I think that the charts are depicting different things... the first is based on online votes (and we all know the kinds of people who flock to those), and the second is actual retail sales.
Mobile network operators do not care which mobile phone brand you choose (save for the amount of subsidy each brand may require)... as long as you take it with a contract from them. In other words, they have little reason to lie about which smartphone brand their customers are choosing when they sign up for new contracts.
I am more inclined to believe the CEOs of 3 different publicly listed companies who are fiercely competitive and have to answer to the scrutiny of shareholders and analysts, than some random web site running an unscientific online popularity contest.
So, while AltaVista, Napster and Friendster may be in the first mover categories of their respective industries, iTunes falls into the same space as Google and Facebook... who all built upon and capitalised on the missteps of the early pioneers in their respective industries.
You're not allowed to patent an obvious advancement.
I whole heartedly agree with this... and this is the basis of many patent review cases.
However, what many lay persons often miss (which patent review engineers, investigators and lawyers often do not) is that many novel inventions are often obvious with hindsight... sadly it is often these seeming obvious inventions that make it big and become the target of attack (e.g. slide to unlock)
We will gladly do so... as soon as you also ask the following competitors to do the same:
- Juniper Networks
- Cisco
- 3Com
- Teledata Networks
- Netgear
- Alcatel-Lucent
-:
After all, the back doors we have in our switches are the same back doors we inherited from their code when we stole it a few years ago.
The idea of a physical cable is that it is simple, robust and as long as the connectors fit, it should (given sane engineering) do what is expected. It is fascinating how they violate that simple and powerful idea in a complex way, just to make a few bucks more. It is also utterly repulsive to any principled engineer.
This was my initial reaction as well... And then I remembered the recent cases of people getting killed, or ending up in a coma due to what is likely to be the use of clone power supplies and cables
Apple has gone to great lengths to mitigate its legal exposure... going as far as offering a discount on an Apple replacement for your third party power supply. For Apple to suddenly ignore the risks of being sued (and to your health and safety) after it can be shown that they could have done something to prevent the use of unauthorised chargers and cables would be stupid of them.
No... He does not mean a web site...
He actually means what he says... a web app[lication] - an application written using the latest web technologies (JavaScript, CSS, DOM and XML/HTML), downloaded from a web site to execute within a browser environment that supports the HTML5 API and standards against which the application has been coded.
A web app is as real an app as any of those that you say you "... don't need to download and install..." You can even choose to save a web app locally on your phone or desktop (just like any other application that you download off the internet) so that you do not need to download it every time you need to use it - fortunately, web and browser caching technology makes this a non-issue.
Do not confuse a web site with a web application or a web page.
Web pages, however interactive, are not necessarily the equivalent of web applications... however both are downloaded from web sites (technically a web server).
The implication of this verdict is that if George Zimmerman is not the cause of Martin's death (whether willfully, accidentally or in self defense)... therefore Martin is the cause of his own death.
Martin should not have been walking home on that streatch of road that night... otherwise he would not have encountered Zimmerman and raised his interest and suspicions.
Perhaps Martin should never have confronted the stranger (Zimmerman) who was stalking following him in the dark... he should have run straight home
It is okay to be suspicious of people you haven't seen before in your neighbourhod... in fact it is okay to follow them around to see if they are up to any mischief. And if they should confront you (given that you would be a stranger to them too) and an altercation should break out (given that they would be suspicious of you too) it would be okay to kill them... after all, you were defending yourself - not withstanding that the fact that you were defending yourself from an confrontation of your own making.
As far as I am aware, when a drone fails it crashes... or automatically returns to base
Both the first drone and the ScanEagle appear to be fairly intact. I highly doubt that we are landing drones on Iranian runways.
The "captured" ScanEagle drone was clearly not shot down... and its pristine structure indicates that it didn't crash either.
Doesn't it concern everybody that Iran appears to be able to capture these drones out of the sky and land them fairly intact... with minimal to no exterior damage.
Does this give credence to Iran's claim that they are able to take over the controls of a drone and land it relatively safely without too much structural damage?
Is it possible that they could override the controls of a cruise missile as it enters their airspace... and send it back from whence it came... gasp!
I understand the logic of having a more powerful ground transmitter that overwhelms the week satellite transmitted signals used to control drones and missiles... but that is still a far cry from actually overriding the controls of a sophisticated drone and tricking the drone into believing that it is still receiving legitimate instructions.
Don't all drones have an automatic "return to base" command as soon as they lose contact with their controllers... at the very least they should have a self destruct.
Gamers need great controls, and frankly the controls on touch screen games stink. Racing game on touch screen vs racing game on console with Xbox S controls or steering wheel? I'm choosing the console.
I remember a time when people said the same thing about smart phone keyboards:
"... to be useful to professionals, a smart phone must have a physical keyboard" went the conventional wisdom
And so the standard bearer for making the best smartphone keyboards was RIM, and everyone benchmarked their mobile devices against the Blackberry keyboard
... until the iPhone and several Android devices arrived and showed that one could approximate the physical keyboard productivity using an on screen touch screen keyboard.
Of course a touch screen keyboard will never be able to emulate the feel, responsiveness and feedback of a physical keyboard... the same can be said for virtual game controls on a touch screen device.
However, people that emphasise this aspect of physical game controls are under the same misapprehension that RIM, Palm, Microsoft, Nokia and their ilk were under when they convinced themselves that the original iPhone could never be a serious contender without a "real" keyboard - based on research showing how important smartphone users rated the quality of the keyboard to be in their decision making process.
From the CD to MP3, Email to Twitter and physical keyboards to virtual keyboards... we have seen a gradual dumbing down of what mankind finds to be of acceptable standard or quality. The virtual game controls (and they don't have to be touch screen... we have seen interesting game controls using gyros and motion sensors), like the touch screen keyboard, simply need to approximate the feel, responsiveness and feedback of the physical controls... and there comes a point in the cost-benefit equation when virtual controls cross the proverbial "good enough" line such that most gamers convince themselves that they are getting more out of the new paradigm than they are loosing out on by letting go of the old paradigm.
Trust me, many Blackberry power users have gone through the agony of having to tamper their idea of what the best data input mechanism for a smart phone is in order to take advantage of what an all glass screen can do (such as having a different virtual keyboards for different data entry requirements).
My advice to all those who find physical game controls to be sacrosanct is to look as how quickly the sanctity of the physical smart phone keyboard evaporated when the utility of their virtual approximations out striped the usefulness of their physical manifestations.
...Having everything rely on GPS, and thus on the budget the US chooses to spend keeping it working, is not a good idea.
Everything does not rely on GPS... the iPhone, for example has had support for GPS as well GLONASS since the iPhone 4S (http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html). The iPhone seamlessly switches between the two satellite constellations (as well as Wi-Fi and GSM triangulation) so the consumer never really knows which system is being used to provide location services). So clearly the world is not solely dependent on the budget the US chooses to spend to keep GPS working; it is dependent upon the combined budgets of the US, Russia and soon the EU and hopefully China one day.
While the separate national or regional systems result in duplication of effort and resources, the upside is that it also results in a high level of redundancy for consumers - kind of like how the Internet is a network of networks. I particularly appreciate how the newer satellite constellations, like Galileo, are offering improved accuracy at consumer level
Given that nearly every member of his family also received the message, it is very unlikely that he had intended to solicit sex from all the recipients, “skin on skin”. Remember, if the prosecution accuses him of “causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity,” they have to prove their case, not the other way around. That is what "innocent until proven guilty" means.
Clearly he did send the message, which is why he could not be exonerated from the crime that he was accused of... However proving intent was always going to be an uphill battle given how indiscriminately wide his message went.
I think that Judge Elias' conclusion that “it is difficult to conclude that he was targeting anyone” is the only reasonable conclusion (unless you have evidence that the prosecutors did not have).
For every Intel server sold (irrespective of operating system) there are simply thousands of PCs sold. It further doesn't help that the vast majority of servers are generally not used to surf the web, while most PCs are... which will further deflate the number or Linux servers counted by services such as StatCounter.
So, from a unit count perspective, I hardly doubt that including the number of servers running Linux in the count is going to make a noticeable dent in the Linux market share statistic.
Server's have a larger market share of value spent (and to a lessor degree of CPU cores sold), than the units sold would suggest.
The whole idea of Android is provide Google with access to a market from which it would otherwise be excluded. So what Google makes on Android is still a whole lot more than what it makes on iPhones.
With Android now looking to expand across the whole computer spectrum including, shock horror, the desktop. That gives Google access to the whole market, regardless of the efforts of Apple and of course M$.
I am not sure which hole you have been burrowed under over the last few weeks, but the statement that "...what Google makes on Android is still a whole lot more than what it makes on iPhones." is completely false... On the contrary. Google makes 4 time more revenue on iOS than it does on Android (Google's Android has generated just $550m since 2008) and that is before one even takes into account the cost of developing, maintaining and supporting Android.
I have the iWork apps on my iPad (and before that I relied on documents to go).
I rarely create new documents on my iPad, but I do a lot of editing, proof reading, and finalisation of documents that I then share, send on, present, etc. I consider myself highly productive on my iPad - even though I still have a notebook at my desk on which I will knock together complex presentations or spreadsheets, before iCloud syncs them onto my iPad where I will continue working on them or present them from using key note or numbers. In a typical day I spend about an hour or two in front of my notebook at my desk; and the rest of the day is spent on my iPad in meetings, workshops, waiting rooms, aeroplanes, etc.
I doubt that having Microsoft Office for the iPad will change the way I work, much. I suspect that there will be less fixing and tiding up of PowerPoint or Word documents that Keynote or Pages mangled during the conversion process. But I will still spend more than half my time on the iPad reading, editing, changing, commenting on spreadsheets, presentations and documents in collaboration with others and am unlikely to change the volume of material authored from scratch on the iPad itself just because I now have Office for the iPad.
It is easy to forget that when we talk about iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone, we are talking about touch screen smart phones - which still make a tiny portion of the number of handsets sold globally, but a huge portion of the revenues earned by the industry.
The reason for the high rate of defection is not because Android is not as good as iOS, but rather because so many people pick up free (on a two year contract) low end Android devices and those really tend to be very bad.
Google has done such a great job of showing people what a great platform Android is that people start to think that every Android handset is like a Galaxy S. Many people are still picking up no-name-brand Chinese specials running an outdated version of Android and cursing their decision everyday. Not every Android device is a Galaxy S2... and consumers need to realise that.
I don't know the real numbers, but Android could still be winning. It's not as if all of the different manufacturers have one joint financial statement.
And the rest is shared between all the numerous Android manufacturers, not to mention RIM (which is still hanging in there), the smattering of Windows Phone manufacturers and a hodge-podge of low end smart phones still running Samsung's Bada or Nokia's Symbian.
You are correct... Android is not a company with its own income statement. The Android handset manufactures compete among themselves as much as they compete against the iPhone. And the thing that is rarely ever said out loud (only whispered in dark tech filled corners) is that the majority of the Android registrations that Google cites in its numbers are cheap low end hand sets that most people pick up for free on a two year contract...
The Android standard bearers such as the Galaxy S2 and some of the HTC models are easily as good as or better than the iPhone... but so many people are entering the smartphone world at the bottom end; and that space is filled with so many so-so Android devices, it is understandable why some (39% according to the latest research) make the switch to an iPhone as soon as they can.
I think that this is part of the U.S. problem... The U.S. spent so much time ahead of the rest of the world that it convinced itself that its models for everything were the best and failed to see the rest of the world passing by with different models. To this day, I still here many Americans criticising anything that is different to how it is in the U.S.
Just because China's labour laws are different does not mean that they are non-existant. Nobody is forced into working under slave conditions in China, the communist state takes care of most of the basics. However, people aspire for more than what the state can offer... so they migrate to the cities and try out their luck in one of the many factories. Right now in China's evolution, the labour supply exceeds the demand, so the bargaining power of workers in negotiating better labour conditions and conditions of service is very weak. That will change in time (like it did in Europe and North America)...
Dude... if each unit is being sold at a loss... then selling tons of them at the same loss making price simply loses RIM a lot more money... a lot faster.
When people talk about "making it up on volume", what they are referring to is when each unit is making a small or marginal profit... so, the only way to turn that into a more attractive proposition is to sell a whole lot more of whatever stuff they are selling. Volume does not magically turn a loss making line into a profitable line; however, it can turn a marginal line into a handsomely profitable one (if costs associated with ramping up volume can be contained)
We shouldn't confuse Amazon's and Barnes & Noble’s smart and innovative content driven strategies with RIM's confused and incoherent "copy whatever Apple is doing" strategy.
People have such short memories (or are too young to remember).
When the iMac came out without a floppy disk dive in 1998, exactly the same sentiment was expressed. PC makers gasped, then heckled Apple... But before long they too followed suite and started gradually phasing out floppy disk drives.
Then too, it was the dreaded focus group that dragged out the eventual demise of the floppy - people like you in focus groups saying "... keep the floppy drive, just in case I need to revert to my trusty sneaker-net". Of course we know what every focus group has to say about Adobe Flash... just about the same thing that they have to say about the CD drive now.
Steve Jobs loathed focus groups... that kind of makes sense when you are launching something that consumers do not know they need yet, like a new product. But focus group are useful tools, when used properly. The problem I have found (at least in financial services) is that focus groups are use to make the decision, instead of gauging the acceptability of a decision.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that the charts are depicting different things... the first is based on online votes (and we all know the kinds of people who flock to those), and the second is actual retail sales.
Mobile network operators do not care which mobile phone brand you choose (save for the amount of subsidy each brand may require)... as long as you take it with a contract from them. In other words, they have little reason to lie about which smartphone brand their customers are choosing when they sign up for new contracts.
I am more inclined to believe the CEOs of 3 different publicly listed companies who are fiercely competitive and have to answer to the scrutiny of shareholders and analysts, than some random web site running an unscientific online popularity contest.
iTunes was hardly a first mover
So, while AltaVista, Napster and Friendster may be in the first mover categories of their respective industries, iTunes falls into the same space as Google and Facebook... who all built upon and capitalised on the missteps of the early pioneers in their respective industries.
You're not allowed to patent an obvious advancement.
I whole heartedly agree with this... and this is the basis of many patent review cases.
However, what many lay persons often miss (which patent review engineers, investigators and lawyers often do not) is that many novel inventions are often obvious with hindsight... sadly it is often these seeming obvious inventions that make it big and become the target of attack (e.g. slide to unlock)
OK, Jeff and Anand, listen up: it's because Windows is doing things in the background.
Of course it is doing things in the background... every modern pre emptive multi-tasking operating system "is doing things in the background."
The question is: why is Windows so bad at it?
Dear gbjbaanb,
We will gladly do so... as soon as you also ask the following competitors to do the same: :
- Juniper Networks
- Cisco
- 3Com
- Teledata Networks
- Netgear
- Alcatel-Lucent
-
After all, the back doors we have in our switches are the same back doors we inherited from their code when we stole it a few years ago.
The idea of a physical cable is that it is simple, robust and as long as the connectors fit, it should (given sane engineering) do what is expected. It is fascinating how they violate that simple and powerful idea in a complex way, just to make a few bucks more. It is also utterly repulsive to any principled engineer.
This was my initial reaction as well... And then I remembered the recent cases of people getting killed, or ending up in a coma due to what is likely to be the use of clone power supplies and cables
Apple has gone to great lengths to mitigate its legal exposure... going as far as offering a discount on an Apple replacement for your third party power supply. For Apple to suddenly ignore the risks of being sued (and to your health and safety) after it can be shown that they could have done something to prevent the use of unauthorised chargers and cables would be stupid of them.
Do you mean a website?
:
:
No... He does not mean a web site...
He actually means what he says... a web app[lication] - an application written using the latest web technologies (JavaScript, CSS, DOM and XML/HTML), downloaded from a web site to execute within a browser environment that supports the HTML5 API and standards against which the application has been coded.
A web app is as real an app as any of those that you say you "... don't need to download and install ..." You can even choose to save a web app locally on your phone or desktop (just like any other application that you download off the internet) so that you do not need to download it every time you need to use it - fortunately, web and browser caching technology makes this a non-issue.
Do not confuse a web site with a web application or a web page.
Web pages, however interactive, are not necessarily the equivalent of web applications... however both are downloaded from web sites (technically a web server).
That is of course a rhetorical question.
The implication of this verdict is that if George Zimmerman is not the cause of Martin's death (whether willfully, accidentally or in self defense)... therefore Martin is the cause of his own death.
I think that a Microsoft app aimed at coordinating disaster-relief efforts is going to be a... disaster!
As far as I am aware, when a drone fails it crashes... or automatically returns to base
Both the first drone and the ScanEagle appear to be fairly intact. I highly doubt that we are landing drones on Iranian runways.
The "captured" ScanEagle drone was clearly not shot down... and its pristine structure indicates that it didn't crash either.
Doesn't it concern everybody that Iran appears to be able to capture these drones out of the sky and land them fairly intact... with minimal to no exterior damage.
Does this give credence to Iran's claim that they are able to take over the controls of a drone and land it relatively safely without too much structural damage?
Is it possible that they could override the controls of a cruise missile as it enters their airspace... and send it back from whence it came... gasp!
I understand the logic of having a more powerful ground transmitter that overwhelms the week satellite transmitted signals used to control drones and missiles... but that is still a far cry from actually overriding the controls of a sophisticated drone and tricking the drone into believing that it is still receiving legitimate instructions.
Don't all drones have an automatic "return to base" command as soon as they lose contact with their controllers... at the very least they should have a self destruct.
Wasn't the response to the loss of the first drone initially similar... that is, until the Iranian's put it on display.
So, now the waiting game starts... we want visual confirmation before we will admit to having lost yet another drone.
Gamers need great controls, and frankly the controls on touch screen games stink. Racing game on touch screen vs racing game on console with Xbox S controls or steering wheel? I'm choosing the console.
I remember a time when people said the same thing about smart phone keyboards:
"... to be useful to professionals, a smart phone must have a physical keyboard" went the conventional wisdom
And so the standard bearer for making the best smartphone keyboards was RIM, and everyone benchmarked their mobile devices against the Blackberry keyboard
... until the iPhone and several Android devices arrived and showed that one could approximate the physical keyboard productivity using an on screen touch screen keyboard.
Of course a touch screen keyboard will never be able to emulate the feel, responsiveness and feedback of a physical keyboard... the same can be said for virtual game controls on a touch screen device.
However, people that emphasise this aspect of physical game controls are under the same misapprehension that RIM, Palm, Microsoft, Nokia and their ilk were under when they convinced themselves that the original iPhone could never be a serious contender without a "real" keyboard - based on research showing how important smartphone users rated the quality of the keyboard to be in their decision making process.
From the CD to MP3, Email to Twitter and physical keyboards to virtual keyboards... we have seen a gradual dumbing down of what mankind finds to be of acceptable standard or quality. The virtual game controls (and they don't have to be touch screen... we have seen interesting game controls using gyros and motion sensors), like the touch screen keyboard, simply need to approximate the feel, responsiveness and feedback of the physical controls... and there comes a point in the cost-benefit equation when virtual controls cross the proverbial "good enough" line such that most gamers convince themselves that they are getting more out of the new paradigm than they are loosing out on by letting go of the old paradigm.
Trust me, many Blackberry power users have gone through the agony of having to tamper their idea of what the best data input mechanism for a smart phone is in order to take advantage of what an all glass screen can do (such as having a different virtual keyboards for different data entry requirements).
My advice to all those who find physical game controls to be sacrosanct is to look as how quickly the sanctity of the physical smart phone keyboard evaporated when the utility of their virtual approximations out striped the usefulness of their physical manifestations.
...Having everything rely on GPS, and thus on the budget the US chooses to spend keeping it working, is not a good idea.
Everything does not rely on GPS... the iPhone, for example has had support for GPS as well GLONASS since the iPhone 4S (http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html). The iPhone seamlessly switches between the two satellite constellations (as well as Wi-Fi and GSM triangulation) so the consumer never really knows which system is being used to provide location services). So clearly the world is not solely dependent on the budget the US chooses to spend to keep GPS working; it is dependent upon the combined budgets of the US, Russia and soon the EU and hopefully China one day.
While the separate national or regional systems result in duplication of effort and resources, the upside is that it also results in a high level of redundancy for consumers - kind of like how the Internet is a network of networks. I particularly appreciate how the newer satellite constellations, like Galileo, are offering improved accuracy at consumer level
Given that nearly every member of his family also received the message, it is very unlikely that he had intended to solicit sex from all the recipients, “skin on skin”. Remember, if the prosecution accuses him of “causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity,” they have to prove their case, not the other way around. That is what "innocent until proven guilty" means.
Clearly he did send the message, which is why he could not be exonerated from the crime that he was accused of... However proving intent was always going to be an uphill battle given how indiscriminately wide his message went.
I think that Judge Elias' conclusion that “it is difficult to conclude that he was targeting anyone” is the only reasonable conclusion (unless you have evidence that the prosecutors did not have).
For every Intel server sold (irrespective of operating system) there are simply thousands of PCs sold. It further doesn't help that the vast majority of servers are generally not used to surf the web, while most PCs are... which will further deflate the number or Linux servers counted by services such as StatCounter.
So, from a unit count perspective, I hardly doubt that including the number of servers running Linux in the count is going to make a noticeable dent in the Linux market share statistic.
Server's have a larger market share of value spent (and to a lessor degree of CPU cores sold), than the units sold would suggest.
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.
Yup... t'was the Senate Judiciary hearing in August Last year iOS Devices Earn Google 4 Times More Revenue Than Android Devices
The whole idea of Android is provide Google with access to a market from which it would otherwise be excluded. So what Google makes on Android is still a whole lot more than what it makes on iPhones.
With Android now looking to expand across the whole computer spectrum including, shock horror, the desktop. That gives Google access to the whole market, regardless of the efforts of Apple and of course M$.
I am not sure which hole you have been burrowed under over the last few weeks, but the statement that "...what Google makes on Android is still a whole lot more than what it makes on iPhones." is completely false... On the contrary. Google makes 4 time more revenue on iOS than it does on Android (Google's Android has generated just $550m since 2008) and that is before one even takes into account the cost of developing, maintaining and supporting Android.
I have the iWork apps on my iPad (and before that I relied on documents to go).
I rarely create new documents on my iPad, but I do a lot of editing, proof reading, and finalisation of documents that I then share, send on, present, etc. I consider myself highly productive on my iPad - even though I still have a notebook at my desk on which I will knock together complex presentations or spreadsheets, before iCloud syncs them onto my iPad where I will continue working on them or present them from using key note or numbers. In a typical day I spend about an hour or two in front of my notebook at my desk; and the rest of the day is spent on my iPad in meetings, workshops, waiting rooms, aeroplanes, etc.
I doubt that having Microsoft Office for the iPad will change the way I work, much. I suspect that there will be less fixing and tiding up of PowerPoint or Word documents that Keynote or Pages mangled during the conversion process. But I will still spend more than half my time on the iPad reading, editing, changing, commenting on spreadsheets, presentations and documents in collaboration with others and am unlikely to change the volume of material authored from scratch on the iPad itself just because I now have Office for the iPad.
Yeah... when you look at the global stats (not just the US and Europe) you see that about a third of all smart phones sold each quarter run Symbian OS. http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-201101-201112-bar
It is easy to forget that when we talk about iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone, we are talking about touch screen smart phones - which still make a tiny portion of the number of handsets sold globally, but a huge portion of the revenues earned by the industry.
The reason for the high rate of defection is not because Android is not as good as iOS, but rather because so many people pick up free (on a two year contract) low end Android devices and those really tend to be very bad.
Google has done such a great job of showing people what a great platform Android is that people start to think that every Android handset is like a Galaxy S. Many people are still picking up no-name-brand Chinese specials running an outdated version of Android and cursing their decision everyday. Not every Android device is a Galaxy S2... and consumers need to realise that.
I don't know the real numbers, but Android could still be winning. It's not as if all of the different manufacturers have one joint financial statement.
More than half of Verizon smartphone sales in Q4 were iPhones
Read more: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-57365200-233/more-than-half-of-verizon-smartphone-sales-in-q4-were-iphones/#ixzz1kQco5gZ4
And the rest is shared between all the numerous Android manufacturers, not to mention RIM (which is still hanging in there), the smattering of Windows Phone manufacturers and a hodge-podge of low end smart phones still running Samsung's Bada or Nokia's Symbian.
You are correct... Android is not a company with its own income statement. The Android handset manufactures compete among themselves as much as they compete against the iPhone. And the thing that is rarely ever said out loud (only whispered in dark tech filled corners) is that the majority of the Android registrations that Google cites in its numbers are cheap low end hand sets that most people pick up for free on a two year contract...
The Android standard bearers such as the Galaxy S2 and some of the HTC models are easily as good as or better than the iPhone... but so many people are entering the smartphone world at the bottom end; and that space is filled with so many so-so Android devices, it is understandable why some (39% according to the latest research) make the switch to an iPhone as soon as they can.
I think that this is part of the U.S. problem... The U.S. spent so much time ahead of the rest of the world that it convinced itself that its models for everything were the best and failed to see the rest of the world passing by with different models. To this day, I still here many Americans criticising anything that is different to how it is in the U.S.
Just because China's labour laws are different does not mean that they are non-existant. Nobody is forced into working under slave conditions in China, the communist state takes care of most of the basics. However, people aspire for more than what the state can offer... so they migrate to the cities and try out their luck in one of the many factories. Right now in China's evolution, the labour supply exceeds the demand, so the bargaining power of workers in negotiating better labour conditions and conditions of service is very weak. That will change in time (like it did in Europe and North America)...
Dude... if each unit is being sold at a loss... then selling tons of them at the same loss making price simply loses RIM a lot more money... a lot faster.
When people talk about "making it up on volume", what they are referring to is when each unit is making a small or marginal profit... so, the only way to turn that into a more attractive proposition is to sell a whole lot more of whatever stuff they are selling. Volume does not magically turn a loss making line into a profitable line; however, it can turn a marginal line into a handsomely profitable one (if costs associated with ramping up volume can be contained)
We shouldn't confuse Amazon's and Barnes & Noble’s smart and innovative content driven strategies with RIM's confused and incoherent "copy whatever Apple is doing" strategy.
People have such short memories (or are too young to remember).
When the iMac came out without a floppy disk dive in 1998, exactly the same sentiment was expressed. PC makers gasped, then heckled Apple... But before long they too followed suite and started gradually phasing out floppy disk drives.
Then too, it was the dreaded focus group that dragged out the eventual demise of the floppy - people like you in focus groups saying "... keep the floppy drive, just in case I need to revert to my trusty sneaker-net". Of course we know what every focus group has to say about Adobe Flash... just about the same thing that they have to say about the CD drive now.
Steve Jobs loathed focus groups... that kind of makes sense when you are launching something that consumers do not know they need yet, like a new product. But focus group are useful tools, when used properly. The problem I have found (at least in financial services) is that focus groups are use to make the decision, instead of gauging the acceptability of a decision.