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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.'"
This article compares Apple, a hardware maker, with Google and Android, who provides software to hardware makers? How is that a fair comparison?
Or the fact Google doesn't sell phones?
If I interpret TFA correctly, this is all based on Google's figures for Android revenue in a settlement offer Google made to Oracle...
I'm sure that Google bent over backwards to inflate that figure as much as possible by including every possible source of indirect income from ads, service sign up, user data collected, desktop users switching to Google Mail/Docs/Calendar to better sync with their phone etc. so that they could pay Oracle absolutely every penny they deserved. I can't think of any reason why they would try every legitimate tactic to make that figure as small as they possibly could. Can you?
Google produced Android as part of a long-term strategy to attract people to their online services. There's going to be a lot of "intangibles" there that are very difficult to account for.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
The article still fails on showing what google gets out of all of this - Information. By using an Android phone you pretty much become a google centric person. You'll use their mail, calendar, contacts, news, etc on mobile and even shift your PC habits to google. In turn that will allow them to give you better adds and to charge more from the companies that serve them.
Google's approach at android is pretty much the same as google's approach at e-mail. They gave you an e-mail service better than most payed services offered at the time (for free) just so they could profit from the information they gathered.
This kind of news is misleading since Google pretty much has been using that business model everywhere with enough success to keep betting at it. It might not generate as much raw money as apple from each handset (even though they might get some from the Nexus line), but they still make more than enough from each smartphone.
So, we have a Slashdot article that's using figures from another Slashdot article from when AT&T had an exclusive deal with Apple.
Not only that, but the original Slashdot article that is used as the "authority" for the Apple figures completely ignores the manufacturing cost of the iPhone.
So here, we see Slashdot click-whoring (once again!).
Newsflash! Companies make money on the stuff they sell!! Film at 11 !!!1!!!111!
The "math" in both this, and the 2007 "Apple" article is so incomplete and just plain out-of-whack that this article is an embarrassment to not only Slashdot, but to "Journalism" in general.
Why are people modding this person as a troll? Are Slashdot users that ignorant???
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/03/29/google_earns_80_of_its_mobile_revenue_from_ios_just_20_from_android.html
Here are March 2012 statistics that show how the stores are doing, and notice how 1.3% of apps downloaded and installed on Android devices are paid for!
I would argue that slashdot mod's in this situation are the trolls not the person making the comment! Mod me down I don't care, but let's keep things at facts shall we...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"