“Today’s long overdue update to Apple’s iPhone line – which had been moribund for years – look set to squeeze some rival manufacturers to death. New iPhones at last means that Android, Google’s smartphone middleware, will soon look attractive only for budget vendors selling into fast-growing emerging markets,” Andrew Orlowski writes for The Register. “The problem, in a nutshell, is this. Why should you continue to make something at all if you lose money doing so? The answer some big names will shortly come to is: ‘Sorry, we can’t – we’re bailing out.’ Because it’s all about margins.”
MacDailyNews Take: Every single iPhone release has set the all-time smartphone sales record. Every. Single. One. Before you misuse it next time, look up “moribund,” Andy.
“Sony, which makes beautiful gadgets, this week forecast a $1.2bn loss from its all-Android smartphone business,” Orlowski writes. “Yes, Samsung makes money from Android – the only manufacturer to consistently do so – but at a huge cost. Samsung buys its success with $14bn a year marketing budget, allowing it to put out saturation advertising, pay sales staff to push its products at retail, and hype indifferent offerings in emerging markets. But as with Sony, the Android business is threatening to hurt the rest of the group. Android remains viable for Samsung, which made a $6.1bn (£3.6bn) profit from smartphones, and that’s enough to cover the marketing. But the trend is ominous: marketing goes up and profits come down – and eventually, at some point, the two lines converge.”
“Today Google loses billions on Android – the justification being that if it’s to be the dominant consumer data processing company, it must put its data collection software everywhere it can. However, Google is also dumping losses it would make as a manufacturer onto third parties, and this isn’t a sustainable business plan in the long run,” Orlowski writes. “What Google might have to do is the unthinkable – and give something back.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The more pain the profferers and peddlers of stolen products receive, the better.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Stoo” for the heads up.]
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