"Voice" and "influence" are not the same thing (confusion being also part of giving them the latter...). For "influence", you need to be receptive and/or enabling.
Furthermore, in regards to "Otherwise someone gets to decide what is invalid and useless, and we rightly don't wish to trust anyone with that job" - oh but you do! Only some very specific groups of people; why is it so?
If both those companies are operating mostly sustainably, that means the "more profitable" one is freeriding on the fixed costs of infrastructure and manufacturing of crucial parts, financed almost exlusively by "less profitable" ones. That is, strictly speaking, ripping off; one of unfortunate side effects of the ways in which our markets are set up (and just look at the mess of the last 2 years if you have any doubts they are less than optimal). The huge group driving technology towards commodity is what enabled the infrastructure, not some manufacturers targeting only "premium" people.
It's possibly even more blatant freeriding in the mobile phone market... (depending on the outcome of patent dispute)
Those are at mosy problems with weird implementations. Backbone where I live doesn't seem to have many; besides, does it need to be a "goldmine" to be insanely more viable from satellites?... Transatlantic and transpacific cables give very tangible benefits for their cost, and could be rerouted through hardly any deep ocean to speak of; heck, "transpacific" one needing in practice not much more than 100km of underwater cable.
Well, I was thinking more about "funny", not "informative" that my post got for some reason...
Anyway, the type of scene described is not the best one as far as stressing motion goes; instead of calm & relfective water, record wavy one - that wrecks havoc on encoders (and no need for some birds)
Are you seriously thinking something which is useful for providing power via decay can be anywhere near sufficient for an airplane? Heck, an RC model even?
Looking at it like that misses one important thing (not directly applicable to "succesful" by the standards of stock market, of which "impressions" and "expectations" that you mention are major part, but...) - Apple didn't give people access to all this technology; PCs and (also) MS did. And that's not a secondary issue...
Sure, it's easy to be profitable if one targets only "premium" people and relies on Chinese sweatshops...which exist also thanks to overall volume of other products - essentially, Apple relies on the success of PC to be able to have such low manufacturing costs / high margins. But the way markets are set up doesn't catch that...
Likewise with new battle, mobiles. You seem to suggest that Apple doesn't willingly ignore and won't ignore vast majority of people, the "lesser" ones - you know, vast majority of almost 5 billion mobile subscribers; in the meantime, Apple sold around 50 million iPhones in total. 1%. Think about it for a second. Those 5 billions made possible by entites investing huge resources in underlying tech, infrastructure, providing mobile phones which, for hundreds millions of people, already are their first forage into networked world. All this of monumental value in regards to the future of humanity, its progress. Heck, it will also greatly benefit this "1%" and "investors". But the latter for some reason don't care about that. They, and you, seem to value more a company which is possibly even freeriding (depending how the patent dispute will end), and doesn't have the will to significantly contribute to that shift for humanity - but it still uses for its benefit the resources built by everybody in the process.
I share your views in regards to Flash, but FF/Gecko doesn't quite "work fine" on all platforms it runs on - mobile Mozilla is not a new effort, all the previous ones basically abandaned due to "oh well, we'll just wait until the hardware gest faster"; and even the current one runs only on one of the most powerful mobile phones. Meanwhile Webkit and Opera run happily on quite "underpowered" devices for a long time. OLPC XO-1 is also a curious example, having Gecko for some reason on what is essentially an overclocked 486... Likewise with standards - they're damn good in comparison to IE6, but "work on Webkit or Opera, run flawlessly on FF" works more often than the other way around. For some time we even had basically "best viewed in IE & FF".
My point was that the term itself has some peculiar connotations. C'mon, "bottom" - what does that ring typically? Why not "race to more" (customers), etc.? That's what this also is, with profound implications for the future of humanity.
I don't think hardware has been commodified quite yet. Using the mentioned example of Nokia - people actually value them for sturdiness, great battery life and reception, easy operation (yes...you might not believe it, but that's their common reputation), etc.; those things mostly carry over also to their smartphones. And it does have value - Nokia actually rarely has the cheapest devices in a given class; most people can find something affordable, yes, but often not the least expensive device, for the class of it (Nokia smartphones being sort of the exception...but only because the cheaper ones are pushed more and more as a replacement for S40, not a "premium" device for "premium" people). You're wrong about pricing (btw "extracting" profit is another nice term...), it also works differently throghout the world - US carriers are quite...specific (and US has fairly small mobile phones penetration). Plus in many areas the rule is to own your phone and rely on prepaid, no contract. Even on Slashdot it seems to be a common consensus that European or Japanese carriers give much better deals...
And sure, extracting profits from "premium" people is nice. It becomes a bit perverted when, among the "real" factors (which exclude expectations or impressions...), it's the only one which "investors"/markets seems to appreciate. What about, say, the societal benefits of the "lesser" 70% of our planet having those means of communication, giving great opportunity for global progress? (which benefits greatly people who are already "well off", too) Those who continuosly provide that, and who contributed greatly to development of underlying technology, often forgotten... And in the meantime the "premium" people live way beyond their means anyway (X axis)
Even if the "appliance" approach would prove valid...what makes you think it won't become "a race to the bottom"?
Plus with portable devices it largely already is (few selected "premium" markets excluded so far). However big iPods seem to be in the US and few other places, in most of the world...well, I think I could count the number of times I've seen an iPod on the fingers of one hand (that's excluding my iPod of course); "feature phones" are the standard (heck, for a few years already Nokia sells more digital media players annually than the total number of iPods ever produced up to that point) - and that's in a reasonably prosperous country in the EU. Guess the world at large. Similar deal (but even more pronounced) with mobile phones, Nokia sells an order of magnitude more of them, annually, than the total number of iPhones ever produced. Close to 2x more Symbian smartphones, also "annually vs. total" (even when being in the early stages of switching its users from S40 to Symbian). And the above figures are just from one manufacturer (the largest, sure...but Samsung, #2 with 21% so around 270 million devices shipped each year, bets big on their bada OS - don't be surprised if, in a year or two, over half of Samsung phones will be smartphones) "Pads" will get soon WebOS, ChromeOS, etc. devices (plus those can actually have proper screens for such usage, from Pixel Qi)
Besides, the term "race to the bottom" doesn't really make justice to what is happening. At the end of 2008 there were 3 billion mobile users. At the end of 2009 - 4.6 billion; now probably around 5. Most of those people without easy means of communication previously, often getting their only way to access internet (Ovi Mail is the fastest growing email provider; Opera Mini is, worldwide, the #1 mobile browser by usage / webpages stats; despite the fact that many of its users tend to be cautious with the amount of browsing - data access is expensive, and when you add wages disparity...). "Race to the bottom" really seems like a poor choice of words when describing such monumental shift for humanity, with great potential for bringing much progress (but somehow "investors" don't value that; even though that will also improve "investments"...). Apple demonstrably doesn't care about the humanity undergoing that shift, they distance themselves from "lesser" people; possibly even freeriding on developments of essential technology making those things possible (depending on how the patents dispute will end).
The digital divide will become smaller, not larger; that's unavoidable.
The road is clear (well, partially) only in the segment of "premium" people, living in "premium" places, though. More and more of the world population gets in the game. Apple is not interested in such "lesser" people, though (just look at that disparity between 7% in reveniu and 35% in profits...)
Which might of course work, profit-wise, for some time; but after a while network effects could take over. Where is the huge domination from Apple II days? Desktop publishing?
Nokia alone sells more portable media players annually than the total number of iPods ever produced. Nokia Ovi Store (y'know, music) gained recently greatly in Europe, will overtook iTunes rather soon; and that's not an isolated case (heck, iTunes or for that matter iPods hardly existed in most of the world)
When looking more long-term and at broader spectrum of markets (I know, not promoted by stockholders, but...) things might still be stirred up a bit; what happened with outright domination from Apple II era? What happened with total domination of publishing market? "iPhone is popular to the average consumer" if by "average" you mean some small subset of "premium" people from "premium" places...and that's the case already. Apple doesn't even want to target "lesser" people.
"LoL"? That's all what you can say at the fact that Nokia alone shipped 80 million smartphones in 2009? That's "just" below 20% of their sales, sure...but that's still higher than the average when looking at all manufacturers. That's still half of all smartphones shipped. That's almost more than all other manufacturers combined
Oh yeah, or you can just as well use your own "definition" of a "smartphone" (is there any? Why iPhone was a "smartphone" for a year while SE Ericsson "feature phones" aren't? And even now the latter have full multitasking... Heck, the "feature phones" with S40, majority of devices that Nokia sells, have comparable multitasking to an iPhone, ability to install apps, for few years are the single familiy of portable media players which sells moore units annually than all iPods ever produced, have Webkit browser, etc.) And what's wrong with "dumb phones"? What, you would prefer that only "premium" people have access to communication? Only in "premium" places? Those "dumb phones" greatly improve the world, giving already close to 5 billion people the means to communicate. Opera Mini is already the #1 mobile browser on the planet...even when its typical users tend to limit their usage (not everywhere mobile data access is cheap, and when the differences in income are added...)
Sure, HTC might have large part of its sells in the form of smartphones (though not all, they do sell BREW, too; you know, "dumb phones", sold to "lesser" people...). But that's irrelvant when classifying them as "major mobile phone manufacturer" (even "very major smartphone manufacturer" is not accurate..."important one", sure, that's better). So what that they limit their market so much? Understand what using that fact essentially means: if somebody makes and sells, say, ten smartphones (ten units!) per year, that would make it a "major" smartphone manufacturer because 100% of their is sales are "smartphones"... HTC is an important player, sure. But they are nowhere near "major mobile phone maker". Heck, SE or Motorola are almost borderline nowadays...
And as for "vast amounts" - yeah, but again take it into perspective: the total amount of smartphones sold daily, averaged throughout the year, appear to be close to 470 000 units. The amount of mobile phones sold daily - ~3.3 million. Don't project your perceptions from your "premium" place (where smartphones also are still a minority of sales anyway, and will remain so for some time) to the rest of the world.
Vast majority of 30-40 (depending on which of the two metrics below you choose) places beating the US handily (according to CIA World Factbook...) in life expectancy or infant mortality has socialized medicine. All the while US spends the most per capita on healthcare; not only far from the best, also very inneficient.
Yeah, it's great to target only "premium" people living in "premium" places; while relying on Chinese sweatshops (Nokia owns all 15 of their fabs; only 2 in China; 7 in the EU) and not developing (but possibly freeriding on it...we'll see how this case will end) the fundamental underlying tech. Not striving to give most of hummanity the means for communication.
"Crappy"? If anything, universally one of the more reliable, with great battery times and reception.
Why do you seem to be under an impression that viral marketing even requires internet or can't deal with "old" stuff? It's simply when people suddenly decide to propagade...something, by themselves. Something curious and not seen every day, from one of the best known writers, for example; who might have been just as well counting on it.
Sure, there is "the value their products hold for customers"; but not only that's not the exclusive thing determining stockprice (to lesser or greater degree), even itself it also doesn't take into account, say, long term societal effects.
This news story is about mobile phones, so an example with them - while at the end of 2008 we saw 3 billion mobile users, at the end of 2009 that was 4.6; perhaps by now 5 billion. That's a monumental thing for the future of humanity. The company greatly responsible for that was, for example, Nokia; with their huge contributions to development and shipping almost half a billion phones annually. But "investostors" don't reward that, apparently don't care about the real potential of world changing for the better (hence also improving "investments"...). Apple not only hardly contributes (total number of iPhones is an order of magnitude less than what Nokia ships annually; and we'll see how patent dispute ends / if that is freeriding), they aren't even interested in contributing to that, demanding "premium" customers...heck, they hardly exist in any area except in few "premium" markets.
Judging something by share value has its limits - what were historically the share values of major companies responsible for every bubble / economic crash just before that? (and just in case...no, it's not an analogy; just an example) Heck, if some insurance company could find a legal way to..."dispose" its clients which are a bit too expensive to heal, while managing to retain the rest, that company share value would skyrocket (again, example...). Generally driven by impressions and expectations.
What do failures of others have to do with a reply to funny post pointing out that, while being funny, it isn't perhaps stictly accurate? Apple had a failure...and that's it.
"Gaining grounds on the higher ranked cell phone providers" is a very generous way of saying what's happening. Nokia had 37% of a bit over 1.2 billion mobile phones sold in 2009, Samsung 21%, LG 11%, SE & Motorola both 5%; it won't change much in 2010 (Nokia, for one, actually gained a bit). And at this point a typical ranking ends. But by looking at numbers, Apple had...2%. Should have 3 this year, I guess. Nokia itself sells annually an order of magnitude more mobile phones than the total number of iPhones ever sold.
I see...so if a product does poorly on the market, you just call it a "hobby" and can boast an uninterrupted string of successes. I have to remember that...
See, the thing is that I'm not skipping HTC...you just don't realize how small number of mobile phones they sell. HTC says they shipped 11.71 million units throughout whole 2009(lots of those with WinMob and BREW, too!). Now, put it in some perspective - Nokia sold, in 2009, close to half a billion mobile phones - that constitutes "just" 37% of the total market. HTC had in 2009...1%. One. They do show great improvement in 2010 so far, with 3.3 million shipped in Q1 and projected 4.5 million in Q2...so I would guess they might approach quite close to 20 million in 2010. That will be less than 2%. In the meantime, Symbian will ship close to 100 million probably. Not to mention at least 1.1 billion of other mobile phone types. Calling HTC a "major cellphone maker" is a misunderstanding.
Percentages I gave are also strictly by volume - number of given devices sold, in relation to...all mobile phones sold.
"Vast amounts of Android phones selling" are a...damn, not quite a confirmation bias, but... (I am actually trying to recollect one better term here;p - I need a nap soon)
Slashdot Mirror
"Voice" and "influence" are not the same thing (confusion being also part of giving them the latter...). For "influence", you need to be receptive and/or enabling.
Furthermore, in regards to "Otherwise someone gets to decide what is invalid and useless, and we rightly don't wish to trust anyone with that job" - oh but you do! Only some very specific groups of people; why is it so?
And...who gives them influence, eh?
If both those companies are operating mostly sustainably, that means the "more profitable" one is freeriding on the fixed costs of infrastructure and manufacturing of crucial parts, financed almost exlusively by "less profitable" ones. That is, strictly speaking, ripping off; one of unfortunate side effects of the ways in which our markets are set up (and just look at the mess of the last 2 years if you have any doubts they are less than optimal). The huge group driving technology towards commodity is what enabled the infrastructure, not some manufacturers targeting only "premium" people.
It's possibly even more blatant freeriding in the mobile phone market... (depending on the outcome of patent dispute)
Those are at mosy problems with weird implementations. Backbone where I live doesn't seem to have many; besides, does it need to be a "goldmine" to be insanely more viable from satellites?...
Transatlantic and transpacific cables give very tangible benefits for their cost, and could be rerouted through hardly any deep ocean to speak of; heck, "transpacific" one needing in practice not much more than 100km of underwater cable.
Well, I was thinking more about "funny", not "informative" that my post got for some reason...
Anyway, the type of scene described is not the best one as far as stressing motion goes; instead of calm & relfective water, record wavy one - that wrecks havoc on encoders (and no need for some birds)
It's not enough to power a basic general aviation airplane, or even not really an RC model.
Are you seriously thinking something which is useful for providing power via decay can be anywhere near sufficient for an airplane? Heck, an RC model even?
Looking at it like that misses one important thing (not directly applicable to "succesful" by the standards of stock market, of which "impressions" and "expectations" that you mention are major part, but...) - Apple didn't give people access to all this technology; PCs and (also) MS did. And that's not a secondary issue...
Sure, it's easy to be profitable if one targets only "premium" people and relies on Chinese sweatshops...which exist also thanks to overall volume of other products - essentially, Apple relies on the success of PC to be able to have such low manufacturing costs / high margins. But the way markets are set up doesn't catch that...
Likewise with new battle, mobiles. You seem to suggest that Apple doesn't willingly ignore and won't ignore vast majority of people, the "lesser" ones - you know, vast majority of almost 5 billion mobile subscribers; in the meantime, Apple sold around 50 million iPhones in total. 1%. Think about it for a second.
Those 5 billions made possible by entites investing huge resources in underlying tech, infrastructure, providing mobile phones which, for hundreds millions of people, already are their first forage into networked world. All this of monumental value in regards to the future of humanity, its progress. Heck, it will also greatly benefit this "1%" and "investors". But the latter for some reason don't care about that. They, and you, seem to value more a company which is possibly even freeriding (depending how the patent dispute will end), and doesn't have the will to significantly contribute to that shift for humanity - but it still uses for its benefit the resources built by everybody in the process.
I share your views in regards to Flash, but FF/Gecko doesn't quite "work fine" on all platforms it runs on - mobile Mozilla is not a new effort, all the previous ones basically abandaned due to "oh well, we'll just wait until the hardware gest faster"; and even the current one runs only on one of the most powerful mobile phones. Meanwhile Webkit and Opera run happily on quite "underpowered" devices for a long time.
OLPC XO-1 is also a curious example, having Gecko for some reason on what is essentially an overclocked 486...
Likewise with standards - they're damn good in comparison to IE6, but "work on Webkit or Opera, run flawlessly on FF" works more often than the other way around. For some time we even had basically "best viewed in IE & FF".
My point was that the term itself has some peculiar connotations. C'mon, "bottom" - what does that ring typically? Why not "race to more" (customers), etc.? That's what this also is, with profound implications for the future of humanity.
I don't think hardware has been commodified quite yet. Using the mentioned example of Nokia - people actually value them for sturdiness, great battery life and reception, easy operation (yes...you might not believe it, but that's their common reputation), etc.; those things mostly carry over also to their smartphones. And it does have value - Nokia actually rarely has the cheapest devices in a given class; most people can find something affordable, yes, but often not the least expensive device, for the class of it (Nokia smartphones being sort of the exception...but only because the cheaper ones are pushed more and more as a replacement for S40, not a "premium" device for "premium" people).
You're wrong about pricing (btw "extracting" profit is another nice term...), it also works differently throghout the world - US carriers are quite...specific (and US has fairly small mobile phones penetration). Plus in many areas the rule is to own your phone and rely on prepaid, no contract. Even on Slashdot it seems to be a common consensus that European or Japanese carriers give much better deals...
And sure, extracting profits from "premium" people is nice. It becomes a bit perverted when, among the "real" factors (which exclude expectations or impressions...), it's the only one which "investors"/markets seems to appreciate. What about, say, the societal benefits of the "lesser" 70% of our planet having those means of communication, giving great opportunity for global progress? (which benefits greatly people who are already "well off", too) Those who continuosly provide that, and who contributed greatly to development of underlying technology, often forgotten...
And in the meantime the "premium" people live way beyond their means anyway (X axis)
Plus that's again a bit wasteful. While already probably living in a place which has plenty of that (X axis only)
Even if the "appliance" approach would prove valid...what makes you think it won't become "a race to the bottom"?
Plus with portable devices it largely already is (few selected "premium" markets excluded so far). However big iPods seem to be in the US and few other places, in most of the world...well, I think I could count the number of times I've seen an iPod on the fingers of one hand (that's excluding my iPod of course); "feature phones" are the standard (heck, for a few years already Nokia sells more digital media players annually than the total number of iPods ever produced up to that point) - and that's in a reasonably prosperous country in the EU. Guess the world at large. Similar deal (but even more pronounced) with mobile phones, Nokia sells an order of magnitude more of them, annually, than the total number of iPhones ever produced. Close to 2x more Symbian smartphones, also "annually vs. total" (even when being in the early stages of switching its users from S40 to Symbian). And the above figures are just from one manufacturer (the largest, sure...but Samsung, #2 with 21% so around 270 million devices shipped each year, bets big on their bada OS - don't be surprised if, in a year or two, over half of Samsung phones will be smartphones)
"Pads" will get soon WebOS, ChromeOS, etc. devices (plus those can actually have proper screens for such usage, from Pixel Qi)
Besides, the term "race to the bottom" doesn't really make justice to what is happening. At the end of 2008 there were 3 billion mobile users. At the end of 2009 - 4.6 billion; now probably around 5. Most of those people without easy means of communication previously, often getting their only way to access internet (Ovi Mail is the fastest growing email provider; Opera Mini is, worldwide, the #1 mobile browser by usage / webpages stats; despite the fact that many of its users tend to be cautious with the amount of browsing - data access is expensive, and when you add wages disparity...). "Race to the bottom" really seems like a poor choice of words when describing such monumental shift for humanity, with great potential for bringing much progress (but somehow "investors" don't value that; even though that will also improve "investments"...). Apple demonstrably doesn't care about the humanity undergoing that shift, they distance themselves from "lesser" people; possibly even freeriding on developments of essential technology making those things possible (depending on how the patents dispute will end).
The digital divide will become smaller, not larger; that's unavoidable.
The road is clear (well, partially) only in the segment of "premium" people, living in "premium" places, though. More and more of the world population gets in the game. Apple is not interested in such "lesser" people, though (just look at that disparity between 7% in reveniu and 35% in profits...)
Which might of course work, profit-wise, for some time; but after a while network effects could take over. Where is the huge domination from Apple II days? Desktop publishing?
Nokia alone sells more portable media players annually than the total number of iPods ever produced. Nokia Ovi Store (y'know, music) gained recently greatly in Europe, will overtook iTunes rather soon; and that's not an isolated case (heck, iTunes or for that matter iPods hardly existed in most of the world)
When looking more long-term and at broader spectrum of markets (I know, not promoted by stockholders, but...) things might still be stirred up a bit; what happened with outright domination from Apple II era? What happened with total domination of publishing market? "iPhone is popular to the average consumer" if by "average" you mean some small subset of "premium" people from "premium" places...and that's the case already. Apple doesn't even want to target "lesser" people.
They do boast marketshare if they can, though (with however narrow criteria). And sure, if their idea is to sell only to "premium" people...
"LoL"? That's all what you can say at the fact that Nokia alone shipped 80 million smartphones in 2009? That's "just" below 20% of their sales, sure...but that's still higher than the average when looking at all manufacturers. That's still half of all smartphones shipped. That's almost more than all other manufacturers combined
Oh yeah, or you can just as well use your own "definition" of a "smartphone" (is there any? Why iPhone was a "smartphone" for a year while SE Ericsson "feature phones" aren't? And even now the latter have full multitasking... Heck, the "feature phones" with S40, majority of devices that Nokia sells, have comparable multitasking to an iPhone, ability to install apps, for few years are the single familiy of portable media players which sells moore units annually than all iPods ever produced, have Webkit browser, etc.)
And what's wrong with "dumb phones"? What, you would prefer that only "premium" people have access to communication? Only in "premium" places? Those "dumb phones" greatly improve the world, giving already close to 5 billion people the means to communicate. Opera Mini is already the #1 mobile browser on the planet...even when its typical users tend to limit their usage (not everywhere mobile data access is cheap, and when the differences in income are added...)
Sure, HTC might have large part of its sells in the form of smartphones (though not all, they do sell BREW, too; you know, "dumb phones", sold to "lesser" people...). But that's irrelvant when classifying them as "major mobile phone manufacturer" (even "very major smartphone manufacturer" is not accurate..."important one", sure, that's better). So what that they limit their market so much? Understand what using that fact essentially means: if somebody makes and sells, say, ten smartphones (ten units!) per year, that would make it a "major" smartphone manufacturer because 100% of their is sales are "smartphones"...
HTC is an important player, sure. But they are nowhere near "major mobile phone maker". Heck, SE or Motorola are almost borderline nowadays...
And as for "vast amounts" - yeah, but again take it into perspective: the total amount of smartphones sold daily, averaged throughout the year, appear to be close to 470 000 units. The amount of mobile phones sold daily - ~3.3 million. Don't project your perceptions from your "premium" place (where smartphones also are still a minority of sales anyway, and will remain so for some time) to the rest of the world.
Vast majority of 30-40 (depending on which of the two metrics below you choose) places beating the US handily (according to CIA World Factbook...) in life expectancy or infant mortality has socialized medicine. All the while US spends the most per capita on healthcare; not only far from the best, also very inneficient.
Yeah, it's great to target only "premium" people living in "premium" places; while relying on Chinese sweatshops (Nokia owns all 15 of their fabs; only 2 in China; 7 in the EU) and not developing (but possibly freeriding on it...we'll see how this case will end) the fundamental underlying tech. Not striving to give most of hummanity the means for communication.
"Crappy"? If anything, universally one of the more reliable, with great battery times and reception.
Why do you seem to be under an impression that viral marketing even requires internet or can't deal with "old" stuff? It's simply when people suddenly decide to propagade...something, by themselves. Something curious and not seen every day, from one of the best known writers, for example; who might have been just as well counting on it.
Sure, there is "the value their products hold for customers"; but not only that's not the exclusive thing determining stockprice (to lesser or greater degree), even itself it also doesn't take into account, say, long term societal effects.
This news story is about mobile phones, so an example with them - while at the end of 2008 we saw 3 billion mobile users, at the end of 2009 that was 4.6; perhaps by now 5 billion. That's a monumental thing for the future of humanity. The company greatly responsible for that was, for example, Nokia; with their huge contributions to development and shipping almost half a billion phones annually. But "investostors" don't reward that, apparently don't care about the real potential of world changing for the better (hence also improving "investments"...).
Apple not only hardly contributes (total number of iPhones is an order of magnitude less than what Nokia ships annually; and we'll see how patent dispute ends / if that is freeriding), they aren't even interested in contributing to that, demanding "premium" customers...heck, they hardly exist in any area except in few "premium" markets.
Similar effects with Google, I guess.
Judging something by share value has its limits - what were historically the share values of major companies responsible for every bubble / economic crash just before that? (and just in case...no, it's not an analogy; just an example) Heck, if some insurance company could find a legal way to..."dispose" its clients which are a bit too expensive to heal, while managing to retain the rest, that company share value would skyrocket (again, example...). Generally driven by impressions and expectations.
What do failures of others have to do with a reply to funny post pointing out that, while being funny, it isn't perhaps stictly accurate? Apple had a failure...and that's it.
"Gaining grounds on the higher ranked cell phone providers" is a very generous way of saying what's happening. Nokia had 37% of a bit over 1.2 billion mobile phones sold in 2009, Samsung 21%, LG 11%, SE & Motorola both 5%; it won't change much in 2010 (Nokia, for one, actually gained a bit). And at this point a typical ranking ends. But by looking at numbers, Apple had...2%. Should have 3 this year, I guess.
Nokia itself sells annually an order of magnitude more mobile phones than the total number of iPhones ever sold.
I see...so if a product does poorly on the market, you just call it a "hobby" and can boast an uninterrupted string of successes. I have to remember that...
See, the thing is that I'm not skipping HTC...you just don't realize how small number of mobile phones they sell. HTC says they shipped 11.71 million units throughout whole 2009 (lots of those with WinMob and BREW, too!). Now, put it in some perspective - Nokia sold, in 2009, close to half a billion mobile phones - that constitutes "just" 37% of the total market. HTC had in 2009...1%. One. They do show great improvement in 2010 so far, with 3.3 million shipped in Q1 and projected 4.5 million in Q2...so I would guess they might approach quite close to 20 million in 2010. That will be less than 2%. In the meantime, Symbian will ship close to 100 million probably. Not to mention at least 1.1 billion of other mobile phone types.
Calling HTC a "major cellphone maker" is a misunderstanding.
Percentages I gave are also strictly by volume - number of given devices sold, in relation to...all mobile phones sold.
"Vast amounts of Android phones selling" are a...damn, not quite a confirmation bias, but... (I am actually trying to recollect one better term here ;p - I need a nap soon)