bulldogs

redefiler said:

msantti said:

Wow.

A feature Apple denies us.

No thanks, I'll keep paying Apple to not use SD cards and totally f*%$ing ghetto mobile device features.  It's 2016, and the pro tip is shuffling a couple gigs of internal storage with Apple Music or a cloud storage service is much cheaper, faster and convienent than offloading music files onto stupid storage wafers.

As someone who owns Apple, Android, Windows and Linux devices you have no idea what you are talking about - particularly with the "cheaper, faster, convenient" thing. Especially since Android phones - gasp! - ALSO OFFER CLOUD STORAGE OPTIONS making them equivalent with Apple products in this regard. SD cards are merely another option for people who want and need them. It is CHOICE. Because your preferred product doesn't offer choice and flexibility in this area, you denounce products that do have them. Whether arrogance, absurdity or (more likely) insecurity, it is not a helpful attitude. 

brakken said:

Oh well. That's the end of Japanese commercial tech hardware.
I wish they'd been able to keep Sharp Japanese.
Good luck, Foxy!

So ... Sony is going to stop making TVs, radios, gaming consoles and smartphones/tablets? When did that happen? And Sony is much bigger than Sharp. Where the entire Sharp company was bought for $6.5 billion, that would be the quarterly profit (or loss) for a single Sony division. Oh yeah, there is also Canon, Hitachi, JVC, NEC, Seiko, Pioneer, Panasonic, Yamaha ... all of whom are as big as Sharp ever was even in their heyday when they were a moderately successful seller of TVs, radios and VHS/DVD players. Now they are getting hit hard by competition from competition by South Korea, China and Taiwan, sure, but seeing one of their smaller units being bought by a foreign company is hardly the harbinger of "the end of Japanese commercial tech hardware." What is far more likely to happen is further consolidation where some of the smaller, struggling players will continue to get absorbed by the bigger ones. The downside to that is less innovation, of course, but that is more of a reflection of internal issues in Japan (with their aging population and whatnot, plus Japan is still recovering from the double hits of the global recession and the massive earthquake/tsunami/nuclear power plant breach that was just 5 years ago ... the financial equivalent of our experiencing 9/11, the Three Mile Island disaster and the great recession WITHIN FIVE YEARS OF EACH OTHER). But the main reason why a Japanese buyer could not be found for Sharp is because they don't offer anything that the other players in the industry have anyway. Sharp makes screens and cameras? So does Sony, Toshiba, Fuji and even (to a lesser extent) Panasonic. So while Sharp was a major supplier for Apple, few Android (for example) OEMs really relied on them to a significant degree, as they went to Sony for premium products and other Japanese companies for the cheaper ones. This will result in Apple being able to streamline their supply chain by allowing them to deal with Foxconn for manufacturing as well as camera and screen components, but that is pretty much the only story here, other than Sharp being able to compete with domestic competition and there being one less good R&D company (Sharp was doing great work with solar panel R&D for example, but weren't able to profit much from it because Chinese companies were "appropriating" their innovations and using a "manufacture cheaply and dump" strategy to eliminate the competition) out there. It would have been neat for Apple to pick up their solar R&D instead, but since that doesn't appear to be a point of interest for Foxconn, it looks like their great work in that area is going to come to a standstill.

williamh said:

ireland said:

What would you do to save Yahoo!

The fact that we don't use Yahoo isn't exactly a failure of Yahoo's, it's just that their "directory" is an anachronism from the time before search engines.  How many things have to go wrong in the world for us to go back to that?  

It isn't that they were a "directory"; people could ignore that if they wanted to, and it was actually useful to people who wanted it. And as someone said earlier, it had nothing to do with "the mind police" (as the NSA was involved with Yahoo too) or government lobbying. Instead, what happened is that Google created a much better search algorithm than Yahoo, and also designed a much more visually appealing and useful way of presenting the information. The beginning of the end for Yahoo was like over 15 years ago, when you would do a Yahoo search and then "results powered by Google" popped up on the screen; they started paying Google for search results. Except that Google was only giving them raw search data; Google did not provide the contextual information and other tools to process the data to rank the results. So even though Google was powering the search, searching for the exact same thing on Google performed better results than for Yahoo. And again - Google's search page result construction was far superior, making it easier to read and analyze. Then Yahoo bought the remains of Alta Vista and several other failed search engines, used their tools to come up with a way of powering their own results so they could stop paying - and providing free advertising to - Google, but it was too late. And when Microsoft entered the search engine game, even though Microsoft never actually turned a profit with Bing, the increased competition - especially since Microsoft also created their own directory/portal MSN.com in addition to the search engine - they were unable to compete with the third major player.

And that is just desktop. Not only did Yahoo fail to join Google and Microsoft in creating their own mobile OS, but they were very late creating a mobile presence. When they finally did deliver mobile apps, they were very terrible and limited. To this day, Yahoo's mobile offerings are far behind that of Microsoft and Google. Yahoo should have been in the perfect position to benefit from mobile. Where Google and Microsoft were competing with each other - and Apple - with their own mobile OS and devices. They should have been in the best position to be able to work out deals to get their apps and services featured on other operating systems because they were the only one without a system of their own to create conflict of interest. They didn't. Also, becoming a cloud company? Trying to offer enterprise products? They didn't even try.

Yahoo's main problem is that they tried to transition from being a tech company into being a media company. Remember: they bought Time Warner. Their big thing was providing news and entertainment content because that was what most people searched for. Their goal was essentially to replace network and cable television and also replace the newspaper and the magazine. There were problems with that. First, they got into and tried to redefine media right when the value of media began to decline. Buying Time Warner was the equivalent of buying a horse buggy company right before the invention of the automobile. Second, the technology wasn't there yet. This was before actual broadband Internet, and it was even before video sharing/search sites like YouTube. And no, Yahoo didn't do squat to develop the tech that they needed. Third: they were REALLY BAD at being a media company anyway, so even if media were still a valuable growing area and the tech was there, they would have still failed. 

Contrast Yahoo with the companies that survived: Google and Amazon. Instead of trying to transition from being a tech company to being a media company, Google and Amazon increased their tech expertise. They started offering cloud products, enterprise solutions, operating systems (well Google anyway) ... they even started selling hardware. Google and Amazon survived - and got stronger - by becoming more like Microsoft and Oracle instead of trying to be the Disney of the Internet. 

As for Marissa Meyer: she made it worse. Sorry, but a lot of people always did say that she was just a photogenic personality to market Facebook, and based on her leadership of Yahoo, they were right. And no, her being a woman does not make saying this sexist. Meyer came on board and just did everything that Yahoo was failing at before, except did it worse. Instead of hiring a bunch of developers to create mobile apps - or even an OS to compete with Android and Chrome OS - she brings in a bunch of journalists and writers to create content. Instead of creating a presence in the cloud for their own products and to sell to consumers and enterprises, she hires Katie Couric to be a "global news anchor" to upload video newscasts. She buys Tumblr because she wanted to get Yahoo into social networking, but there is no real way to turn Tumblr into a major revenue source. She had none of the tech knowledge required to transform Yahoo into a company that could actually compete with Google, Facebook and Microsoft. Her business skills were terrible and she also had no real expertise in the content and media directions that she had Yahoo invest so much in. Paying the NFL to live stream games over the Internet? Verizon was doing that already, and with much better tech. Trying to compete with Netflix and Amazon by running the last season of the very low rated "Community", a show only liked by TV critics? 

Yahoo could have been saved. It is just that Meyer was the wrong one to save it. Do any of you doubt that Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Hugo Barra etc. - people who actually know something about tech and have management ability - would have been able to save Yahoo? 

sog35 said:

gatorguy said:

Here's some homework. Go to Yahoo stocks and pull up a year-to-date chart on Apple. Then use the comparison tool and add both GOOG and MSFT to the chart. Do you see any relationship?

Look at last years chart for Google vs Apple.  Who cares what the YTD chart shows.  That's only 2 months of data.

Google was up 45% in 2015
Apple was down 4% in 2015

There is no relationship between the companies.

Saying "Google and Microsoft are going down hard" is funny. If they do, who is going to take their place?
For example, if Google goes away, who is #1 in search? What replaces YouTube? Gmail? 
Microsoft goes down hard ... what are all those SQL Server enterprise databases going to migrate to? The Azure cloud users (which includes Apple)? Oh yeah: what is going to take over 75%-80% of the PC operating system share? Funny ... the most likely candidate to is ChromeOS (or more accurately the ChromeOS/Android hybrid). Which is made by Google. tenly said:

sog35 said:

The amount of jobs and small companies Amazon has ruined is mind blowing.

Makes me sick that a company like Amazon can undercut the competition by selling goods below cost.
Amazon stays afloat because they pay most of their executives with stock options instead of cash.  And Wall Street keeps inflating Amazon stock, so they are part of the scam also.

How is selling goods below cost NOT anti-competitive?  How can other companies compete if Amazon is willing to take losses on every book they sell?

Is this situation not comparable to what Microsoft did in the 90's with web-browsers?  They sold Internet Explorer below cost (free) by bundling it into Windows  in a clear attempt to put Netscape and everyone else who were selling web browsers out of business.  But in that case, the government enacted restrictions against Microsoft to prevent the monopoly - so I don't get why in the Amazon e-books case they have done the opposite and they are PROTECTING Amazon's monopoly.

No one was selling web browsers. Everyone was giving them away for free. Just as everyone is STILL giving them away for free. (For goodness sakes ...)
"the government enacted restrictions against Microsoft to prevent the monopoly"
all the government did was force Microsoft to unbundle IE from Windows. Back then, a person who wanted to uninstall IE couldn't because Windows would not run properly without it. And by the way ... IE is still free. As it always was. As every other browser always been.

"so I don't get why in the Amazon e-books case they have done the opposite and they are PROTECTING Amazon's monopoly."

The same reason why they didn't stop Wal-Mart from doing the same. Wal-Mart is notorious for underselling in order to drive local competition out of business ... and then raising prices again when they are the only player in the area.

Price isn't the sole reason why Amazon has a "monopoly." 
1. Amazon got into e-books first. Lots of people who have been with them from the beginning stay there because of brand loyalty. It will remain that way until a company comes up with a better product - or a cheaper product - that gives them a reason to switch. Apple failed to come up with a better product, and we know that they aren't going to come up with a cheaper one, so they tried to rig the game by colluding with publishers to raise prices. Which is illegal. Remember: the primary role of antitrust actions isn't to benefit companies (or in this case, any single company like Apple). Instead, it is to benefit the consumer. Any action that drives up prices - at a negative impact to the consumer - will draw government action. Driving prices down, the government rightly assumes that the consumer benefits and lets it alone. You would have to make the case that artists, publishing companies etc. are being harmed by Amazon's underselling, or that Amazon's actions result in less books being in the market. While some companies and artists have complained, on balance it is the opposite: Amazon's e-book operation has greatly reduced the barrier of entry. It is A LOT easier to become a published author now than before, and some companies devoted entirely to e-books exist. Other authors sold a ton of e-books through Amazon and were able to sign deals with traditional publishing houses as a result. Even with traditional printed books, Amazon lists self-published books that would never be sold by a brick-and-mortar bookstore. So basically, what you want is for the government to allow Apple to collude with publishers to create a favorable market for themselves. That presumes that it is the job of the government to protect Apple's desire to be a bookseller, and moreover to make as large a profit selling books as Apple wants. It isn't. 

2. Funny ... the people who are aghast at the monopolies that Apple's competitors have are/were fine with Apple having the monopoly. Apple fans WANT Apple to be the only real player selling smartphones and tablets, for instance. But here is the deal: Apple once had their own monopoly. It was called the iPod and iTunes. As with Amazon, they created their product first, getting all the early adopters and earning brand loyalty, both with record companies, artists and consumers. As with Amazon's product, no one else was able to come up with a better music player to earn switchers. Unlike with Android and computers, Apple chose to maintain an inexpensive product, the iPod Shuffle, to prevent competitors from gaining a foothold with cheaper devices. Also, with $.99 per song, $7.99 per album - and frequent sales - no one, not even Wal-Mart (who attempted to offer a competing platform that plugged into Windows Media Player and Zune) was able to really compete selling music with iTunes either (until the smartphone basically ended the era and created competition in this space again, including later developments like the streaming service and YouTube/Vevo). Now I do not recall anyone successfully challenging Apple over the $35 iPod Shuffle or the $.99/$7.99 thing. And ironically, the company that did the best job of competing with iTunes and Apple in that era for digital music downloads? Why, Amazon of course. And even Amazon had the good sense to automatically import their downloaded songs into iTunes rather than to try to lock people into their own music player. 

There is no compelling reason to switch from Amazon, especially if A) the competing product costs more and since the Kindle app runs on iOS and OS X. As well as in the Safari browser. And on Android, ChromeOS, the Chrome/Firefox/IE etc. browsers. And on Windows. Even on Linux you can access it via the Firefox or Chrome browser and C) Apple's product offers no advantage in technology, price, user experience etc. If Apple wants to compete here, then they are going to have to offer something better, cheaper or at least different (like Android did with phones and to a lesser extent tablets). And that includes giving people who are outside the Apple ecosystem a practical way of accessing content the way that Amazon did. And the way that Google did, of course, which assumes that anyone actually purchases books via Google Play, which is doubtful. But I should point out that the books that Google does offer via Google Play costs the same as they do on Amazon. I do not know if this fact was cited during the case, but if Amazon needed to, they certainly would have. People who only want to pay $10 for a book don't have to go to Amazon. They can go to Google Play. But they don't, mainly because Amazon's product for consuming e-book content runs circles around Google's, and paying the same for an objectively inferior product is not something that very many people are going to do when offered a choice.

"More established brands like Asus, Huawei, and ZTE also recorded impressive numbers, though far lower than their smaller competitors." Not true at all. Asus went from 8.5 million to 20 million and began to be a real player in the U.S. and Europe for the first time (at least among Android enthusiasts). Huawei went from 74 million to 107 million. I will grant you Oppo, but the other players like Meizu, Lava (sold primarily in India), Intex (again India) simply went from 2 million to 6 million or something like that; huge increases over small bases. "The shift in marketshare has come at a cost for former heavyweights like Motorola, HTC, Lenovo, Sony and Nokia, which all saw shipments contract by more than 10 percent." Motorola was never a heavyweight. Motorola-Lenovo's troubles were primarily due to weakness in China, and Lenovo fumbling with supply chain and marketing issues that cost them big in India and Latin America. HTC, the only "major" smartphone maker whose main business is smartphones and related accessories, is simply too small for effective R&D and marketing; hence too small to survive. They've basically released the same phones 3 years in a row and have seen the competition rip off their best features in and otherwise surpass them. They need to find a graceful, face-saving way of "merging" with a South Korean or Taiwanese company that will allow them to retain their brand name and most of their people Best scenario for merger would be Asus, Razer, Nvidia or Acer ... worst would be LG or Samsung, or pretty much anyone in mainland China. If they are smart and get out now, they can negotiate the former. If they are dumb, then a mainland China company like Xiaomi or Huawei will scoop them up to get their patents and U.S./European carrier and store channels. Sony is stupid. They produce great, beautiful phones and tablets that cost way too much and that they do not advertise outside of Japan. (Other companies are buying the components that Sony puts in their phones, like cameras and screens, to put in their own phones and are outselling Sony.) They need to completely revamp their pricing/marketing strategy. As for Nokia: their exclusivity contract with Microsoft FINALLY expires soon, so they are going to re-enter the smartphone market this year, except this time with Android devices that they should have sold from the beginning, instead of allowing a former Microsoft executive to sell them on the idea of becoming Windows Mobile-exclusive as a differentiator among the "other-than-Apple" smartphones. (In their defense, lots of analysts predicted that Windows Mobile would drive Android out of business by 2012 and have a bigger market share than Apple by now. Then again it isn't a defense at all, because EVERYONE ELSE including Samsung, LG, HTC etc. made both Android AND Windows phones to see which one would sell, which allowed them to drop the one that failed ... or just keep selling both if both succeeded. So, Nokia was just dumb.) Initially, though, they will just be budget and (hopefully) midrange devices sold primarily in Asia and manufactured by either Foxconn (who makes their Nokia N1 Android tablets, which have had some success in China and India but for now legally can't be sold or even resold by resellers in America or Europe thanks to Microsoft) or Micromax. Also, might want to check these out. This isn't just clickbait from the Apple bashers. They are just 2 of many sources that have been reporting this for the last 36 hours or so, and they are all using data from several sources to report the same news: Apple market share declined in every market but China. Cook's statement that record numbers of people are switching from Android to iOS is true ... but he fails to mention that even more people are switching from iOS to Android. http://news.softpedia.com/news/apple-s-ios-share-nosedives-across-the-world-as-android-s-domination-broadens-499494.shtml http://news.softpedia.com/news/apple-s-ios-share-nosedives-across-the-world-as-android-s-domination-broadens-499494.shtml

foggyhill said:

bulldogs said:

I am curious. Let us say that Samsung hadn't infringed on Apple's IP. How much would it have changed, really? Does anyone believe that Apple would have ever enjoyed 90%, 80%, 70% or even 60% market share? Especially overseas where carriers do not subsidize devices? And even in America and Europe where a certain percentage of the population either just doesn't like Apple or simply likes to be contrarian? Apple was never going to dominate the smartphone and tablet market the way that they dominated the music player market. And in the music player market, no one was capable of coming up with a true competitor to either the hardware or to iTunes, plus Apple addressed the low end market with the iPod Shuffle for music players. 

So there was always going to be a viable second OS, especially addressing the overseas and low end markets. And Blackberry, Symbian, WebOS, Firefox OS, Ubuntu, Tizen (which was acquired by Samsung, not developed by them), Microsoft etc. all had their shots and failed. The reasons: lack of technical expertise in mobile Internet technology, lack of apps and ecosystem, lack of name branding/marketing, not enough financial backing. Only Google, it seems, had the combination of technical acumen, app store with a lot of third party developers, a globally known name brand and deep pockets and that was why they succeeded while others didn't.

And don't overplay Samsung's role. After all, Samsung made and marketed Windows phones too (as well as Bada and then acquiring Tizen). Not just Samsung: LG and HTC made Windows Phones also, and the HTC One Windows 8 device was aesthetically beautiful. Oh yes, and then there was Nokia, the company that ruled the mobile phone space pre-iPhone who failed with first their own Symbian smart device OS and then after investing heavily in marketing and R&D for Windows Mobile.

So, Samsung's success was more about Android than Samsung (the many good features that originated in Samsung's despised TouchWiz and were later put in Google Android notwithstanding), meaning that it had more to do with Google than with Samsung's copying Apple. To put it another way: it was mostly due to Samsung covering bases before Apple could get there such as being able to sell to all carriers while Apple was an AT&T exclusive and then offering larger phones and smaller tablets while Apple delayed in delivering both. And it was also due to their rising to the top of the Android heap by spending way more on advertising and on carrier and store agreements than HTC and Motorola who could simply not afford it and also LG and Sony who CAN afford it but for some strange reason chooses to just sit back and allow first Samsung and now Huawei and Xiaomi to eat their lunches. 

I suppose that getting $180 million because Samsung has continued to sell the ancient Galaxy 2 (with its 4.3 inch screen and 2.3 - though upgradeable to 4.1! - operating system) is nice. But the truth is that Samsung is becoming less relevant anyway. They are now #3 in China behind Xiaomi and Huawei. Huawei has now joined Apple and Samsung in selling 100 smartphones annually - and they reached that mark long before Christmas so they may end the year at 115 million - and in the process has leapfrogged Xiaomi, and will start selling smartphones in the US by March of 2016 along with another Chinese company LeTV. While Huawei, LeTV and Huawei will likely not take many smartphone sales away from Samsung in the US due to lack of carrier agreements, they will in India and Africa, where the 3 Chinese companies will not only sell devices but are also building out the Internet and mobile infrastructure, so that in those regions they will not only sell phones and tablets, but also the Internet and mobile data plans that the tablets use as they do in China. And when you consider that Huawei is already selling a decent number of phones in Europe, it can be said that Apple is continuing to dither about with Samsung while the market - the global market anyway ... the U.S. market is set with about half being Apple fans and the other half Samsung loyalists - is changing.

Apple may have eaten even more of the profit, not the market share. Apple doesn't give a crap about market share. By copying Apple in this way, Samsung gained profit by being seen as something similar to Apple even though in functionality in wasn't really. They used Apple's window dressing to put lipstick on a pig and make a killing by gaining profit without doing any of the work ; as always.

Samsung probably gained 5-10B in profit by its infringement from profit from the initial model and from the beachhead it then gave to continue selling at the high end.

Even when it stopped selling the initial model, it still was benifiting from what it did.

The phones that Samsung infringed for the most part were not big sellers, so I do not know if Samsung made $5-$10 billion in profits on them. Even if they did, $5-$10 billion isn't that much to a global conglomerate like Samsung; they probably make twice that on their line of washing machines alone. And saying that copying Apple is what gave Samsung a beach head at the high end would be sustainable if the infringing models actually sold. They did not. Instead, Samsung started to sell when they began to make much larger devices (4.7 inches and bigger) and when they began to offer hardware and software features that the other Android OEMs could not match. And oh yes, when they began their very successful marketing campaign. (Note that Samsung's troubles began when they fired their very successful American marketing team in a fit of nationalistic pride. http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-dallas-office-audit-2015-2)

Another point: Sony, LG, HTC and now the Chinese contenders were never accused of copying Apple (well, except for Xiaomi that is) and they sold tons of high end phones too. Hundreds of millions of of premium Sony Xperias, LG G, HTC One etc. devices sold. The idea that if you take away Samsung, Android collapses isn't tenable because before the rise of Samsung, HTC was the biggest Android vendor and was making a ton of money. So if Samsung doesn't come to dominate the Android market, then it is far more likely that their profits and sales are split more evenly amongst the other players. So the idea that had Samsung not infringed Apple, Apple would have enjoyed a monopoly in mobile, or at least a monopoly amongst premium devices, really can't be substantiated, especially since the infringing models didn't sell anywhere near as much as the phablets that Samsung created after they stopped copying Apple, and that there were other Android OEMs enjoying sales and profits (though granted not as much as Samsung) before Samsung blew up in the first place.

In any event, I am not so certain why anyone would have wanted Apple to have a monopoly in the first place. First off, it would have made Apple a huge target for the types of anti-trust lawsuits that AT&T, Microsoft and now Google is experiencing. Second, monopolies inevitably stifle innovation, which is exactly what happened to AT&T and Microsoft. Having to compete with Samsung and Google has resulted in better iPhones, iPads and even Apple TVs and Apple Watches in a very short time. We have seen much more innovation from Apple in 5 years than we saw from Microsoft in 15. And before you be too quick to say "Apple is better than Microsoft" well remember the Apple TV. Apple invented the thing in 2007 and then for the most part ignored it. Competition from Chromecast, Android TV and Amazon's Fire TV caused them to totally revamp the device in less than a year, AND to keep it at a competitive price point while doing so. Making 90% of the profits in mobile, 60% of the profits in PCs while still being forced by competition to come out with a superior product (which includes, yes, "borrowing" ideas from the competition as Apple has done) is a good spot to be in. Being where AT&T was 30 years ago or Microsoft 15 years ago where you are just sitting and waiting for either the government or innovation to come topple you is definitely not a good spot, and I have no idea why any Apple fan would want to sit there. 

This post is funny. Vendors can prefer Apple Pay to Samsung Pay, Android Pay and the competition all they want. That doesn't change the reality that by enabling support for Apple Pay, they - in nearly all cases - will automatically support Android Pay, LG Pay, Paypal and everyone else who offers an NFC payments solution. Oh yes: and if they support electronic credit card payments, they already support Samsung Pay whether they want to or not.

Second, this artfully ignores the real story: Android Pay usage has caught up with Apple Pay usage. Despite Apple Pay being introduced nearly a year earlier, receiving much more advertising and media fanfare, and being supported by far more financial institutions, both saw the same transaction rates in physical stores: 8%.

http://www.luxurydaily.com/android-pay-apple-pay-reach-parity-as-mobile-pay-adoption-grows-report/

Before you reply that Android has a larger market share ... these are only stats for America, where iOS and Android market share is nearly equal. (In addition, Android Pay will not launch in its first foreign market, the U.K., until later this month.) So these vendors may prefer supporting Apple Pay, but they will wind up supporting both solutions, and in about equal volumes. 

jbdragon said:

igorsky said:

Samsung...always left sitting at the dance.

Samesung has been trying to offer it's own services to make money after the sale. The problem is they don't own Android, Google does, and most everyone would rather use Google's services, the Exception seems to be CHINA where they're doing their own thing. Samesung Pay will be yet another loser. Their profits like everyone else building Android phones will continue to drop to nothing. Really the only winner with Android is Google!!! They demand their services front and center and don't care who is making the phones or if they make any money doing it. Google still wins. On the other hand, if all these Merchants are aware of Apple Pay, why aren't merchants supporting NFC and Apple Pay? That's really the biggest issue currently in the U.S. It's lack of support. Most of the banks are now on board. Everyone is waiting for the ability to use it everywhere now and these same merchants are dragging their feet.

0. Calling Samsung "Samesung" in this space is hilarious. Samsung phones supported NFC payments back in 2011 along with all other Android NFC-enabled phones. Apple devices didn't even add NFC, let alone mobile payment ability, until 2014. Also, Samsung's solution is different - and superior - because it includes MST in addition to NFC, meaning that it can be used at any location that supports electronic credit card purchases.
 
1. Regardless of whether they prefer to support Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay or LG Pay, if they enable their NFC, they will support all 4. And if they have credit card stripe readers, they will support Samsung Pay because of their MST reader tech. 

2. No one, including Apple, is making much money off mobile payments. The purpose of offering mobile payments is ecosystem lock-in.

3. "Their profits like everyone else building Android phones will continue to drop to nothing." Except their profits have already stopped dropping, as have profits for most other hardware vendors except HTC and Sony. Many other Android manufacturers also make money by selling components to their competition - which includes Apple - and also a whole lot making accessories. As far as services ... well there are more than apps! Xiaomi, Huawei and others are also mobile, Internet and even streaming TV/music providers. They bundle those with the Android tablets and phones and make a ton of money. Xiaomi and Huawei are even considering expanding this business model to foreign countries, initially some parts of Asia, Africa and even Europe where the devices will be sold at cost in order for them to make the real money getting the users online and having them rent movies. 

Sorry, but if Android was so unprofitable, more companies would have abandoned it by now. Instead, the only company that has - not counting those who merely dabbled a bit like Pyle and Philips - is HP (and with them one should note that they never made phones, only tablets) and more and more new companies launch selling Android devices each year.