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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
Well I think Apple's kinda got Samsung by the balls. Yeah Samsung is probably pissed about the lawsuit, but on the other hand if they say fuck Apple they just lost one of their largest customers. Granted Apple would need to get a new supplier but one thing I've learned in business is you never want the vendor thinking they are your only option. Hell I imagine Apple probably could start manufacturing the parts they want, I believe there sitting on around 60 Billion in cash.
I'm guessing Samsumg's VP of mobile considers the VP of manufacturing to be an enemy, as both of them are in competition for the CEO postion. If hitting Apple hurts manufacturing, that's two birds with one stone.
There has to be closed-garden companies like Apple to make new paradigms. They control the OS, they can make it do what they want. They're also not afraid to do away with tradition that has no use anymore.
Unlike PC manufacturers, who with Microsoft, can only design computers with what Microsoft had in mind. Tweaking can be done, but nowhere near the level needed that went from OS X -> iOS. They had PC tablets from 2001, and guess what, they were just junk. Just like the Windows phones, which had the same start button on bottom left mentality - give me a break!
Even after 15 years of Linux, I haven't seen the open approach yield much in productive innovation on the desktop front. Design by committee is the worst. Or a 100 comittees in this case. And Microsoft has that same problem. And PCs have design by tradition. It took Apple to get rid of the floppy and some legacy ports that 99% of people don't use.
And even after Apple is gobbling up the notebook market, I don't see many of the PC manufacturer so much as even copy them. Same plasticky, gimmicky shit notebooks as ever. Sure, Dell make copy MacBook Air with Adamo or whatever it's called (as useless as either were), and they may also make the shiny screens, or chicklet keyboards - but the bodies, the very first impression of a notebook on PCs has remains the same plasticky, unwiedly, fugly crap that they've been pushing out in 1998. No clean lines or anything like the Power Mac or moreso MacBook Pro. Boggles my mind.
And I say this as someone that would like to see nice computers on the PC front as I work on a PC desktop. I recently got a hand me down desktop and it was fucking gaudy - LED lights and gauges everywhere, like a poor man's F1 racer in computer case form. Tried to find something minimalistic, and the nicest thing I could find was a black case version of das keyboard.
*(I do love open source and open standards, but keep them the hell away from the GUI :D)
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.....