microsoft's day has passed barring a sudden change out of Redmond. The tablet market is in its infancy, and quite frankly, the iPad and it soon to appear competitors are barely scratching the surface of their potential. In a few years the CPU power will be higher, there will be better connectivity to 3rd party devices, and the OS's will evolve to allow them to perform more and more of the tasks that currently require a PC. And most of them will be running OS's that don't come from MS (baring the unforseen ability of MS to actually get back in the game). The paradigm shift of pocket and tablet computing will erode MS's revenue and margins, so rather than it being a "harder task" to beat MS's income, I think it will simply be a slower task, with much of the "hard work" being shared by Apple, Google, RIM, and many of the companies that used to be MS's partners including Intel, IBM, HP, Dell, etc.
Thanks for the comment on my post.
Yes, what you also wrote is too true, but slowly, although gathering much pace, the worm turns, and it is Apple leading the way.
I have to use a PC at work, here is how a typical days goes by:
1. Boot up (with a few minutes)
2. Okay, Outlook is down for the zillionith time, re-boot
3. Still down, notify help desk, "yes we know there is a proble, looking into it:
4. Communicator is down, when its not, get missed calls, ghosts at the other end
Maybe I'm holding the receiver wrong lol !
5. If I'm call that week, I lug the wonderful brilliant and amazing Dell laptop home
"Dad why are you bringing that piece of crap (our code for PCs) into our home ? The kids ask
6. It takes 5 mins and 7 secs to boot the Dell (my 10 year old G4 takes 15 secs) and my
5 year old MBP takes about 45 secs, go figure ?
I HATE everything M$, why ? Because they make garbage its that simple, and most people are sucked into a vacuum of zero class, poor design, crappy quality, non-existant support, and an OS that was devised by a person in a straight jacket.
I'm am SO HAPPY when I can use my Macs, the same sentiment from my high school son, as the school mainly has PCs that either don't work, or are so full of M$ rot, that they need to be thrown out. Why oh why are schools in Australia purchasing windoze machines, when Macs are MUCH cheaper over time. No windoze rot, no viruses, better security, brilliant UI, robust design - perfect for kids, elegant, ease of use, hold their resell value much better, and last far longer than PCs. I am still amazed and frustrated with schools.
I hear u WH. My GF works in the school system and some D**kh**d purchaser went for cheap MS machines that she says are just about unusable! We have macs at home and she thinks I'm a genius for introducing her to them! Needless to say I'm not a genius! Best and enjoyed reading your comments!
PS. Best app I bought is TomTom gps really enjoying it! $35! Really recommend it over a stand alone unit! (no affiliation, just a great app) best
Microsoft's day has passed barring a sudden change out of Redmond. The tablet market is in its infancy, and quite frankly, the iPad and it soon to appear competitors are barely scratching the surface of their potential. In a few years the CPU power will be higher, there will be better connectivity to 3rd party devices, and the OS's will evolve to allow them to perform more and more of the tasks that currently require a PC. And most of them will be running OS's that don't come from MS (baring the unforseen ability of MS to actually get back in the game). The paradigm shift of pocket and tablet computing will erode MS's revenue and margins, so rather than it being a "harder task" to beat MS's income, I think it will simply be a slower task, with much of the "hard work" being shared by Apple, Google, RIM, and many of the companies that used to be MS's partners including Intel, IBM, HP, Dell, etc.
Possibly, but we have to keep in mind that MS is still making record revenue and profits (still more profit than Apple) despite their lack of mindshare. They even had a recent, huge success with the Kinect. I don?t think we?ll know the state of MS until they start to actually drop in revenue and profit YoY.
These might be the signs of MS weakening but they are well entrenched and make more profit in a non-holiday quarter than Apple?s market value was when they trimmed the fat and reorganized themselves to get back on track. In other words, MS will have to many more misteps than they have until they are in a place like Palm, Moto and others.
PS. Best app I bought is TomTom gps really enjoying it! $35! Really recommend it over a stand alone unit! (no affiliation, just a great app) best
If I didn?t own the app I?d think you had an affiliation with TomTom the way you pimp this app. It?s really great. The new instance OTA maps updates with v1.6 are great.
If I didn’t own the app I’d think you had an affiliation with TomTom the way you pimp this app. It’s really great. The new instance OTA maps updates with v1.6 are great.
Thanks, S...yep! I'm very interested in what everyone else is enjoying as far as Apps! Just throwing it out there!
PS. A great app for runners is the Nike + gps. You don't have to wear the "Thingy" in ur shoe anymore! Sorry off topic!
http://everyjoe.com/technology/nokia...go-was-a-fish/
I figured Nokia's market share would be challenged by the increase of cheap Android smartphones. They'll build Android smartphones for less and less money since there's no licensing fees. Why buy a Nokia dumb-phone when you can get some Android smartphone for the same price? The industry changed so fast on Nokia, I don't know if they'll ever be the same. I know that some company has to produce cellphones for third-world nations, but if Nokia has a hard time selling high-end smartphones, where are the profits going to come from. They keep saying everything is alright, but it certainly doesn't look that way as Android smartphones have taken mid-priced market and are soon working their way down to the low-end market. Apple seems to have the high-end in its back pocket, so where does Nokia go from here? There's a huge market of cellphone users out there, but with two huge companies with money to spare grabbing everything, it gets tougher for the slow to move companies and the companies that can't spend lots of money for R&D.
It's really amazing that Apple was able to change an entire industry in a few years and it wasn't even a market that Apple had any experience in. Cellphones were cellphones but Apple managed to change them into hand-held computers that did double duty as cellphones. I guess the Palm Treo could do those things, too, but Palm couldn't follow through with the touch interface.
I think Apple will be flying far ahead MS in revenue for this holiday quarter. A milestone.
Getting ahead of MS in net income is a harder task as MS? nets about 35% while Apple is 22% due to the nature of their core markets. I think sometime this calendar year Apple will also best MS in income. Another milestone.
Excellent point and rebuttal to my query. I should have worded it more clearly to include the context of the handset market.
With the introduction of the Verizon iPhone, I figure Apple would easily jump ahead. I'm sure the Verizon iPhone is going to be in great demand by present Verizon users and I'll bet there'll be defectors from T-Mobile and Sprint wanting iPhones. If the iPad is geared up for 3 million units a month production and is available around the world, that would have to be an immense jump in revenue. There's still a wild card with the Maiden, N.C. data center. Apple is going to pull some announcement linked to it that will probably blow everyone away.
With the introduction of the Verizon iPhone, I figure Apple would easily jump ahead. I'm sure the Verizon iPhone is going to be in great demand by present Verizon users and I'll bet there'll be defectors from T-Mobile and Sprint wanting iPhones. If the iPad is geared up for 3 million units a month production and is available around the world, that would have to be an immense jump in revenue. There's still a wild card with the Maiden, N.C. data center. Apple is going to pull some announcement linked to it that will probably blow everyone away.
Yep, C. It's going to be very exciting. The new ipad, Lion and the iPhone 5, too! Can't wait!
Best!
Remember that little fact every time you hear a hater say that Apple just sells "shinier devices." I'm sure Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo does.
You must not know much at all about business then. Do you think advertisers and app developers don't care about unit sales? You wouldn't want to be in the banking business making fractions of a percent, but on hundreds of billions of dollars?
Of course Google needs unit sales to ensure that they are on as many handhelds as possible to generate the ad business they need to survive. Likewise it is inaccurate to say that Apple doesn't care about units sold. But your analogy to the banking industry, of which I have a fairly deep background is completely off-base for the purposes of your argument.If anything you needed to look at ROI for any given instrument - the higher the ROI the better the profitability and the more resources available to offer through the instruments - investments, mortgages etc. In fact your analogy fails at exactly the same place the finance industry nearly failed not so long ago. [EDIT:]For example, banks offer accounts to manage money through, some pay a small interest rate, most have some kind of fees associated with them. Categorically they have many many more bank accounts than they have investment funds, loans or mortgages, however the loans, funds and mortgages makes a much higher return than the bank accounts per unit - which is why banks didn't object when the Banking Act was pushed through to allow insurance companies and investment firms to offer bank accounts as well, and why they do not particularly concern themselves with competition from credit unions for accounts.
So yes high volume, low margin can be a viable business model and has served Michael Dell (for example) and scores of others well during the initial phases of PC market growth. But you are seeing now the maturing of the PC market, and the Dell model leaves no room for switching to the more viable moderate volume higher margin strategy. That fact is demonstrated in Apple's continued double-digit growth in a slowly flattening market growth curve. It was demonstrated in the car industry as well. Convention wisdom in the past has been to cut margins to maintain marketshare - the proverbial "race to the bottom". As you lower margins you become increasingly vulnerable to market fluctuations in parts prices, you have to (as Dell did a decade ago by laying off their design team and other staff) reduce overhead to keep your costs as low as possible and so on. You have to go lowest commodity price on your parts, your quality suffers and you lose marketshare, through customer dissatisfaction.
Why do you think Apple has the highest customer satisfaction rating in the industry? Why do you think they have the highest retention and loyalty? Compare to companies like Honda, Mercedes Benz, Volvo. There are reasons behind these successes and they aren't due to the high volume/low margin model.
Uh no. Investors look at reward vs risk. They invest a tremendous ammount of money in low return, low risk investments like government bonds, investment grade corporate bonds, utilities and so forth. Things with low rates of return and low growth potential. Much much more money than is invested in high margin high growth companies.
Historically, investors following value investing strategies have outperformed those who invest in high growth stocks, over the long haul. Betting on a Google, Apple, Amazon etc. is risky and while there can be huge rewards, you can also lose plenty, if not everything. Most tech companies that show a lot of promise fail. Apple almost did.
You need to be clearer here with your example. The investors you are talking about are risk averse investors of the institutional variety - fund managers and the like. You are lumping together a multitude of different investors under only one rubric, which unwise and misleading. Like saying there are fish in the ocean - true, but hardly representative of the actual diversity and relative populations*. And investors look not just at reward versus risk, there are many other factors that going into investment decisioning - health of the market, segment performance, segment maturity, long-term and short-term performance, company management, supply-side resources, internal viability, and so on. Your last paragraph is chock-a-block with questionable truisms that I have no desire to address at this point.
*there are approximately 2 million known different species of marine life in the world's oceans. Of that number, there are 15,304 known species of fish and 194,696 to 214,696 known species of animals and plants, which are critical elements in the ecosystem that supports the fish species. Just in case you were curious.
Why oh why are schools in Australia purchasing windoze machines, when Macs are MUCH cheaper over time.
Pretty simple answer really. When your kid starts his/her first job it's 90% probable that he/she will be given a windoze machine.
Like saying there are fish in the ocean - true, but hardly representative of the actual diversity and relative populations*.
*there are approximately 2 million known different species of marine life in the world's oceans. Of that number, there are 15,304 known species of fish and 194,696 to 214,696 known species of animals and plants, which are critical elements in the ecosystem that supports the fish species. Just in case you were curious.
Is there such a thing as a fish?
"in the universe" or "in the Milky Way Galaxy" has a nice ring to it too.
Till Underverse come.
Pretty simple answer really. When your kid starts his/her first job it's 90% probable that he/she will be given a windoze machine.
I think it's up to us to change that.