“Back in 2010, I coined, somewhat prematurely, the phrase ‘The Great Smartphone Bear Market,'” Michael Comeau writes for Minyanville. “The idea was that the smartphone market was growing at an extraordinary rate, but nobody was really making any money, aside from Apple.”
“Since 2009, the major story in the industry has been how rapidly devices powered by Google’s Android operating system have taken market share from the ecosystems of Apple, BlackBerry, Microsoft, and Nokia,” Comeau writes. “So building Android phones is a great way to make money, right?”
“Wrong,” Comeau writes. “There’s an interesting storyline playing out if one dials down to a company level: The top Android phone makers — the aforementioned Samsung, HTC, and Motorola — aren’t doing all that well. Samsung and HTC both reported lower-than-expected earnings in July. Samsung’s stock is down 20% year-to-date, while HTC is down a whopping 50%. HTC is not only seeing its sales slide, but it also has collapsing profit margins and may actually post a loss in Q3. And year to date, Motorola has actually posted an operating loss of $397 million for Google.”
Read more in the full article here.
