Slashdot Mirror
Google Earns $2 Per Handset; Apple, $575
Hugh Pickens writes "While Apple generates more than $575 in profit for every iOS device, and according to estimates in 2007 Apple earned more than $800 on every iPhone sold through ATT, Horace Dediu reports that Android generated less than $550m in revenues for Google between 2008 and the end of 2011, earning only $1.70 per year, per Android device — explaining how Apple is sucking up two thirds of the profit in the mobile phone business. Dediu's starting point is a settlement offer Google made to Oracle of $2.8 million and 0.515% of Android revenues on an ongoing basis. His assumption is that those numbers represent Google's revenue from Android to date. 'If this is the case,' writes Dediu, 'We have a significant breakthrough in understanding the economics of Android and the overall mobile platform strategy of Google.' Of course profitability is not the only reason Google is in the mobile phone business. 'P&L considerations were not the only (or even at all) factors in investment for Google. Having a hedge against hegemony of potential rivals, having a means to learn and develop new business and having a role in defining the post-PC computing paradigm are all probably bigger considerations than profitability,' writes Dediu. 'My take is that [Android] is not a bad business. But it's also not a great one.'"
Google apparently earns 80% of its mobile revenue from iOS devices and 20% from Androids devices.
Let me rephrase...
Google do not manufacture devices. The moment an iPhone is sold Apple makes a good chunk of profit, when an Android phone is sold Google gets nothing.
Most notably android doesn't include what anyone else makes off the phones.
Android: "$2".
developers: $50
manufacturers: some amount.
Since apple is involved with all of the above, they're naturally including all of that. Which is not exactly an apples to apples comparison.
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.
I was going to moderate, but that's the second time you've posted flat-out wrong information on this thread...
The Google Nexus carries the Google name, because Google commissioned it, and set specific guidelines for how it's to be used/sold. It was manufactured by Samsung, and most of the profit goes to Samsung for it, but there are certain rules governing how that particular phone can be sold, and those are set by Google.
For one, the Nexus can't be sold with a network lock. It's sold as a "reference" device, and is unlocked to any network.
For two, it is not allowed to have any manufacturer-specific branding, and is sold with a stock unmodified Android.
There's other differences, but those are the big ones.
Google claimed in front of a congressional hearing that 66% of all mobile searches come iOS devices. Google reported pays Apple $100 million a year for being the default engine on Apple devices.
there have been previous estimates that Google does indeed make more money per handset from iPhones than Android.
Not estimates, it's in Eric Schmidt's testimony before Congress. Fully two thirds of Google's revenue from mobile comes from Apple devices.
"Android manufacturers aren't exactly getting rich either..."
Samsung just posted $5 billion profit for their last quarter.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/samsung-posts-record-quarterly-profit/article2394031/
Apples quarterly profit from their last quarter was just over $6 billion.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/10/18Apple-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-Results.html
You are splitting hairs. They make money on Nexus sales, but Nexus sales makes up a fraction of the overall Android market. Compare this with Apple, that makes 100% of iPhones, and you see that one is an ad company while the other is a hardware company.
It stands to reason that Apple would make more from the manufacturing of the phone.
An important change for education.
no.. the 575 is supposedly the profit portion. you see, 800 is the revenue number.
but it's just one part of this clusterfuck of a "story".
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.