“Google Inc.’s Android is extending its lead over Apple Inc. in the mobile-software market at a rate that compares with Microsoft Corp.’s expansion in desktop software in the 1990s, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said,” Brian Womack reports for Bloomberg.
MacDailyNews Take: One not-so-minor difference, Microsoft retained control of and got paid for their software, Mole.
“Booming demand for Android-based smartphones is helping Google add share at the expense of other software providers, Schmidt said yesterday in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. Android snared 72 percent of the market in the third quarter, while Apple had 14 percent, according to Gartner Inc. Customers are activating more than 1.3 million Android devices a day, Schmidt said,” Womack reports. “‘This is a huge platform change; this is of the scale of 20 years ago — Microsoft versus Apple,’ he said. ‘We’re winning that war pretty clearly now.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Mole likely gets it, but he’s playing stupid.
Let’s stop focusing on market share without context and let’s start focusing on what matters. Market share does not necessarily equal profits. Market share does not necessarily equal platform. And in the long run (and in the short run too), market share that doesn’t ultimately lead to profits is meaningless. Anyone can get market share. All you have to do is give away your product at cost or, better yet, for free. But you can’t beat Apple’s iOS just by losing money. Somewhere, somehow, sometime you’ve got to make a profit. Let’s stop pretending that market share is the bottom line or the only thing that matters. Profit and platform matter. Let’s focus on them, instead.
There’s one little problem with the theory that market share matters most in a platform war. By every imaginable measure and in every way that conceivably matters, it is iOS – not Android – that is winning the platform wars. And it isn’t even close. – John Kirk, TechPinions, November 29, 2012
And, BTW, Schmidt is counting everything with Android in it, including point-and-shoot cameras, watches, car computers, etc.
Womack reports, “The company avoided about $2 billion in worldwide income taxes in 2011 by shifting $9.8 billion in revenue into a Bermuda shell company, almost double the total from three years before, filings show. Governments in France, the U.K., Italy and Australia are probing Google’s tax avoidance as they seek to boost revenue. Schmidt said the company’s efforts around taxes are legal. ‘We pay lots of taxes; we pay them in the legally prescribed ways,’ he said. ‘I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate.’ The company isn’t about to turn down big savings in taxes, he said. ‘It’s called capitalism,’ he said. ‘We are proudly capitalistic. I’m not confused about this.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Well, at least he got one thing right.
MacDailyNews Take: Schmidt’s love affair with market share (because that’s all he’s got) reminds us of a little story we usually use for Dell:
Data source: Citi ResearchLittle Mikey had a lemonade stand. Okay, it was a kiosk. He sold 100 (8 oz.) cups yesterday for 10-cents each. He spent 11-cents per cup for artificial lemon flavoring, corn syrup, and the paper cups. He used tap water because it was free. Threw it all together in a big plastic pail. He’s out a buck for all of his trouble. Boy, that was a lot of work for less than nothing!
Around the block, little Steve runs a lemonade stand, too. It’s all blond wood and very clean. He sold 50 (24 oz.) glasses yesterday for 50-cents each. He spent 20-cents per glass on fresh-squeezed lemons, pure cane sugar, spring water (mixed with the utmost care), and some very nice glassware (he buys in bulk and gets a good price). He took home $15 yesterday. He’s currently building his newest stand right where Mikey’s used to be. – MacDailyNews, April 23, 2009
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
You might be delusional to call out Schmidt this way as the Google game plan is very different from Apple’s. No Google tax to speak of and flood the market with affordable devices that do one thing well and that is drive folks to the Google eco system.
If the true measure of a business is sustainability then the Jury is still out on both Apple and Google. Let’s compare notes in a couple of years and see who had the best recipe to sustain itself as a major player. As is stands, Android might not be the profit making machine that Apple is but once again the goals for both companies are very different.
Windows “clearly” won the war for the PC market a decade ago. Steve Jobs even said as much, or at least that the “war is over.” But look at that “war” now, years later, and focus on “sustainability” in the PC market. Which platform is stagnant and “commoditized”, although it is still has the largest market share by far. Its former champion (Dell) is struggling (“beleaguered”). Which platform is vibrant, with Mac sales and market share growing every year, and making most of the available profit in the market, with a much smaller market share.
In the mobile market, the situation is even worse for Android in two key ways. First is profit. Microsoft makes a big profit on PC Windows. There will come a point (may have arrived already) when no one else (including Google) will be able to afford to compete with Apple directly. Notice how most of the tablet competition is no longer trying to compete head-to-head with iPad (because trying to do so has been a money losing proposition EVERY time). They are now going where where Apple will not go (the ultra low end and “convertible” tablets with keyboards).
Second is fragmentation. Windows kept software “standard” in the PC market. The affect of Android is almost the opposite. Android is SO fragmented that is should not even be considered ONE platform.
I think it is very clear where things are headed “in a couple of years.”
Well the goal for Google is to drive search and of the millions of Android devices sold in China every month, Baidu is the default search engine and all other Google services are gutted. So by every measure, at least in China, Google is losing. In the U.S., iOS drives far more web traffic than Android despite being on less devices, so market share really is the only thing Google can tout.
After Apple employees heard Schmidt’s speech, they all cleared their belongings out of Apple headquarters and all Apple retail stores closed down. They figured what’s the point of going to work anymore if Google was going to put them out of business (like Microsoft did).
1.3 million Android device activations a day is a rather frightening number to hear despite Google not making even a penny from each activation. The only sad thing is that Wall Street seems to wholeheartedly believe Schmidt by giving Apple a P/E of 12 and Google a P/E of 21.
All secretaries so far elected are like Eric… that is why we are in this deep sh**!
That is why he was considered for the job! He is a qualified idiot.
How is that possible. I see more and more people with iPhones everyday. I see some Android phones, but not nearly as many. Who or where are all these Android owners….
In the meantime, over in China, there’s a bunch of Android phones running Baidu instead of Google … eating Google’s normal lunch of Adstream revenues. Perhaps Schmidt can be so kind as to explain how Google profits from that marketshare without having any revenue stream.
How is it possible to activate 1.3 million phones per day?! that’s almost half a billion phones a year!
I think the last I heard Apple might have been activating 500,000. That’s another 182,000,000.
I was bothered by the “war” thing also. First of all Schmidt isn’t Google. He’s a glorified, hell what is his job these days? 2nd of all, what happened to all the condescending talk of Apple being a great company, etc. Now they’re at war?
Apple intentionally went away from competing in smartphones global market.
They thrown away their only change for much broader reach and sales, by cancelling cheap iPhone 3Gs devices.
Before 21st September of this year, Apple sold iPhone 3Gs for $375 before taxes. With iPhone 5 release, they could lower iPhone 3Gs price to, say $275 and keep it selling at least for developing markets.
This would dramatically change marketshare, but would lover average selling price (ASP), as well as margins. Apple did not want that, so they just cancelled iPhone 3Gs.
So the fact that in global scale Apple profoundly loses smartphone marketshare is solely Apple’s own conscious decision not to compete, to only keep premium, high margin sector of the market.
Apple does not sorry for that, nor they think they are wrong by ceding sales to Android.
You’d think Schmidt didn’t see any of the black Friday and Cyber monday post shopping analysis in which it was made clear that anyone buying anything online using a mobile device was pretty much using iOS via iPhone or iPad. And if I’m not mistaken, Android doesn’t even bring Google the advertising revenue that iOS does!
Seems to me there are 2 wars. 1 War is about how much product is out there, and Google is winning that through dumping. The important war is which platform generates revenue and Apple seems to be the clear winner by far there.
“Every quantitative measurement we have shows we are winning this war,” Mr. McNamara said after returning from his first trip to South Vietnam in April 1962. (NY Times)
Winning as in:
1. More viruses and security threats!
2. More fragmentation!
3. More messy interface issues!
4. (put your more here)
I’ll give him that there are more android devices worldwide. The whole problem with calling that a “win” is that google isn’t making any money from android.
Thermonuclear can also be done from the other side and rather surreptitiously at that. May Steve Jobs continue to fill Schmidt’s head with delusions of grandeur.
The guy is a POSchmidt. Stab Steve, Apple and users right on their back. His continual insult on Apple is like spitting on Steve Grave. Although he is right that Android has overtaken Apple and will be another Windows / Mac world where 90% of the market will be Android…. He won by doing exactly what Microsoft did to Apple. Jerk.
This is not about Android winning the war. It is more like America is being screwed big time. Samsung is siphoning all the Android profits while all American companies on the Android bandwagon are making peanuts or big losses.
Birds of a feather flock together. Both Sammy and google are very immature companies, wahhhhh wahhhhh, we are winning, wahhhhh, wahhhhhh, our maps are better. They both make me sick!
There is a five part series on a site called tech:pinions that very convincingly makes the case Android is a Frankenstein that come around to threatening Google.
Goo Schmidt is such a bozo.
stupid.
arrogant.
liar.
robber.
he even looks like psychopath grave robber.
1. FAKE
his Android calculations is faked, as he counts more than phones; if Apple added all iDevices on iPhones, how is Goo anything but a goo (Shit) pile?
2. SHORTSIGHTED
It’s easy to gain market share with free goo, but Apple profits, whilst Android will eventually go bankrupt and all its numbers are worthless. So Erica Schmidt, anyone can think now, now, now, without outcome. You are acting as irresponsible as our government & banks. Your shortsightedness as as short as your plick.
3. MISS
It’s easy to beat Apple iPhone if few bought iPhones last quarter, waiting for the iPhone5 instead.
4. XMAS
Just wait Ericlein, for the Apple onslaught this xmas, as they upgraded iPhones, iPads. iPods, iMacs…They will take over Android numbers so far up your ass, it will hurt for you to count henceforth. Apple is on the best seller list at every source for the holiday season buys.
5. China
China kills Android. How can Eric ignore that biggest single market?! Apple is a China Darling. Yes, apple naysayers, Android sells in China, but at no profit! Plus China does not use Google Search or Maps or App store (Play), so Goo is dead there.
6. Dell
Dell sucks but is nevertheless a good number for Google. Dell, the same day Eric announced Android is doing so well, stated it will dump Dell phones, that is, Android!
7. Google Maps
It’s an essential part of the Google Ad wars, as ads are the only profitable biz for Google. Australia denounced Apple Maps as dangerous 2 days ago, but today Google Maps too! Google Maps is no better.
8. Numbers
Apple proves its numbers each single quarter. As Openly as OpenSource. Yet Google with Android, as Amazon with Kindle or B&N with Nook or MSFT with Surface, never show any numbers! It’s so easy to cheat or distort the truth. Apple does not, can not, does not need to, as it’s too real, too confident. The competition is fake, won’t last. Only Apple profits and in the end, you can not be fit to survive without profits.
If by ‘clearly’ he means we can all see through it, then yes, I agree….
News flash: Schmidt clearly delusional.
Schmidt must be a graduate of the Gates & Ballmer School of Denial.
You might be delusional to call out Schmidt this way as the Google game plan is very different from Apple’s. No Google tax to speak of and flood the market with affordable devices that do one thing well and that is drive folks to the Google eco system.
If the true measure of a business is sustainability then the Jury is still out on both Apple and Google. Let’s compare notes in a couple of years and see who had the best recipe to sustain itself as a major player. As is stands, Android might not be the profit making machine that Apple is but once again the goals for both companies are very different.
Windows “clearly” won the war for the PC market a decade ago. Steve Jobs even said as much, or at least that the “war is over.” But look at that “war” now, years later, and focus on “sustainability” in the PC market. Which platform is stagnant and “commoditized”, although it is still has the largest market share by far. Its former champion (Dell) is struggling (“beleaguered”). Which platform is vibrant, with Mac sales and market share growing every year, and making most of the available profit in the market, with a much smaller market share.
In the mobile market, the situation is even worse for Android in two key ways. First is profit. Microsoft makes a big profit on PC Windows. There will come a point (may have arrived already) when no one else (including Google) will be able to afford to compete with Apple directly. Notice how most of the tablet competition is no longer trying to compete head-to-head with iPad (because trying to do so has been a money losing proposition EVERY time). They are now going where where Apple will not go (the ultra low end and “convertible” tablets with keyboards).
Second is fragmentation. Windows kept software “standard” in the PC market. The affect of Android is almost the opposite. Android is SO fragmented that is should not even be considered ONE platform.
I think it is very clear where things are headed “in a couple of years.”
Well the goal for Google is to drive search and of the millions of Android devices sold in China every month, Baidu is the default search engine and all other Google services are gutted. So by every measure, at least in China, Google is losing. In the U.S., iOS drives far more web traffic than Android despite being on less devices, so market share really is the only thing Google can tout.
Did you actually have a point to make … coz I can’t decipher one, besides an invite to brunch in a couple of years time.
After Apple employees heard Schmidt’s speech, they all cleared their belongings out of Apple headquarters and all Apple retail stores closed down. They figured what’s the point of going to work anymore if Google was going to put them out of business (like Microsoft did).
1.3 million Android device activations a day is a rather frightening number to hear despite Google not making even a penny from each activation. The only sad thing is that Wall Street seems to wholeheartedly believe Schmidt by giving Apple a P/E of 12 and Google a P/E of 21.
Lucky for us this guy is not Secretary of Commerce.
All secretaries so far elected are like Eric… that is why we are in this deep sh**!
That is why he was considered for the job! He is a qualified idiot.
cabinet posts are appointed by the president, not elected.
I’m thinking he likely meant to type “selected”.
oh okay, that’s plausible..thanks.
Well, had he taken the appointment, I sure he wouldn’t have been able to make such ridiculous comments as reported above.
Even though that is his job, there is no denying that.
He is paid to spin for Google … Full stop.
That aside, the guy is a total tosser.
Thats like the criminal proudly anouncing that bank robbers are withdrawing more cash from banks than honest customers.
Exactly
Google’s Eric Schmidt clearly full of s@#t
How is that possible. I see more and more people with iPhones everyday. I see some Android phones, but not nearly as many. Who or where are all these Android owners….
in drawers everywhere! I travelled around England, France and Italy for 10 weeks this fall. I saw 90% iPhones. And iPads everywhere.
In the meantime, over in China, there’s a bunch of Android phones running Baidu instead of Google … eating Google’s normal lunch of Adstream revenues. Perhaps Schmidt can be so kind as to explain how Google profits from that marketshare without having any revenue stream.
-hh
How is it possible to activate 1.3 million phones per day?! that’s almost half a billion phones a year!
I think the last I heard Apple might have been activating 500,000. That’s another 182,000,000.
Those are all taxpayer-paid “free” Obamaphones that have been activated!
you sir, are a fucking idiot…
1
Let them be idiots. It makes winning elections impossible for them
Shh… let them keep talking… Let’s hope they don’t figure that out.
Let’s stay on topic. Weren’t we talking about delusional?
Eric the mole’s “winning this war” is what I imagine Asad says to himself. Steve Jobs father emigrated from Syria. Desperation!
Two great companies at war. How disappointing
I was bothered by the “war” thing also. First of all Schmidt isn’t Google. He’s a glorified, hell what is his job these days? 2nd of all, what happened to all the condescending talk of Apple being a great company, etc. Now they’re at war?
Schmidt is a glorified jackass. That is his job.
Agreed, though it WAS Jobs who mentioned going thermonuclear.
Absofuckinglutely.
Apple intentionally went away from competing in smartphones global market.
They thrown away their only change for much broader reach and sales, by cancelling cheap iPhone 3Gs devices.
Before 21st September of this year, Apple sold iPhone 3Gs for $375 before taxes. With iPhone 5 release, they could lower iPhone 3Gs price to, say $275 and keep it selling at least for developing markets.
This would dramatically change marketshare, but would lover average selling price (ASP), as well as margins. Apple did not want that, so they just cancelled iPhone 3Gs.
So the fact that in global scale Apple profoundly loses smartphone marketshare is solely Apple’s own conscious decision not to compete, to only keep premium, high margin sector of the market.
Apple does not sorry for that, nor they think they are wrong by ceding sales to Android.
Substitute “table scraps” for “sales” and your sentence makes much more sense.
You’d think Schmidt didn’t see any of the black Friday and Cyber monday post shopping analysis in which it was made clear that anyone buying anything online using a mobile device was pretty much using iOS via iPhone or iPad. And if I’m not mistaken, Android doesn’t even bring Google the advertising revenue that iOS does!
Seems to me there are 2 wars. 1 War is about how much product is out there, and Google is winning that through dumping. The important war is which platform generates revenue and Apple seems to be the clear winner by far there.
Schmidt … Irrelevant … Yesterday’s news … Move on …
“Every quantitative measurement we have shows we are winning this war,” Mr. McNamara said after returning from his first trip to South Vietnam in April 1962. (NY Times)
The most appropriately named butcher that ever lived: Robert Strange McNamara.
Kill with fire.
What a piece of Schmidt!
Winning as in:
1. More viruses and security threats!
2. More fragmentation!
3. More messy interface issues!
4. (put your more here)
I’ll give him that there are more android devices worldwide. The whole problem with calling that a “win” is that google isn’t making any money from android.
The Post Office has HUGE share. I think we’ll see DHL and UPS and FEDEX going out of business any day now.
+1 🙂
Santa has the biggest market share with the Get One Free campaign. Post Offices, FedEx, DHL, UPS are all going out of business!
hey Eric, SHOW ME THE MONEY !
Thermonuclear can also be done from the other side and rather surreptitiously at that. May Steve Jobs continue to fill Schmidt’s head with delusions of grandeur.
Every time I see the Mole call the disjointed mess that is Android a “platform” I snicker a little.
The guy is a POSchmidt. Stab Steve, Apple and users right on their back. His continual insult on Apple is like spitting on Steve Grave. Although he is right that Android has overtaken Apple and will be another Windows / Mac world where 90% of the market will be Android…. He won by doing exactly what Microsoft did to Apple. Jerk.
This is not about Android winning the war. It is more like America is being screwed big time. Samsung is siphoning all the Android profits while all American companies on the Android bandwagon are making peanuts or big losses.
Birds of a feather flock together. Both Sammy and google are very immature companies, wahhhhh wahhhhh, we are winning, wahhhhh, wahhhhhh, our maps are better. They both make me sick!
There is a five part series on a site called tech:pinions that very convincingly makes the case Android is a Frankenstein that come around to threatening Google.
Goo Schmidt is such a bozo.
stupid.
arrogant.
liar.
robber.
he even looks like psychopath grave robber.
1. FAKE
his Android calculations is faked, as he counts more than phones; if Apple added all iDevices on iPhones, how is Goo anything but a goo (Shit) pile?
2. SHORTSIGHTED
It’s easy to gain market share with free goo, but Apple profits, whilst Android will eventually go bankrupt and all its numbers are worthless. So Erica Schmidt, anyone can think now, now, now, without outcome. You are acting as irresponsible as our government & banks. Your shortsightedness as as short as your plick.
3. MISS
It’s easy to beat Apple iPhone if few bought iPhones last quarter, waiting for the iPhone5 instead.
4. XMAS
Just wait Ericlein, for the Apple onslaught this xmas, as they upgraded iPhones, iPads. iPods, iMacs…They will take over Android numbers so far up your ass, it will hurt for you to count henceforth. Apple is on the best seller list at every source for the holiday season buys.
5. China
China kills Android. How can Eric ignore that biggest single market?! Apple is a China Darling. Yes, apple naysayers, Android sells in China, but at no profit! Plus China does not use Google Search or Maps or App store (Play), so Goo is dead there.
6. Dell
Dell sucks but is nevertheless a good number for Google. Dell, the same day Eric announced Android is doing so well, stated it will dump Dell phones, that is, Android!
7. Google Maps
It’s an essential part of the Google Ad wars, as ads are the only profitable biz for Google. Australia denounced Apple Maps as dangerous 2 days ago, but today Google Maps too! Google Maps is no better.
8. Numbers
Apple proves its numbers each single quarter. As Openly as OpenSource. Yet Google with Android, as Amazon with Kindle or B&N with Nook or MSFT with Surface, never show any numbers! It’s so easy to cheat or distort the truth. Apple does not, can not, does not need to, as it’s too real, too confident. The competition is fake, won’t last. Only Apple profits and in the end, you can not be fit to survive without profits.
The competition remains flummoxed!