After losing Apple's iPad business, Intel has bled $7 billion while heavily subsidizing cheap x86 At

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  • Reply 181 of 217
    welshdogwelshdog Posts: 1,897member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Gatorguy View Post



    A flop would be a device that doesn't serve its intended purpose. 

    That is not the definition of flop. Total failure is, but using your parlance the device in question did not make money for it's manufacturer so it did not serve the intended purpose.

  • Reply 182 of 217
    welshdog wrote: »
    <div class="quote-container" data-huddler-embed="/t/183451/after-losing-apples-ipad-business-intel-has-bled-7-billion-while-heavily-subsidizing-cheap-x86-atom-android-tablets/40#post_2640286" data-huddler-embed-placeholder="false">Quote:<div class="quote-block">Originally Posted by <strong>Gatorguy</strong> <a href="/t/183451/after-losing-apples-ipad-business-intel-has-bled-7-billion-while-heavily-subsidizing-cheap-x86-atom-android-tablets/40#post_2640286"><img alt="View Post" src="/img/forum/go_quote.gif" /></a><br /><br />A flop would be a device that doesn't serve its intended purpose. </div></div><p>That is not the definition of flop. Total failure is, but using your parlance the device in question did not make money for it's manufacturer so it did not serve the intended purpose.</p>
    If something is launched to be a reference model, to show OEM’s what they could do and financial considerations are ignored then wether it makes a profit or not means that it is not a flop.
    When in the case of winRT for example they change the objective after launch, hoping it would be a financial success then you have a flop.
  • Reply 183 of 217
    gatorguy wrote: »
    Not quite. You completely ignored -- but I am sure, did not miss -- my other two questions.

    (You 'also' appear to have missed a key word in making your exaggerated claim about Google's stated purpose, but that's a minor point -- I am throwing this in to see if you'll predictaby respond to just this, thus ignoring my reminding you of the two questions you ignored).
    Google's blogs and their Nexus Program lead discuss why Nexus devices are needed.
    The number of sales of any particular Nexus model and the revenue from them has no bearing on why Google has to have them built. They're not designed to be revenue drivers.

    So no your questions weren't ignored. If you read my entire post they were addressed in the quotes I provided explaining why Nexus models are created.
    1: They might be "flops" if the goal was simply making Nexus models successful commercial products. They're not. The commercially successful products are left to the Android partners to design and sell (with various degrees of success).
    2: Googles' engineer explains why they are a necessary component of the Android development program. and how they successfully fill the need for an actual hardware reference platform as a "proving ground" so to speak.

    It's not as hard to understand as several members here are making it so I'm becoming convinced that a few here simply refuse to give up a talking point that Nexus models are a "flop". They insist on purporting to know better how to gauge the success of the Nexus program than Google does. A good start would be first understanding why it exists.

    There's only one reference tablet:

    the iPad.
  • Reply 184 of 217
    fracfrac Posts: 480member
    gatorguy wrote: »

    Question for anyone who still has doubts: If Google really meant for Nexus models to be profit-making, licensee-competing commercial successes why don't they go directly to Foxconn or Pegatron or Quanta directly for the builds rather than using a licensee like LG or HTC or Motorola or Samsung who doesn't even manufacture the device themselves?

    'nuff said.

    Answer: Because Google doesn't have a Tim Cook. Google has not shown any real chops for manufacturing any of it's consumer devices...it's not their thing, so they pass on the risks to their small circle of eager OEMs who are anxious to gain any advantage they can, if there is one to be had.
    The problem as I see it, with Google delivering a 'reference' product, is that the reference design seems to be taken as the maximum to emulate - which few manage, preferring to go with lesser specs to give at least 'some' profit. The reference product also thus determines the maximum retail cost....I'm sure you can find higher end tablets costing more with better specs, but where is the differentiation advantage? When the 'reference' design manages 90% of most Android users needs(you say)...there seems to be little appetite to spend more to gain little extra.
    For Apple, it's simplicity itself. iOS, iPhones, iPads are clearly differentiated from the Android pack by virtue of not being Android and even though the capabilities may not be that different across the platforms, it's a marketable advantage that allows for premium pricing. Apple is always going to emphasise that 'Appleness' trumps any other metric for marketing purposes - justified or not.
  • Reply 185 of 217

    Wow Ded does realise the world doesn't revolve around Apple doesn't he. Intel didn't get the business for the iPad that's true. Everything after that point though is them competing for the other manufacturers. Intel aren't basically given Atom away because they need to make tablets cheaper than iPad, there giving it away so the other tablet makers stay with Intel until Intel can make a chip that's good enough to charge more.

     

    If they lost manufacturers and in turn manufacturers customers it would cost them more in the long run to get them back. Win RT at this point is basically dead, the Atom versions won in that space. So in that sense the plan is currently working.

  • Reply 186 of 217
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,309member

    Saying that the Atom's won in a space where MAYBE a few millions of devices were sold isn't in the same ballpark as Qualcomm or Apple volumes. It's like Nvidia winning the Shield space. 

     

    The problem for Intel ultimately is that the market, save for Apple, won't pay premium prices for SOC's; there's just not enough profit in the finished devices. Even the K1 has smaller die than the A8X, and die size at a particular node is a good indication of price. Essentially, Intel could win by being at 10nm when everybody else is at 14nm, but as fast as ARM is ramping, that isn't a bet that I would make. There are a few posters here who have fab experience that could elucidate this more, but essentially, Intel comes in on the high end of the price range, or has to subsidize market share. Certainly possible, but with the drop in the PC business, it would paint a diminishing profit picture.

  • Reply 187 of 217
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    Google has a 'stated purpose' for Nexus? I'd like a link to that.

    That aside, (i) this means that sales must certainly fall into the 'flop' -- i.e., rounding error -- category, factually speaking; and (ii) how has Google's stated purpose panned out -- do you have a statement or something along those lines from Google on that front?

    (Corrected typo)

    There's not going to be a statement, because the Nexus wasn't meant to be sold in massive amounts. In their eyes it is not a flop regardless of sales numbers, and since it's their device with a stated purpose they have every right to think what they want no matter what we think.
  • Reply 188 of 217
    dasanman69 wrote: »

    There's not going to be a statement, because the Nexus wasn't meant to be sold in massive amounts. In their eyes it is not a flop regardless of sales numbers, and since it's their device with a stated purpose they have every right to think what they want no matter what we think.

    Thats a tad trite. Anyone has the right to think what they want about anything. So I don't get your point.
  • Reply 189 of 217
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    Thats a tad trite. Anyone has the right to think what they want about anything. So I don't get your point.

    My point is that there isn't going to be a statement from Google, because the Nexus fulfills its stated purpose.
  • Reply 190 of 217
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,309member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by dasanman69 View Post





    There's not going to be a statement, because the Nexus wasn't meant to be sold in massive amounts. In their eyes it is not a flop regardless of sales numbers, and since it's their device with a stated purpose they have every right to think what they want no matter what we think.

    If Google sells them to customers who review them poorly, and potential customers stay away in droves due to the build, then perhaps there's success internally and failure in the market. What was the point to selling these POS builds to consumers anyway?

     

    At any rate, demonstrates what Google thinks of its customers. Oh wait, those would be advertisers, not Nexus buyers.

  • Reply 191 of 217

    Gatorguy, I have been impressed that you generally don't try to play fanboy, and you raise the discussion over all, but I do think on this one you are missing the trees for looking at the forest.  Why can't Google aim for a large market with it's own product?  They make it and control everything about it, why is that still just another run of the mill mishmash?  I say this partly from my Wife's experience with the Nexus 5 phone.  I works, sort of...if you ignore how often it does something you just don't want it to do.  IPad's and iPhone's do the same kind of stuff, but I can always understand immediately what is going on and what needs to be changed.  The Nexus 5 is a bag of hurt for basic people who simply want to text something to their friends.  Why are there multiple apps installed to message with fighting over control of the device so they can provide your messaging?  Why is it always trying to force her to use Google's Facebook clone?  

     

    Most of our disappointment with the Nexus lineup may simply be we were contaminated with an iPad/iPhone understanding of how a device will work.  That being said why do I have to work so hard to understand what is going on?  One of the reason's iPads are so useful around our house is they simply work.  Dad doesn't have to go change the settings on the 3 different remote's to get someone on the video game or tv show they want to watch.  If Apple can make a computer that is easier than a TV to opperate, then why can't anyone else?  Each new generation of "smart" phones before the iPhone required a manual to learn how to use them.  Now that is no longer the case.  Why would anyone want to go back to devices that require us to learn their way of working rather than the other way around?

  • Reply 192 of 217
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    tmay wrote: »
    If Google sells them to customers who review them poorly, and potential customers stay away in droves due to the build, then perhaps there's success internally and failure in the market. What was the point to selling these POS builds to consumers anyway?

    At any rate, demonstrates what Google thinks of its customers. Oh wait, those would be advertisers, not Nexus buyers.

    That would depend on the review, and why the consumer purchased the device. A father of 4 would give a Ferrari a bad review, and a wealthy single man would give a mini van a bad review. Both are automobiles but serve very different purposes.
  • Reply 193 of 217
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,309member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by dasanman69 View Post





    That would depend on the review, and why the consumer purchased the device. A father of 4 would give a Ferrari a bad review, and a wealthy single man would give a mini van a bad review. Both are automobiles but serve very different purposes.

    Fair enough. Here's a link to the review.

     

    http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/11/11/nexus-9-vs-ipad-air-2-a-mostly-subjective-comparison/

  • Reply 194 of 217
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    Gatorguy, I have been impressed that you generally don't try to play fanboy, and you raise the discussion over all, but I do think on this one you are missing the trees for looking at the forest.  Why can't Google aim for a large market with it's own product?

    Google hasn't historically shown very much interest of getting into smartphone hardware as a business. There was the old Nexus One direct-to-customer sales program years back when there were very few Android devices for the public to experience. But Android was designed first and foremost as a widely-available alternative mobile OS rather than created to run on Google's own hardware. Even before the first Android device ever came to market it was the OEM's coming up with hardware platforms for the OS, not Google creating their own.

    Of course the most obvious reason not to jump in hardware would be competition with their own OEM's. There really would be no benefit to doing so would there unless it was an all-in commitment, licensees be damned? Since Google's expertise is in software and not hardware it would be a pretty tough road with probably few financial returns. Why do it?

    As for your wife's difficulties with a Nexus 5, that backs up my previous posts that they are not designed for the consumer market and require a lot of trade-offs for the sole benefit of having the latest OS updates in a timely manner. They don't have much storage as a rule, nor the best displays, nor the best cameras, nor the fastest hardware. I'm sure there's a fair percentage of Nexus buyers who regret not doing their homework well enough to understand what they forego when choosing a Nexus model over one of the much better featured, equipped and designed OEM models that build on the Nexus reference platform. Nexus sales are quite limited for good reason IMHO. Lots of folks might think they want pure Android but there's a lot of benefits to the unique features and usability improvements the licensees bring. Any manufacturers flagship would be easier and more pleasant to use than any Nexus model IMO.
  • Reply 195 of 217
    prwprw Posts: 31member

    The major obstacles to Apple using ARM SOCs in laptops are USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt.  Apple didn't provide USB 3.0 until Intel started bundling support into its processor chips.  Even though USB 3.0 hubs are commonly available now, Apple would have to plunk the technology into its ARM SOCs to maintain a similar profile.  I hope they do so.  It takes hours to restore my iPad Air and iPhone 6+ now, since they only support USB 2.0.  Can you imagine a new Apple laptop without USB 3.0 ?

     

    Thunderbolt is a joint Apple and Intel technology, but only Intel is producing controller chips now.  How long before Intel moves that support into the processors ?  Then they could drop the external controller chips, and Apple would face a very expensive fork:  keep Intel processors or design their own controllers, or redesign their processors to include Thunderbolt.  

     

    If Apple overcomes these obstacles, I imagine a new version of Rosetta for Intel X86 instruction streams.  And they would still need to build-in virtual machine support.  

     

    I wonder - if Intel is licensing Atom designs, could Apple acquire a license and add an Atom core or 2 to one of their ARM Ann systems ?  That would be an interesting way to combine Windows virtual box and USB 3.0 support.  

  • Reply 196 of 217
    Who writes these headlines?

    You can't lose what you never had. Intel didn't "lose" Apple's iPad business, because it never had it in the first place. There have never been Intel CPUs in iPads.
  • Reply 197 of 217
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    tmay wrote: »
    If Google sells them to customers who review them poorly, and potential customers stay away in droves due to the build, then perhaps there's success internally and failure in the market. What was the point to selling these POS builds to consumers anyway?

    At any rate, demonstrates what Google thinks of its customers. Oh wait, those would be advertisers, not Nexus buyers.

    It isn't all Google's fault, it's HTC's as well, thought I haven't seen any of problems that other customers are having with mine, i.e. the gap between the screen and body, bleeding around edges, there is defiantly a quality control issue that HTC needs to address. To many half assed models are getting through the line. I know what the problem is too, it's the way their assembled, some are being pressed to hard together causing the screen bleed and some not hard enough causing the gap, both problems can be rectified with assembly retooling and it needs to be done now before these problems get out of hand. Pretty shabby of HTC and for Google allowing this too happen in the first place. They need to own up and recall the faulty ones. This nothing new, the Nexus 7's had problems as well with their first batch. Nvidia has managed to produce two tablets without problems, I think HTC can to, wake up guys.
  • Reply 198 of 217
    tmay wrote: »

    There's a honest review by someone you'd think would be biased. Android tablets IMO are still lacking big time.
  • Reply 199 of 217

  • Reply 200 of 217
    alfiejralfiejr Posts: 1,524member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gatorguy View Post





    Of course:

    http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/android-be-together-not-same.html



    "Advances in computing are driven at the intersection of hardware and software. That's why we’ve always introduced Nexus devices alongside our platform releases. Rather than creating software in the abstract, we work with hardware partners to build Nexus devices to help push the boundaries of what's possible. Nexus devices also serve as a reference for the ecosystem as they develop on our newest release."



    Ars also published an article back in June based on interviews with the Nexus program manager.

    http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/nexus-program-manager-says-nexus-devices-cant-ever-go-away/

    "The whole idea of Nexus was, we did it for two reasons: one is to actually have a physical device that we're working with, but the other was sort of like a statement of purity," Burke told Ars. "It's like, here's how when we were designing Android and creating different frameworks and APIs and user experience, here's how we think it should look. It's a starting point."



    Burke was adamant that development of Android would be much more difficult without Nexus hardware to test against'. "I think of my team, and there's two outputs: there's the open-source code we make available and everyone uses, and then there's Nexus devices, and there's no way I could do open-source code without a Nexus device," Burke said. "You just can't get all the bugs, you can't actually experience it, you've got to live and breathe it day-in and day-out... So the idea of a Nexus device will never go away, can't ever go away... So I think Nexus continues to be very important for Android."



    Burke also said that the team would continue to release new versions of Android alongside new Nexus hardware, as has become customary. "I don't see why we would change that," he said. "Otherwise, if there was no Nexus device, I'd have to launch something on existing Nexus devices, and eventually in a couple years those devices would be out of date and then what do I do? I wouldn't be able to be sure that when I was open-sourcing code that it would actually work."



    ah, good of you to cherry-pick some Google PR quotes from 2014 about its Nexus line intentions - it's a testing platform, a prototype. at least, nowadays it is.

     

    but let's go back a few years to the beginning, shall we? and see if that was the only original goal.

     

    after rummaging around a lot of Wikipedia Nexus products footnotes, i found this article from 2012 that sums it all up nicely:

     

    http://techland.time.com/2012/08/22/bad-news-for-google-nexus-phones-still-dont-sell/

     

    it's based on the revelation of the true sales of Samsung's Galaxy Nexus as revealed in the Apple litigation - they were really terrible, less than a million total. launched in 2011, the Galaxy Nexus was, beyond any question, the first serious effort by the #1 Android OEM to sell a Nexus-branded product:

     

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Nexus

     

    unlike the first two Nexus phones, the Nexus One (HTC) and the Nexus S (Samsung), it got big hype in the media, wide distribution, and significant marketing. many reviewers, even most, called it the best Android phone, and some called it the best smartphone of all vs. the iPhone. by anyone's definition, given all this, the Galaxy Nexus was indeed a "flop."

     

    btw, this was also the same time frame when Google decided to buy Motorola Mobility. it was obviously a time when - under Andy Rubin's control of Android - Google was thinking big, with an Android "flagship" hardware emphasis. it is wonderfully ironic that Motorola finally released its own and first Nexus 6 phone just last month only a few days before its sale to Lenovo was consummated. Rubin was dumped as head of Android in early 2013, due in large part no doubt due to the way the Motorola acquisition he spearheaded turned out for Google, with a net loss of several $billion. and this irony is further compounded by his resignation from Google a few days after the Nexus 6 was released.

     

    is not the picture now becoming clear?

     

    under Rubin's control, Google indeed intended the Nexus line to be its "flagship" products and genuine commercial successes in terms of sales and "branding." his final effort was the late 2012 Nexus 4 (LG), which also found anemic sales - it "flopped." and the Motorola acquisition was part of his long range plan for Google to become an OEM itself. but Larry Paige decided in early 2013 to veto Rubin's strategic plan, and pushed him aside.

     

    so since then, yes, beginning with the Nexus 5, Google has re-defined its Nexus line as a prototype series not intended for commercial success.

     

    since it never had any commercial success anyway.

     

    the Rubin Nexus Plan A was indeed a flop, beyond any question. and he got dumped! The Paige Nexus Plan B i guess is what you call it - if you ignore all that history. 

     

    but then the next problem is, what do we call it when the latest Nexus hardware - is this case the Nexus 9 tablet - turns out to be a total piece of shit? is that not also a "flop" - a failure to achieve the stated goal of being "reference" hardware?

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