brucemc

avon b7 said:

maestro64 said:

sog35 said:

avon b7 said:

Herbivore2 said:

Avon B7 said, "No manufacturer of low or mid tier phones has even the slightest intention of massive profit. Comparing those profits to those of Apple serves little or no purpose."

If maximizing profits isn't the goal, then it's time for those companies to get out of the business. 

The criticism of the points DED made with statements like this are pretty ridiculous. 

Apple and Samsung are the only two companies capable of reliably profiting from the smartphone industry. Samsung primarily in components and Apple in the finished product and vertically integrated system. 

Samsung is attempting to move to Apple's vertically integrated model much to the consternation of Google. Samsung's plan is to move off of Android all together and over to Tizen. Samsung's Tizen phone sales in India are pretty nice. And it is quite worrisome to Google. Because if Samsung is successful, the only high end players will be Apple and Samsung. And neither will be running on Android. 

https://techviral.net/samsung-shift-devices-android-tizen-os/

So it actually be self-fulfilling if the low end Android device manufacturers aren't interested in large profits. Because it won't happen. There will be Apple and Samsung. The others, including Huawei won't be playing at the high end of anything. Samsung's Gear S3 makes the Android wear watches from Huawei and LG look atrocious. 

You appear to be confusing 'massive' profit with 'maximising' profit.

My point is that low to mid tier manufacturers can't get away with 30-40% margins and they know it. That isn't part of the plan.

Huawei hasn't even stretched its legs in the premium segment but has already released a phone well over the $1,000 mark and has units at all the price points down to the entry level. It took such a jump on quality with the P9 that it has allowed itself to take a breather with last week's P10 announcements which were more lifestyle focussed. Expect a bigger jump later in the year with the successor to the Mate 9 and perhaps an attack on the US market.

Sorry dude. But Huawei is in deep SHIT.

They missed profit targets in the phone division and massive layoffs are coming:

https://www.xda-developers.com/internal-memos-at-huawei-talk-about-missed-profit-targets/

“Huawei will not pay for those that don’t work hard,” which suggests the company may start cutting back jobs. Huawei employs a total of 170,000 people, with 45% of them working on research and development. A Huawei engineer is quoted by Reuters as saying “everybody is nervous” since they know they are now at risk of being laid off.

Deep SHIT Huawei.

As Apple dominates the top end and cheap POS china phones start under pricing even cheap SHIT Huawei phones.

Huawei will quickly disappear into irrelevance like Xiaomi before it.

You do know that Huawei is a government funded business entity, as long as Huawei is doing things which the China government feels is in the best interest of the country they will be fine and will be around for a while longer. It has nothing to do with whether they are making money or not. As far as I know Xiaomi does not fall into the Huawei category of business in China. I do not know how the Government see them in the big scheme of things.

jbdragon said:

lwio said:

and Apple makes an increasingly large profit from services including the App Store were Android makers have a very hard time making anything at all.

This is the problem with Android, and Windows has gone through the same type of thing. Android phones have turned into a commodity. There is very little money to be made in selling the hardware. Everyone is fighting each other to sell the phones and so prices drop down to nothing. So then like windows, you throw on 3rd party crapware because you get a little money from that which is better then breaking even or losing money. People don't like that crap on their phones. The only real winner with Android is Google because they're making money from their services and from Ad's. Google doesn't care if you make money selling Android phones or not, Google still wins. If you disappear, there's always someone else to take your place. Google still wins. Google's services have to be up front and center. Other company's are trying to offer their own things. Samesung had done their MILK Music service thing which has failed. They're trying to make money with Samesung Pay, which in the end will fail over Android Pay. Google is trying to sell their Pixel phones at iPhone prices. I don't think they're selling all that many of them. Android all this time has been marketed as the CHEAP phones. Why would you then turn around, stop selling cheap NEXUS phones and sell iPhone priced Pixel phones? It's just not going to work well. China is the exception to the rule so much in that Google doesn't have a presence in China. So people there are going to 3rd party App stores. Pirating like crazy and Viruses are running rampant there. You can fork Android, but then you can't use Google's services and there's a lot of other Negatives to go along with it. Amazon tried with their Fire Phone and it bombed. The EU is trying to do something about it, but I don't see how. There's no money in selling low end to mid range phones. Who would you rather be, Android (Everyone) selling 1 BILLION Android phones and breaking even or Apple selling 1 iPhone and making a $50 profit? How about 10 billion for Android, still breaking even, or 10 iPhones making a $500 profit. So who's winning? Well the Investors and Android fanboys will say Android, they have a huge Market share over Apple, Look 10 billion Android phones to 10 iphones. Not even close. While everyone else with a brain will say Apple WON. They actually made a $500 profit and only had to sell 10 iPhones to do it. You've heard the saying, "Work Smarter, not harder!" What is Market Share in the phone industry getting you?

Forgive me for taking a simplistic approach but there is an angle you haven't touched on. Android handsets sell 10 billion. Let's run with that notion but forget Google, Apple, Samsung etc. just for a second. Let's forget the profits or lack of them. That means 10 billion people got a phone and it serves their use, for better or worse, but it satisfies their use. That angle is key.

Let's put the manufacturers back in and we see Apple were ignored by 10 billion shoppers. 

Should Apple stay premium and ignore those 10 billion users and hope there are enough left to keep buying high margin, premium phones well into the future, or move into a lower tier in the hope of selling much more units?

Will the main future earnings drivers be unit sales or services?

If services are going to make up an ever increasing part of revenues, doesn't it make sense to have the largest possible pool to feed off? Surely that pool implies getting a lot of the 10 billion onto your platform or should Apple open up its platform to Android users?

There are lots of possible scenarios but most of the ones that involve services require the highest possible share to feed off. The same logic applies to 'home kit' style devices.

I'm in the camp that says smartphones have hit the comfort zone and shoppers can get far more than they ever could out of a mid tier phone and that premium prices will be a harder sell in a saturated market with a decent spread of top class phones. Past the iPhone 8/7s I see Apple having a harder time shifting units in the premium segment.

stevo-nz said:

I've had nothing but problems with Apple's new GPS. The Nike app is crap. The GPS seems to stop on its own when you hit anything above 17km. I have a feeling whenever Apple's Activities alerts happen, GPS automatically switches off. Either that, or the crown is the problem in that whenever you're climbing, your hand bends back and pushes it accidentally. This has happened on both Nike and RunKeeper apps. I'm now trialling Strava's new update. Using Strava is good as runs can link back into their platform which then gives you elevation information. Pity we can't get that on-the-fly. So my experience so far is they are still behind Garmin when it comes to hard core sports enthusiasts.

dreyfus2 said:

The question I have is... Are these search results pointing at Google manipulating search? Or correctly reflecting the fact that Alphabet surpassing Apple in market cap was reported by just about every clickbait site in existence, and the opposite by virtually no one?