Slashdot Mirror
Apple Now World's Largest Semiconductor Buyer
Lucas123 writes "Apple has leaped two spots to become the world's largest consumer of semiconductor technology, including NAND flash, NOR flash and microprocessors. Apple spent $17.5 billion on semiconductors in 2010, an increase of 79.6% over 2009. Sixty-one percent of Apple's semiconductor budget in 2010 was spent on wireless products such as the iPhone and iPad, while second place HP spent 82% of its semiconductor budget on computer products like desktops, notebooks and servers."
it is surprising how hard it is for slashdot posters to click one link further to the real article instead of linking to the one with adds.
http://www.isuppli.com/Semiconductor-Value-Chain/News/Pages/Apple-Becomes-Worlds-Largest-OEM-Semiconductor-Buyer-in-2010.aspx
And Samsung is the world's second largest semiconductor MANUFACTURER, after Intel.. including providing a lot of chips to Apple.
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.
Fun times ahead.
Apple strength in hardware sales lies in its device and media ecosystemâ"every Apple product is connected through iTunes/iOS and is synergetic with all other Apple products.
As a result, committed users of the Apple ecosystem derive more value from each additional Apple device they buy, and users have little interest in leaving the Apple realm.
In other words, through a common ecosystem, Apple leverages each device to sell other devices. Rising device sales to consumers then leads to increased semiconductor purchasing by Apple.
.
.
A buyer that once purchased a Hewlett-Packard PC would just as likely purchase a Dell PC next if the price was better, given that there is little or no value in purchasing another Hewlett-Packard.
Stupid PC buyers... buying according to their needs and monetary abilities. Why can't they learn that it is much better to be "committed".
Also, HP (and Samsung) buys almost as much semiconductors as Apple (even without all those pricey touchscreens) - but it sucks ass.
While Apple rocks.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You have to understand that apple might as well be the biggest gadget manufacturer in the world. They do desktop computers, notebooks, netbooks and phones (Not to mention iPod lines with touchscreens, for example).
And unlike android or windows, they do manufacture everything themselves, so the load is not spread between every company that decides to produce a windows laptop or android phone.
About ten years ago, before the iPod and OS X, I suspect very few of us suspected anything like this from Apple. As much as I don't agree with their walled garden approach to software, it's hard not to be impressed with what they have accomplished.
And yet, we're very much in a transformative age in computing. Desktops are increasingly rare for mainstream computing, tablets are on the rise, and there are billions of people who are getting their first taste of the Internet not through a traditional computer, but instead a smartphone. Everyone is searching for the holy grail, the next big thing.
It's gonna be an interesting next ten years. I for one is staying idealistic and hoping for open standards and interoperability across devices, platforms, and operating systems. Sorry, Apple.
.: Max Romantschuk
Stupid PC buyers... buying according to their needs and monetary abilities. Why can't they learn that it is much better to be "committed".
(...)
While Apple rocks.
Funny that, since Apple is the IBM of cell phones while Android is the Microsoft. If you invest heavily in Android apps, you can switch between any number of clones. If you invest in iApps, you're committed to Apple hardware which comes with a heavy premium.
Don't get me wrong, I have an iPhone myself because it has features ahead of its time - but so did OS/2. But unless they keep moving they'll end up just like IBM did, overrun by cheap clones doing pretty much the same at a much lower cost.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The iPads are to small for real work like cad, excel, call centers, photo shop like work, stuff where you need more then one app open side by side, codeing, lots more as well and the small caps make cloud based work cost alot / in some areas 3g is to slow for big files.
Apple devices don't scale well for "work" in general. It doesn't matter if it's a higher degree of interactivity or just handling more "use".
They are also intentionally limited in terms of "play".
The new input devices certainly hold a lot of promise but the current devices that tend to employ them are overhyped. It's the inputs that are interesting not so much the devices they happen to be attached to today.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> The iPads are to small for real work like cad, excel, call centers,... codeing,
Right. Because those things matter to almost everybody.
See, Slashdot have this weird thing where they think the 0.2% of the market they are in matters in some way. It doesn't. Normal people don't use CAD programs or code. They watch videos, they use social networking, they IM. That's the vast majority of the market. And guess what? Increasingly, people are finding they prefer iPads and smartphones rather than desktops.
It suggests to me they need a cheaper version of the iPhone (I think offering 3GS this long was the idea behind that) but also cheaper plans or just offering it unlocked, cheap, so I can have the carrier of my choice.
Who knows, maybe they'll start offering the 3GS for $229 or some such with the pre-paid cell phone plans out there is Apple smartens up.
Yeah, and IBM is just a hollow shell now...wait, no, it's one of the largest IT consulting firms in the world. Last year, IBM had revenues of nearly $100 Billion (for comparison, Apple "only" pulled in $65 Billion). Loss of one market does not mean that a company will die. I wouldn't have a problem with Apple ending up "just like IBM did". Hopefully, they would adapt and move on to dominate different markets.
I guess every post with the word Apple in it will be reduced to a IOS vs Android cock fight in the comments. I'll bite anyway, since TFA is boring and inaccurate. I mean... the word semiconductor refers to basically every IC and component based on a transistor. TFA seems to refer to only flash memory and microprocessors... Apple was, at several times (perhaps mostly due to Apple's irregular and controversial purchasing patterns) the largest buyer of Flash memory. Besides... these numbers seems to be based on $$, not components. In 2009, isuppli claimed apple was the larges purchaser of NAND flash based on the number of chips they ordered (not per meg or per dollar). Apple receives huge discounts on components, which skews any $-based results (as does exchange rates). The industry production in the same article is measured by Exabytes, not $$ or components. iSuppli (which, from it's name, seems Apple biased), doesn't seem interested in talking about common units, rather a mix of units. Furthermore, many reporters from many sources don't seem to understand the data and have taken the liberty of making things up.
Stupid PC buyers... buying according to their needs and monetary abilities. Why can't they learn that it is much better to be "committed".
(...)
While Apple rocks.
Funny that, since Apple is the IBM of cell phones while Android is the Microsoft. If you invest heavily in Android apps, you can switch between any number of clones. If you invest in iApps, you're committed to Apple hardware which comes with a heavy premium.
Don't get me wrong, I have an iPhone myself because it has features ahead of its time - but so did OS/2. But unless they keep moving they'll end up just like IBM did, overrun by cheap clones doing pretty much the same at a much lower cost.
Maybe it's different elsewhere in the world, but in the NE US a low end iPhone is cheaper or the same price as a low end android phone. A high end iPhone is the same price or cheaper than high end Android handsets. There are some models in between on the Android side, but I wouldn't go so far as to say price differential has a large effect on consumer buying habits. Clearly iPhones outsell any single line of Android phones (not that that fact necessarily makes the iPhone better).
IOS vs Android would only be comparable to the os/2 vs windows war if Google was coding iOS (and realized they would benefit greatly by sabatoging the software and throwing in the towel). That is not the case. The current smart phone market is perhaps better analogized as Android being the Linux, and Apple being the Apple.
Of course Android is also like the Dell of smart phones. Maybe it's just Verizon, but every Android set I have seen requires you to root it just to get the bloatware off. If we're rooting these devices, and hence, to be fair, rooting the iPhone, we can negate most complaints about the iPhone. If you don't root an Android phone it's not really open (well it is to developers and hackers, but not to you).
So... most people don't have jobs...?
No .. they stopped used computers for work . Accountants use now an abacus App . They also don't use computers ( desktops/laptops) in home either . They watch videos on some tiny screens (instead of a display or TV) , IM ,email , docs using touch keyboards ( you can type as hell on them ), listen music at a mono very small speaker , soon they will start playing shouters on IPads too =)))
I don't understand why these discussions usually devolve into an implied impending total destruction of the desktop form-factor at the hands of smartphones and tablets.
I got a tablet recently and have noticed that for 95% of my casual use it is perfect. It's convenient, it's always on, I can (and do) use it on the couch or in the truck...It's fantastic for web browsing. The remaining 5% is, well, I'm doing it right here. Typing anything longer than a sentence or two.
Then there is the heavy lifting. I do a lot of media production. Professional level audio work--recording, mixing, mastering, etc--as well as video production. Additionally at the office I deal with a lot of spread sheets and Photoshop and multiple email accounts and a second dedicated desktop for a custom image processing application....for that I cannot foresee the desktop being dethroned. For a very very long time. Barring a completely revolutionary UI shift that eclipses the current smartphone/tablet format--and I cannot rule that out. Even then it will still take 5-10 years (at best) for every application to transition over....10-15 year for (almost) every business to adopt it.
I understand that the thought of a 'no desktop' world is scary to those of us who do more (and in some circumstances FAR more) with our general computing devices than facebook and angry birds...but that is simply foolish. Though I wouldn't rule out a hybrid transitional form-factor...Atrix and ilk I'm looking at you....
My only concern given this inevitable progression is that the "traditional" desktop hardware is likely to skyrocket in price--or simply not exist. Sure, running your desktop on real server hardware has always been a nice extension on the e-peen...but being forced to pay the additional price for nothing more than lack of commodity hardware, that'll suck. But it won't be the end of the world....
If you invest in iApps, you're committed to Apple hardware which comes with a heavy premium.
Huh? Apple's phones at worst are marginally more expensive than Android phones from the same carriers (especially discounting the two-for-one giveaway deals that are now cropping up on Android phones because otherwise the carriers couldn't move the things). We're talking $200-$300 over 2-3 years. For most people who can afford a smartphone at all, that doesn't even approach a "heavy" premium.
And in exchange for the extra couple hundred dollars, you get world-class support - everything from prompt OS updates to a wide range of peripherals to the best in-store experience in the industry. I had an out-of-warranty iPhone die on me, and Apple swapped it out free of charge. That kind of service alone is worth way more than any "premium" they charge.
You also get a phone with a much better user interface, and deeper app support.
The only reason why Android is doing as well as it is: the carriers need something to keep Apple from becoming a monopoly and bossing them around. That's it. Android is still a junky knockoff, but it's a better knockoff than any of the idiots at RIM or Microsoft could come up with. It's serviceable. So, the carriers push it to keep from becoming beholden to Apple.
It'll be interesting to see what'll happen over the next decade as wifi networks become ubiquitous and the carrier's networks won't matter as much for many folks (especially city dwellers). I'm sure the cable companies would love a slice of the mobile telecom pie too, which could accelerate the migration. I think the carriers are going to lose the ability to dictate which devices people use for telecommunications, and at what price. Apple is uniquely positioned to benefit from such a trend. The other makers all seem to depend upon the carriers to plug their junk. It'll be interesting to see what happens when the gatekeepers are no longer directing traffic their way.
It suggests to me they need a cheaper version of the iPhone (I think offering 3GS this long was the idea behind that) but also cheaper plans or just offering it unlocked, cheap, so I can have the carrier of my choice.
The Verizon/ATT duopoly doesn't want you to have any choice.
Desktop hardware will go the way of the dinosaur. Tablets and smartphones will soon be more than capable of driving multiple monitors when docked (possibly even wirelessly). Their operating systems and UI's will evolve to work with keyboards and mice when available.
For the handful of people who require workstation-class performance - maybe 0.5% of the overall market - those systems may remain, or much of that work may migrate to the cloud, with tablets and other devices simply functioning as clients.
And in exchange for the extra couple hundred dollars, you get world-class support - everything from prompt OS updates to a wide range of peripherals to the best in-store experience in the industry. I had an out-of-warranty iPhone die on me, and Apple swapped it out free of charge.
Lucky you, I had a broken home button (just that and yet the phone was completely useless), no warranty and it cost me 100 euros to get it fixed (a refurbished phone btw).
Track IP - Remotely track the IP address of a machine via email or MySQL.
I imagine the larger, heavier high-def Android tablets are on the way. Probably Christmas. They'll also have some way to use multiple HDTVs as wireless monitor extensions I imagine - which would solve all of your problem except the keyboard and Wacom tablet. We're almost there.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
where Apple has all its stuff made is the world's largest consumer of semiconductors.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I really think this talk about docking a tablet is backwards. I don't think anyone will want to dock their tablet.
My vision of the future is basically everything doing wireless syncing, and a lot of one-off devices that don't meaningfully connect in any manner other than being sync clients. The syncing could be more significant than just file sharing. In many ways it is kind of like docking without any actual docking occurring.
Convergence makes sense when you want to stuff more and more functionality into your pocket. And to a lesser extent convergence can help with things like desk space in a cramped urban apartment, etc. But there's very little reason to have a desktop setup that's completely useless unless you sacrifice your tablet. Docking is just one more pain in the ass, one more little token you have to carry around, and it doesn't need to happen.
There has been a slew of changes in Android 3.1 - such as full support for mice (on app level - the ability to handle mouse hover and drag events, trackpad scroll etc) - that clearly hint at Android being geared towards netbooks and above.
Meanwhile, Apple is rapidly updating OS X to be more and more like iOS - app store, fullscreen apps etc.
Will tablets kill laptops/desktops? No. But I'm pretty certain that the latter two will run software which looks much more like what we see on tablets today in 4-5 years.
Devices already need (and have) interfaces which allow them to charge and communicate with other devices. Docking isn't going anywhere. It's a really convenient way for new devices - like tablets and smartphones - to connect to and utilize legacy peripherals, everything from monitors to printers to hard drives.
Longterm that may all go wireless, but at the moment things like wireless HDMI are expensive and an enormous power suck. That isn't likely to change in the next decade. Your portable gadget needs to be charged. Might as well get some use out of it while it's charging.
But there's very little reason to have a desktop setup that's completely useless unless you sacrifice your tablet.
There's very little reason to have both devices if one can effectively function as both. You physically can't use a desktop and tablet at the same time. If the tablet - with the help of a keyboard, mouse and monitor - can function as a desktop, why own a desktop? We've seen the same thing happen with laptops largely supplanting desktop PCs over the past decade. Now you can expect to see the tablet and smartphone largely supplant both form factors.
There will always be a teeny tiny market for desktops and traditional laptops, in the same way there's still a small market for workstations. But desktops - and eventually laptops I suspect - are going to become niche products.
Glad I'm not in your world where laptops are supplanting PCs. Everyone I work with, including the secretaries, would be very pissed to lose easy dual screens, fast use of outlook with gigs of emails and huge attachments (ideal, no. Useful, yes), and the ability to have spreadsheet macros run in seconds rather than minutes. Laptops are nice for what they're good at, being mobile and pretty close to desktop speeds, but they're no replacement for desktops, even for the jobs you don't understand.
Loads of servers everywhere, with terminals to login, or access to the server 'cloud/internet' via portable devices such as mini tablets/phones, or larger 10"+ tablets.
Phone/tablets will grow closer to desktop cousins, as in more storage/local apps. And desktops converted to more home servers, so pretty much later there will be ONLY laptops / tablets to buy, and big box 'Home Servers' that handle shit loads of backups/media servers/PVRs/VMs.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
but customers are waking up to IBM's methods, selling needlessly complex products that require the lock-in money-sewer of IBM consulting