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Last time I checked, corporations were in business to make a profit.....

http://www.asymco.com/2012/05/03/the-phone-market-in-2012-a-tale-of-two-disruptions/

So do you really think that Apple would want to trade places with Samsung?

And before you say "only an iFan would be glad to spend more and put money in Apple's pockets", thanks to subsidies, I pay no more for a $650 iPhone than the typical Android buyer pays.

For a brush with a finer tip, check out Asymco. They outline how it *could* be true based on recently-published numbers. They also underscore that they think the numbers are dubious, but overall, I think it's a pretty fair assessment.

They've lost money in 14 of the last 16 quarters. A reduction in the number of devices being developed (they did 27 new phones last year) and a move away from low end devices both mean that less people and locations (they are cutting ~30 locations) are necessary. According to the article, those being let go are being given generous severance packages.

The move to high end devices should not be surprising to anyone in the US, but might surprise Europeans, who are used to paying full cost out of pocket for phones, rather than getting a new one issued to you each time you re-up on a 2 year contract, as is done in the U.S..

In general, low end phones are largely fungible commodities, meaning substiting one for another has low or no marginal costs. Staying in the down market is why Nokia is getting beaten in total phones shipped by Samsung these days. See this article from April:

http://www.asymco.com/2012/04/12/how-samsung-beat-nokia/

How many smartphones did Samsung ship in Q2?

50.2 million.

That’s the estimate from IDC. So why bother asking?

Because that is an estimate. Of the 104 million Android phones shipped in the quarter (itself an estimate from another, possibly different methodology), I could only account for 7 million actually reported.

http://www.asymco.com/2012/08/13/how...ng-ship-in-q2/

Summary: thanks to obfuscation by Samsung, even a specialist phone-industry analyst has no frickin' idea how many - or how few - phones the company has actually sold. "The company stopped reporting any data on either overall phone shipments or of smartphones since Q3 2011."

Further, Android doesn't know what anyone wants, but Google's apparently got a decent idea, as do Morotola, HP, Acer, Archos, Sony, HTC, LG, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Samsung. By and far, these companies outsell Apple and it's not because Apple knows better than they do what their customers want."

If these companies all know what companies want then why are all of the Android manufacturers except Samsung losing money?

I
http://www.asymco.com/2012/05/03/the-phone-market-in-2012-a-tale-of-two-disruptions/

And as far as Amazon and B&N, they don't even market that tablets as Android based devices.

"'I don't know anyone in the ad-supported Web business who isn't engaged in a relentless, demoralizing, no-exit operation to realign costs with falling per-user revenues,' â" including its recent acquisition of Motorola,"

Because being a commodity Android phone manufacturer definitely protects you from a relentless, demoralizing no-exit operations to realign costs with falling per-user revenues.....

http://www.asymco.com/2011/05/16/iphone-share-of-phone-market-in-q1/

>>>And they wonder why iOS stays on top.

Might want to update your belief system:
Androids sold - ~900 million
iOS gadgets sold - ~100 million

Might want some actual facts to back that up with:
June 27th, Google I/O:
"Google during its annual I/O Developer Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday unveiled that 400 million Android devices have now been activated and a total of one million new Andro
id devices are activated each day. "

March 7th, Apple Event
"While we wait for the new iPad to officially take the stage in San Francisco, Apple CEO Tim Cook has just taken the opportunity to rattle off some impressive numbers for the company’s iOS devices. The company has sold a total of 315 million iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches, with a full 62 million of those iOS-powered devices being sold in Q4 2011 alone."

So Google is winning...? Maybe? Depends what Apple rattles off at the next IOS fanboy rapture event. Apple is certainly winning in profitability, although Samsung isn't doing so badly either.

In the entire mobile phone market (a somewhat different market than Android VS IOS) in 2011, Apple made ~70% of the profit, while Samsung made ~20%.

IOS device stats: http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/07/tim-cook-talks-ios-device-stats-315-million-sold-62-million-in-q4-alone/
Android device stats: http://www.bgr.com/2012/06/27/1-million-android-devices-activated-each-day-400-million-total/
Profits in mobile phone market: http://www.asymco.com/2012/05/03/the-phone-market-in-2012-a-tale-of-two-disruptions/

AT&T and Verizon are making plenty of money - just check their quarterly results. The telecom equipment manufacturers aren't making much.

As far as the "phone manufacturers" - only two of the majors are making any money. Apple only makes most of the industry profits with Samsung making the rest. HTC makes a little.

http://www.asymco.com/2012/05/03/the-phone-market-in-2012-a-tale-of-two-disruptions/

Those figures are worldwide. E.g. http://www.asymco.com/2012/05/03/the-phone-market-in-2012-a-tale-of-two-disruptions/

I'm not sure what lesson you drew from the Amiga (which was definitely killed by bad [un]management, not because it was closed (which it wasn't) or even overly expensive), but I agree with the general sentiment that Open (which currently equals Android) will win in the long run. It will win on price and volume and being "good enough". Here's an interesting graph ("The Rise and Fall of Personal Computing") which I have not verified in any way. Look at the slope of android vs the apple products. That to me says "android will win in a couple of years".

This assumes that Apple will continue to be AAPL and position themselves as selling exclusive high-end products, meaning they'll try to keep margins very high while refusing to play in some markets on pure principle (like the 7" tablet form which IIRC Jobs didn't want)

What we can expect is ever more litigation from AAPL as the balance of power starts shifting. Perhaps in two years we'll have have a more or less clean split between ios android and win8. In the end though, the march of Commoditization is relentless, and it favors cheap-and-open, neither of which describes MS and Apple.

I've actually been thinking that the phone form factor as we know it today may well go the way of the dodo in the future. Who really makes calls any more? Maybe that Galaxy Note is a transitional form to a bigger device ("tablet") which CAN make calls but is really optimized for reading/dictating. Heck, in the future what's to say that your speech won't be recognized into text or phonemes from text AND speech alike, burst over an IP channel and then synthezied -- possibly in "your voice" -- on the other end. But I digress.

Yes, but look at the decline. It's shocking, especially if you factor in iOS devices. If you factor in Android, it's even worse.

This guy makes a strong argument that tablets will pass traditional form factor PCs (desktop/laptop/notebook) by Q3 2013. It isn't very far out to forecast.

My anecdotal data bears this out. Among buddies buying new systems when old machines die or are given away, very few replace a PC with a PC. They replace them with tablets at least 80% of the time.

The world is changing, and it's an interesting inflection point, very much like when PCs took over from workstations as the main "go to" computer for most tasks. People didn't believe it then either - had all kinds of reasons it could never happen - but happen it did. Just like then, there is a crowd now that doesn't believe it, but the sales numbers don't lie. Tablets are growing 100% year over year, and PCs sales are flat (declining in the developed world, slight increase in the developing world).

"The thing is, there are constantly new Android devices and updates. Apple doesn't release that often and doesn't see a lot of innovation. If I buy the best Android phone now, in a few short months there will be a better one. Not so with the iPhone or iPad. I guarantee that those ratings are not the same today as they were a year and 3 months ago. Android devices now outsell iPhones:"

If I buy an iPhone now and Apple releases a new version of iOS -- I get the new OS the same day it is released? Can you say the same?

Sure there are constant Android updates -- what are the chances that your shiny new phone gets the update? How many new Android phones are still shipping with outdated versions of Android?

Success for a company is defined by making money not "market share"...Let's see how Apple is doing compared to Android....

http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/03/first-apples-rank-in-mobile-phone-profitability-and-revenues/

Here you go....

http://www.asymco.com/2012/05/03/the-phone-market-in-2012-a-tale-of-two-disruptions/

http://www.asymco.com/2011/02/11/in-memoriam-microsofts-previous-strategic-mobile-partners/

While DirecTV's Chairman is crowing about his viewers lacking an interest in paying for an "extra box" on top of what he provides? Viewers will continue to drop DirecTV service completely,

This is inevitable, broadcast services are dying a slow death as multi-cast and on-demand services become more prevalent.

once they use boxes like AppleTV .

This made me laugh. Apple has had no success with AppleTV and for good reason, they are trying to follow the same "micropayment" model that is killing the other companies, when you look at it, paying $2 per episode is no different then pay-per-view. AppleTV has completely failed to take off and unlike Microsoft they are unable to bundle it with their other offering due to the fact it's a bit of hardware. This "Direct TV" guy (they don't exist in Oz) is right about that, people don't want another box, his or Apple's. They want this shit built into their TV sets and not have it controlled by someone else. This is why Napster and Bit Torrent is such a huge success, not because it's free but because it provides people with what they want. Apple TV is a failure. A successful on demand service will integrate with what people already have and provide access to what they want without asking for payment every single time.

Do you even have a clue what "Apple TV" is? [looks at posting history]. Quite obviously you don't have any clue about anything, so why should we be surprised. Here's someone with a clue.

It's nowhere near that high. Here's some actual analysis done on five different films that breaks down the different costs for each. The biggest salary paid out was $31 million. Depending on the total production costs, actor salaries can either contribute a significant amount of the cost (e.g. Unbreakable) or a rather small amount (e.g. Spider Man 2) so it's not as though the stars are making bucket loads of money. In some cases they're worth that cost though as Hollywood has determined that putting certain people in a movie will get more people into theaters. Hollywood is making plenty of money, but they use all kinds of crooked accounting practices to make it seem as though they're not.

Those numbers will change in a year. Apple is spending a shit ton of money for ramping up manufacturing equipment, forecast for $7B this year. What other company has ever spent that much just on mfg equipment? One obvious reason is growth in China.

http://www.asymco.com/2012/05/22/up-to-eleven/

I seriously, seriously doubt it. Android basically makes no money relative to Apple.

http://www.asymco.com/2012/05/15/android-revenues-in-perspective/

Adding an attribution to Horace Dediu (the original author) is not that hard.
Or possibly even a link to the original article.

Do "Android revenues" include advertising, e.g. ads shown in apps?

Yes. That's where the gross majority of Google's revenue from Android comes from. The Asymco link breaks it down, and points out that Google also makes between four and five times that much per iDevice, since Google is the default search engine on iOS. Google's ad-based revenue lets it worry about revenue per smartphone, not just per Android smartphone.

Because most android manufacturers are losing money.

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

If you had a design you felt was innovative enough to patent and you spent a ton of R&D on, and you saw a company producing something that you believe is infringing on your ideas, would you just sit back and let them run with it?

See, that is the flaw in your argument. You're supposing that any appreciable portion of patent law relates to something "innovative enough to patent" that somebody "spent a ton of R&D on." Especially as it pertains to companies the size of Apple or Microsoft.

There are a few such cases, to be sure. But the vast majority are incremental improvements slapped together, or something done for decades with "using a computer!" stuck on the back. There's no bar for innovation; every idea a company that size has ever had goes through the patent process because $10k to them is worth less than a sneeze. There are an estimated 250 million Android phones that have been activated[1], growing at a rate of about 700,000 per day. Let's ignore the existing install base (which Apple probably will not); at $5/device, they are asking for $3,500,000 per day. Do you see now why filing BS patents that took no thought and no effort at every turn in hopes that one hits the jackpot makes sense? $3.5MM can pay for 350 patent applications per day that never make a dime. (And you can be assured that many "make a dime," whether directly, as a patent bludgeon or simply as a boost to the company. Patents can be valuated and listed as a company asset on its balance sheets even if it is never licensed.)

Maybe this is one of the good patents that cost a billion dollars in R&D. I doubt it, but maybe. It still doesn't matter. The next one won't be, and there will be a next one.

And let's be honest here. There's no mobile patent worth $3.5 million per day.

[1] http://www.asymco.com/2011/12/21/how-many-android-phones-have-been-activated/

http://www.asymco.com/2012/01/17/the-rise-and-fall-of-personal-computing/

I'm not holding funeral services for the PC just yet.

Eventually the traditional PC will be gone. Not that we won't have comfortable workstations with big screens, keyboard and a mouse. It's just that the platform, and especially its OS will be different. And that screen will be a touchscreen. And it will also have voice recognition.

In particular, look at those graphs in the article. They tell quite a story. Consider that first and last graph especially. Consider that those are logarithmic scales. That means that the iOS / Android devices have rocketed to large numbers faster than anything in history. It is easy to see that by vast numbers alone they will soon eclipse traditional PC's. Just last week I was reading how Microsoft's sales of Windows are down, and they blame it on declining sales of PC's.

I don't know iOS numbers, but I do know that Android devices exceed 250 Million with over 700,000 new activations per day (or over 8 per second).

The entire computing landscape has changed before and it will change again. Not overnight. There is not a bright line you can point to and say that is the day it changed. It's just gradual continuous change. A blur. A gradient.

Also, Steve Jobs was right and was able to avoid the innovator's dilemma. Ignore the Android line. Look at the iPad / iPhone lines compared to Mac. He was right to recognize, acknowledge and not be in denial about it -- the innovator's dilemma. ("we can't build the new platform because it will cannibalize the existing profitable platform.")

Something else to notice about those graphs: PC's are getting very flat. Mac still have a significant upward trajectory.

Basically: things are changing. I think WOA signals that Microsoft recognizes this, and is floundering around trying to do something about it, and will ultimately fail. This should not be a surprise. Microsoft has passed its middle age and is moving into its golden years. :-)

then why did they ever give them a piece of the pie to begin with? android can't be called anything other than a massive success for google. everyone is making $. there's no reason for anyone to be unhappy with the current arrangement. google never wanted to get into the hardware market. it's full of slim profits and stiff competition

Really? Doesn't look like everyone is making slim profits.
http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/29/apple-captured-two-thirds-of-available-mobile-phone-profits-in-q2/

I bet Google would love to have some of those "slim profits" added to their bottom line.

As a platform - the important thing - Apple's star is waning. You can't compete with the rest of the industry just because some fan boys prefer how the screen scrolls when you swipe it, or whatever.

As a platform....

1. iOS still accounts for 2/3rd's of Google's mobile searches

http://9to5mac.com/2011/09/21/google-23rds-of-our-mobile-search-comes-from-apples-ios/

2. The Apple app store generates 4x the revenue of the Android app market....

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-app-store-2011-12

3. And Apple generates more profit on the iPhone than the rest of the industry combined.....

http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/29/apple-captured-two-thirds-of-available-mobile-phone-profits-in-q2/

Since your analysis seems to be lacking an actual connection with the facts, I'm guessing you would be surprised to learn that, using Reported Income as the most telling metric of success, Apple is blowing MS away.

For example, http://www.asymco.com/2011/09/29/comparing-revenues-apple-and-microsoft/ provides the following tidbits:

-- The Mac business generates more Revenue than Windows

-- iOS powered devices generate more revenue than all of Microsoft’s products put together

-- Apple’s revenues grew 413% since Q2 2007 while Microsoft’s grew 26%

So it seems if Apple is to be, as you claim, "a fading memory," it may be due to some diminishing capacity on your part, and not a true measure of Apple's continued success.

Check out Asymco. The most recent post is titled Global smartphone penetration nearing 10%. They've got lots of other interesting info on the mobile market in older posts.

If you're not an iPhone/Apple fan, beware: this site takes a firm stance that revenue and profits are more important than pure market share. In that context, Apple appears to be walking on water. They present their analyses factually and with complete citation and disclosure of contextual biases, but regardless, I can imagine that someone who hates Apple for whatever reason might feel that it's distressingly pro-Apple.

If you're one of Apple's phone competitors, these charts should make you burst into tears. Apple is making 2/3 of the total profits in the entire industry, even if they aren't selling 2/3s of the phones.

Yup. Look at it fall:

http://www.asymco.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Screen-Shot-2011-11-06-at-11-6-10.40.33-PM.png

You're going to have to define "Apple is losing". Market share? Maybe. Profit share? No fucking way.

http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/30/the-profitphone-x-phones-sold-chart/

Or this, which shows that the iPhone has MORE REVENUE THAN ANY LINE OF BUSINESS AT MICROSOFT.

http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/30/the-profitphone-x-phones-sold-chart/

Or this, which shows that the iPhone is ABOUT AS PROFITABLE AS ALL OF MICROSOFT.

http://www.asymco.com/2011/10/02/ios-vs-microsoft-comparing-the-bottom-lines/

How do you like them apples?

You're going to have to define "Apple is losing". Market share? Maybe. Profit share? No fucking way.

http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/30/the-profitphone-x-phones-sold-chart/

Or this, which shows that the iPhone has MORE REVENUE THAN ANY LINE OF BUSINESS AT MICROSOFT.

http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/30/the-profitphone-x-phones-sold-chart/

Or this, which shows that the iPhone is ABOUT AS PROFITABLE AS ALL OF MICROSOFT.

http://www.asymco.com/2011/10/02/ios-vs-microsoft-comparing-the-bottom-lines/

How do you like them apples?

You're going to have to define "Apple is losing". Market share? Maybe. Profit share? No fucking way.

http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/30/the-profitphone-x-phones-sold-chart/

Or this, which shows that the iPhone has MORE REVENUE THAN ANY LINE OF BUSINESS AT MICROSOFT.

http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/30/the-profitphone-x-phones-sold-chart/

Or this, which shows that the iPhone is ABOUT AS PROFITABLE AS ALL OF MICROSOFT.

http://www.asymco.com/2011/10/02/ios-vs-microsoft-comparing-the-bottom-lines/

How do you like them apples?

if someone built a feature for feature, damn near exact clone of the iphone and started selling it for $50 .. you'd see apple losing some business.

Good thing that's Apple's exact business model. Disrupt itself.

Apple phones now have prices from $0 to $850:
http://www.asymco.com/2011/10/09/the-new-iphone-portfolio-and-implications-on-asp/

And, unsurprisingly, the $0 iPhones are starting to supplant the $0 Android phones:
AT&T Mobility CEO: "we're getting more new subscribers coming on the 3GSthan other deviceswe [are also] sold out on that device"

Apple are resting on their laurels. They've done good and have come out of nowhere to dominate the market ... but Android is still outselling them. Wow. 4 million iPhone 4S sold .. who's willing to bet that will be a significant number of the total sales?

Yes, because a profit seeking entity making 66% of all mobile phone profit worldwide is "failing".

http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/29/apple-captured-two-thirds-of-available-mobile-phone-profits-in-q2/

And before you reply with the usual slashdot retort about developers caring about market share.....

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/21/861-5-percent-growth-android-puny/

Just so I can avoid the other usual retort about "why would fanbois be proud of the fact that they are spending more on iPhones than Android phones". In the U.S., I pay $200 for a $699 iPhone. An Android user pays $200 for a $500 phone. I don't care that the carrier pays a larger subsidy to Apple. My bill is the same every month,

Apple *is* in fact making huge profits from its Mac division - about $5B last *quarter* - see http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/20/how-apples-business-grows/ ... A whole lot of companies would love to have this "not huge profits" business line... Assuming they don't screw it up, that's ~ $20B/year...

Apple makes a lot *more* money from iOS devices (lumping the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch together gets you to ~60% of the company's income), but that's "only" 3x the Mac income, hardly the "vast bulk", which (to me at least) implies a completely dominant fraction of the whole - of the order of 90-odd percent, not ~60 percent...

And your analysis is wrong anyway, IMHO. I think Apple are perfectly happy to be seen as the premium brand, where they can rake in much more in profit from much less "work" by focussing on only a few product lines. Look at http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/31/fourth-quarter-mobile-phone-industry-overview/ - Apple take more than 50% of the profit in the phone industry by owning only 4% of the market-share.

Businesses exist to product profit, not to product market share. *One* way to try and increase profit is to try and increase market share. Apple has another way, and it's working well for them.

Simon.

No. Maybe in smartphones, but they are a minority of the market. There is a whole world beyond the 1st world and nobody there can afford a smartphone yet. It is a volume business but there is a lot of profit there in churning out cheap phones by the container.

Not smartphones, all phones....

http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/29/apple-captured-two-thirds-of-available-mobile-phone-profits-in-q2/

There is not much profit in $30 phones -- ask Nokia

And who the fsck cares about profits unless you are an Apple shareholder,

The claim was that Apple was "losing". How is a profit seeking entity losing when it makes 2 out of every $3 in the industry?

  units moved are what counts for everyone else. Developers don't give a crap how much Apple is making, they want to know how many potential customers they have to justify developing for the platform to judge how much THEY stand to make.

Developers care about the people who are willing to buy stuff. The Apple app store generates over 17x the revenue of the Android app market.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/21/861-5-percent-growth-android-puny/

Most users don't really care how much Apple is making in profit except if they learn Apple makes 50 juicy points it might piss some off while some fanboys like yourself seem to get off on how hard Apple is screwing you.

Well it doesn't matter what "most users care about". A statement was made, I refuted it with facts.

I paid $200 for a $700 iPhone 4 under contract. A high-end Android user paid the same $200 for a $450 phone. We are both paying the same monthly bill. Why do I care that the carrier paid a higher subsidy to Apple than the Android manufacturer?

And in volume of Smartphones Apple is at 18% and falling fast into their 5-10% market niche they have stayed within on the desktop since the 1980s.

If by falling fast, you mean holding steady....

Google just announce 190 Million Android devices sold during their quarterly report today. Apple just announced 220 million iOS devices sold during the iPhone 4S launch.

Give it another year and they will probably be falling fast in tablets until they hit boutique luxury good territory. Because that is what Apple is, a premium brand experience. The only reason developers still care about iOS is they (rightly it appears) assume anyone who can afford an iProduct has enough disposable income to afford to pay for lots of apps so while in absolute percentage of potential customers they may be shrinking, they rakeoff per customer is high enough to justify porting.

Didn't you just say that developers care about units sold? So which is it? Do developers care about units sold are the number of people who actually have money to buy stuff?

Apple seems to be doing pretty well at competing....

http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/29/apple-captured-two-thirds-of-available-mobile-phone-profits-in-q2/

Apple makes 66% of all mobile phone profit. RIM makes 11%

Android doesn't seem to be "winning" in the only thing that counts for a business -- profits.

'oh they have lots of customers, money and patents and they sue all their competitors therefore it must be good'. But of course when it's 'M$' it's 'oh they have lots of customers, money and patents and they sue all their competitors therefore it must be bad', maybe they should change it to Appl€.

Android has already won. It's pretty much got the *rest* of the smartphone market, which is nontrivial.

http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/29/apple-captured-two-thirds-of-available-mobile-phone-profits-in-q2/

"Winning" in business is making a profit. Apple + RIM makes 77% of all mobile profit.

Motorola -- loss money
LG - loss money
Sony Ericson -- loss money
HTC -- made about $565 million (not great)
Samsung -- who knows but some of their profit is coming from bada and dumb phones,,

Apple seems to be doing pretty well at competing....

http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/29/apple-captured-two-thirds-of-available-mobile-phone-profits-in-q2/

Apple makes 66% of all mobile phone profit.
RIM makes 11%

Android doesn't seem to be "winning" in the only thing that counts for a business -- profits.

Apple is a media company, first and foremost.

http://www.asymco.com/2011/09/29/comparing-revenues-apple-and-microsoft/

Now look at the sliver of Apple's revenue that comes from iTunes.

Your data comes from here, which I don't find to be particularly reliable. Just read through several of his pieces with charts with no data and stupid reasoning that "the numbers are too imprecise to provide data." Yeah, whatever bub. Keep "analyzing" business to provide charts that support your predefined position that Apple is dominating Android even while Android holds 45% of the market and climbing.

The big question is: Is Android encroaching? I'm not sure the answer is that easy.

Have a look at the two graphs in these posts on Asymco: http://www.asymco.com/2011/08/22/nokia-vs-android/ and http://www.asymco.com/2011/08/05/the-competition/ .

Android is growing tremendously, but it doesn't seem to eat away any of Apple's marketshare. In fact, it looks like a lot of dumbphones are replaced by new Android devices and that Android is eating up Nokia's former share in the smartphone sector.

Another interesting fact is utilization (don't have a link handy, sorry). If you look at website statistics, WiFi hotspot statistics, the story is usually the same: a big majority of the devices are iOS. It does make sense if you consider that a lot of former feature phone users are now on Android, but continue to use their new Android devices as feature phones.

As long as Apple continues to sell more and more phones---and right now it still looks like that is the case---they don't have to worry about Android.

The big question is: Is Android encroaching? I'm not sure the answer is that easy.

Have a look at the two graphs in these posts on Asymco: http://www.asymco.com/2011/08/22/nokia-vs-android/ and http://www.asymco.com/2011/08/05/the-competition/ .

Android is growing tremendously, but it doesn't seem to eat away any of Apple's marketshare. In fact, it looks like a lot of dumbphones are replaced by new Android devices and that Android is eating up Nokia's former share in the smartphone sector.

Another interesting fact is utilization (don't have a link handy, sorry). If you look at website statistics, WiFi hotspot statistics, the story is usually the same: a big majority of the devices are iOS. It does make sense if you consider that a lot of former feature phone users are now on Android, but continue to use their new Android devices as feature phones.

As long as Apple continues to sell more and more phones---and right now it still looks like that is the case---they don't have to worry about Android.

I agree Google is just doing what it needs to do but I could do without their whining. They knew what they were getting into with Android, from potential Java lawsuits to getting heat from Apple, but they didn't have any choice. Google didn't have a choice because they couldn't let Apple have the power to lock them out of the mobile market and their OEM's had no choice because they were blind sided by Apple to the point where it could buy their entire industry out of petty cash.

Apple and Android are still both growing in share, it's Symbian and RIM that have been losing. I'd say up until a week ago that Android might have had a sustainable model for share dominance, but then Google went and bought Motorola, and now the whole future of the thing is in question, if Google doesn't handle their relationship with their partners very carefully.

I would say it's working out pretty god damned well, actually. Apple is making 66% of the mobile phone profits.

Microsoft already makes more from Android than from Windows Phone 7.

Meanwhile, Apple is in the middle of a giant lawsuit against Samsung for it's mobile phone division, which is starting to seriously make a run for crown of the Android market, and is eating away at Apple's business.

Apple:

1. Generates more revenue than any other company in the world selling cell phones (yes they generate more revenue than Nokia)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20056289-248.html

2. Has 50% of the worldwide profit in cell phones compared to 13% for all Android manufacturers combined:

http://www.asymco.com/2011/05/16/iphone-share-of-phone-market-in-q1/

3. The iOS app market is more than 17x bigger than Android's by revenue:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/21/861-5-percent-growth-android-puny/

Android from a business perspective isn't really doing that great.....