michael scrip

canukstorm - old said:

And that could be bad news for Android, simply because Samsung is the only Android device maker making a profit. The rest are, at best breaking even, and at worst showing losses. What happens to Android when they these device makers exit because it isn't sustainable?

I heard there are 1,000 companies making Android devices.    You're right... that number is completely unsustainable.  Obviously they can't all stay.

Most will go out of business... but the rest will be acquired and merged together (if there's anything of value)

But there will still be an appetite for Android devices... over a billion Android devices are sold each year now. They'll eventually come from fewer and fewer manufacturers.

It kinda reminds me of the PC market.  Remember 20 years ago when there were hundreds of PC manufacturers?

Now how many are there?  HP ate Compaq... Sony left the business... something happened between Gateway, eMachines, Acer, I can't remember... oh and IBM, freakin' IBM, got out of the PC business.

There didn't need to be so many companies selling virtually the same commoditized Windows PCs.  The market figured itself out.

And the same will happen to Android someday too.

runbuh said:

Buckling, or just looking for ways to make money? I suspect the latter. In the US, they are the Top Grossing app in the App Store today.

They may be the Top Grossing app... but that's clearly not enough.

I read an article that said Spotify made $1.2 billion in 2014.

But they had to pay $1.4 billion in royalties and whatnot.

Streaming music is a tough business. I suspect Spotify is trying all sorts of things to make money.

I've owned three iPhones... 4S, 5S and 6S... and I never thought the LCD looked bad.

benjer said:

Don't know if I'm in the minority here, but I used to open AI articles using the "comments" link from the AI home page and read the article in the forum post rather than clicking on the article title. I usually want to scroll through the comments on most articles, so that just became my habit. In the new forums, the articles are not formatted into paragraphs, which makes them harder to read.

Exactly.

I, too, always clicked on the "comments" link to get to an article.  I preferred the forum version of the article rather than the regular AI article. And then I was already in the forum to view and make comments.

Also... I could click the "Forum" link from the homepage and then there was a little red indicator on "Subscriptions" to tell me if I had any activity on my subscribed threads.

Is that function still there?  I'm not completely sure what this new activity thing does.

Sidenote:  Is it a coincidence that many websites are transitioning to new platforms around the same time? Recently Engadget got updated (and completely ruined, in my opinion)... Neowin updated their forum software (with plenty o' bugs)... and now AppleInsider.

Is December "make crazy changes" month?