By controlling their hardware, it makes it easy to for developers. Apple has always been primarily a hardware company. They also work to ensure high profit margins. How many PC makers from the 1990's are still making PC's today? Apple is now the second largest company behind Exxon. I think their approach has proven successful. I think perhaps the real gold is Apple's 50 billion in cash reserves so they can buy up the technology that will define the next wave of innovation.
IPhones growth is not stagnating. There are more iPhones being sold this quarter than last quarter or for that matter year to year. The difference is that Android is selling more in growing market. Last year 30 million iPhones were sold. This next year 50 million will be sold. The following year 80 million will be sold. It is just that in a couple years 250 million Androids will sell at the same time. Meanwhile apple continues to make $300 bucks a unit while the 20 manufacturers of the Android phones duke it out and sell their phones sometimes at a loss. Profits are lean. Lots of 2 for 1 deals. An Android phone costs roughly $180 or so to produce. An iPhone costs the same to produce. That cost will come down perhaps as the economies of scale emerge with an increasing demand for smart phones.
I think you misinterpret what I say. I am not derisive of apple in any fashion especially in their business model.
They have done a fantastic job and have done it far better than anyone.
I am constantly arguing with folks who think the Android will kill off the iPhone. They just don't understand that both will continue to exist and that apple will be the one making most of the money and insuring their longevity.
They have great market capitalization. Billions in the bank. Produce products that people want to buy by re-inventing the markets.
Great company. Great products that work for the vast majority of people really well.
Glad you like them. I hear they are awesome and might pick one up at some point.
Since they cost about $180 each to produce someone is subsidizing the phones. You can get a base level iPhone for $100 bucks I heard somewhere. Up till now ATT has been funding Apple to the tune of 300 bucks a unit.
Is google funding the Android purchasers? I don't know.
Don't know many folks who buy off contract. Everyone I know buys thru ATT except a few who have gotten jailbroken devices to run on T-mobile.
Still Apple makes $300 a unit vs maybe $100 per Android device if they aren't on buy one get one free special. At the fire sale point someone is taking a hit and subsidizing the phone. But by and large consumers don't really see the difference much.
Seems like Apple continues to try and make its cash stockpile larger with better business practices that ensure long term viability as a corporation. The Android makers will continue to Cuisinart themselves to try and get greater market share, but profits will go to the.app store controllers in the end, while the Android device manufacturers will just be working to make ends meet and not really get ahead.
Manufacturing cost between Android and iOS devices is pretty similar.
Apple makes sizeable profit by ATT subsidies and still makes a bigger bundle by controlling the app store.
I expect a bigger jump in profits with the Verizon announcement. Too bad I don't have Apple stock. Should have bought some a long while ago.
2 for one deals of some Android devices might suck some folks in. Coverage might also have some folks more inclined to steer clear of carriers without good coverage.
I think that Android devices will become the pre-eminent smart-phone device, but there will also be 20 or so competitors squabbling over the market and trying to introduce things into their devices which could fragment the market. The Android market will not have nearly the profitability nor the cohesiveness of iOS even with superior numbers of units sold.
But both Android phones and iPhones will be loved and used by consumers. It is a great thing there is a choice. Unfortunately, I personally believe that RIM will falter and that is too bad. More choice is always good.
Eventually, however smart-phones as we know them will be obsolete and irrelevant. Who will lead the charge? Apple. Why? They are the ones with a track record of bringing products to the market which make people want to buy them. Will they create the new product? Probably not.... they usually are not the first one in.
But they have proven resourceful in buying up new technology and refining it to make the early players look cludgy while their products appear novel and become the de-facto standard.
He means that given the choice, the market decided that they preferred something other than Apple more than they preferred Apple.
I would look at it differently...... so far people have preferred multiple smart phones. Apple continues to sell more iOS devices each quarter than the previous one as do Android based machines.
Hmmmm..... so last time I checked the price of an iPhone vs an Android device was relatively similar. Not sure what the "abnormally high markup" you refer to is.
Apple will do fine with the iPhone. Android phones will eventually take the lions share of the market, but that won't be the profitable part of the market. Even if apples eventual share of the total smartphone market is 10%, they will still be larger and more profitable than the majority of Android phone makers. And they will be more diverse.
Back 12 or so years ago Dell said apple should sell its assets and pay its stock holders back. But once Steve Jobs took back the company he started, they have had explosive growth. Now they have more than 40 billion in cash and their company value is second only to exxon at over 300 billion. They usually aren't the greatest innovators, but they are able to buy up and leverage the technologies available. They package things in a way that has appeal.
Apple actually benefits enormously from tight control of their products contrary to your thoughts that it might be something that hurts them. The majority of people don't care if something is open source or open architecture or not. They just want functionality for what they want to do. People want a toaster that toast things when they press a button. Apple might not innovate or even create all of the functionality of their devices, but when they sponge existing technologies and package it properly they have enough control over the product to make it work without a hitch. That is what most people want.
Apple will continue to make the big profits and bring products to people that dazzle. The rest of the market will scramble to keep up with apples repackaging of currently available tech that appears amazing and new. I guarantee that 10 years from now, money will not be made using smartphones. Something else will be here which will make all smartphones useless and non-profitable. Where will apple be? Likely Apple will be in the forefront of the newest tech using their enormous purchasing power to assemble a new great product which will make consumers want it.
The open model is only as good its ability to organize and keep cohesiveness. If the android and it's apps become splintered and fragmented, then consumers will become confused and unsure of the devices. Sure there are some who want to do more and on an iPhone you can jailbreak it if that is your inclination, but the majority of folks still find the stock iPhone more than adequate for their needs and they don't care about philosophical debates about openness.
Apple will be coming out with products that nobody anticipated and will try to catch up. Apple will still be making big profits in the future because their business model is not dependent on producing a high volume of cheap devices with low profit margins. They are fine with a lower percent of the market and leading the market in creating new things that people will want.
As much as I enjoy the polemics of a food fight on Fox, I do believe that much of the media today simply does not deal with reality very well. It is much more lucrative to create hysteria and fund your enterprise than to promote sanity and reasoned approaches to life. If everyone were suddenly sane and logical then I doubt they would spend a lot of time watching fox or any of the other jerry springeresque "informational" shows.
But this all does not serve our country well. We need reality to make our democracy work...not polemics and promotion of idiocy and political food fights. Where is the education of this country headed if cable news is providing information to a sizeable chunk of the populace?
Back in the day I used to know some kids who pirated thousands of programs. Their goal was to collect every piece of software available for the Apple II. They had thousands of programs on thousands of discs..... a huge loss of revenue for the software industry?... not really They were collectors. They spent all of their lunch money on discs and what software they could.
But they didn't even use it or know how most of it worked. Sure they were pirating, but if a kid pirated visicalc... was it really a loss in revenue? No, they didn't have a reason to use it.
So before everyone assumes that there is any sort of direct loss of income to software companies, they really need to understand the demographics. How many CAD programs is the average teen going to use. Is the average pirate going to use much of what they pirate or do they just want to have it? Personally, I just buy the few programs I want to use, download GPL programs I need and that is about it, but some people just want to have all of the latest stuff.
Another thought: Today things are just different. With the new iphone/ipad apps, the issue of piracy will largely disappear I believe, because the software is too cheap to bother pirating (aka effort) and there are too many (titles) to have for random reasons. Most apps cost less than the average soft drink from a vending machine.
Great cause it matters that our decision making should come from poll results. Of the 72% against video games, how many have played computer games at all other than solitaire at work when they are bored.
Upholding Logical Fallacy is definately how the courts should make decisions.
Polling is a terrible way to tell a story. So full our biases and the biases introduced by the line of questioning. With questioning you can lead folks to agree to so much and disagree with so much. It depends on what you are asking.
You can use a wonderful apple bluetooth keyboard with it. We have many in our house including a swedish on for my wife and a portugues one for me. Since I have started using them, I find that they are much better than even my favorite old clunky IBM keyboards you could drive a bus over. I used those for years. Once you get used to these Apple bluetooth keyboards, they are really fast to use. Only thing that maybe could be missed is the numeric keyboard, but then again I am not a banker or accountant. Best of all you can use the BT keyboard with an iPad.
My wife's mother passed on when she was young. Now that we have our own kids, she wishes she could talk with her mom about the simple struggles her mom had to go thru raising her and her brother. There are all the milestones and small details, stories, and information that only a mother may know. My wife wishes she could find out so much about the times she doesn't remember when she was young.
Record for the children what their early lives were like.
"the provable effect of piracy is when the investors walk away from a project because they won't get their money back before pirates saturate their market with ripoffs"
maybe... but you are talking about apples and oranges. The music industry is certainly different than medical devices. I do not know of any garage level medical device makers. Medical device folks have to worry about knockoffs from other large industries or governments. That is a separate issue from what your average garage band or musician has to worry about.
None of my friends in the music industry are saying to themselves... damn.... too bad I wasn't born 20 years ago when people couldn't pirate music as easily. I guess I will quit doing my music and my art. I will quit making songs.
Nobody does this.
Most people I know have more venues to get their music out than existed 20 years ago. They can make their music more cheaply, by themselves, and distribute it themselves too. There are far more opportunities for musicians to make money now than at any other time in history.
Piracy doesn't damage the music industry so much as it gives exposure to more music for more artists. It is like its own distribution and advertising system. Of course the RIAA doesn't think this way, but they are part of the old model and are trying to preserve that modality of operation. The future of music seems to be bypassing them.
I have bought several hundred more music CD's from listening to downloaded music than I ever would have bought without having heard the bands I had never heard of. The only difference is I can listen to a downloaded song and go to the artists website and buy a CD there. Most of the money goes to the artist.
Apparently with all of the wildly large costs for pirating 24 songs people should just start trying to make it a business.e I you made an nice 24 song compilation, you could probably sell 100k copies for about a buck the world over. You would then have the necessary profits to pay off this sort of settlement. Might as well give the illegal a try if they are going to impose such giant penalties eh?
And yet everyone gives out their real name on Facebook when they have the choice to give a fake one.
Somehow I didn't use the real me in my facebook ID. It is completely not me and that is fine. Keeps out the folks I dont want to see my crap. Not that they cant see it if someone is really really interested, but it keeps out the idle peekers.
A Blizzard employee went ahead and put his name out there as detailed on this site.
In short, a little digging has found the guy's phone number, home address, the names and home address of his parents, his siblings' names, the valuation of his property, the name of his spouse, his facebook account, pictures of his home, pictures of him, his twitter account, his age, and so on.
Guess that is the last game I will be buying from them. I like my pseudo anonymity.
The author needs to know that his assumption that the mini-jack is purely 2.0 sound is false.
Even my old mac mini has a mini-jack and it supplies both digital and analogue sound thru the same jack depending upon the connector used.
I have beautiful 5.1 surround and so will those who get this machine.
ah I see someone else posted the error... well I'll repost so more will see itl.
Slashdot Mirror
sometimes the herd just needs to be culled.
Princess Bride....
Count Rugen: Get some rest. If you haven't got your health, then you haven't got anything.
By controlling their hardware, it makes it easy to for developers. Apple has always been primarily a hardware company. They also work to ensure high profit margins. How many PC makers from the 1990's are still making PC's today? Apple is now the second largest company behind Exxon. I think their approach has proven successful. I think perhaps the real gold is Apple's 50 billion in cash reserves so they can buy up the technology that will define the next wave of innovation.
IPhones growth is not stagnating. There are more iPhones being sold this quarter than last quarter or for that matter year to year. The difference is that Android is selling more in growing market. Last year 30 million iPhones were sold. This next year 50 million will be sold. The following year 80 million will be sold. It is just that in a couple years 250 million Androids will sell at the same time. Meanwhile apple continues to make $300 bucks a unit while the 20 manufacturers of the Android phones duke it out and sell their phones sometimes at a loss. Profits are lean. Lots of 2 for 1 deals. An Android phone costs roughly $180 or so to produce. An iPhone costs the same to produce. That cost will come down perhaps as the economies of scale emerge with an increasing demand for smart phones.
I think you misinterpret what I say. I am not derisive of apple in any fashion especially in their business model.
They have done a fantastic job and have done it far better than anyone.
I am constantly arguing with folks who think the Android will kill off the iPhone. They just don't understand that both will continue to exist and that apple will be the one making most of the money and insuring their longevity.
They have great market capitalization. Billions in the bank. Produce products that people want to buy by re-inventing the markets.
Great company. Great products that work for the vast majority of people really well.
Glad you like them. I hear they are awesome and might pick one up at some point.
Since they cost about $180 each to produce someone is subsidizing the phones. You can get a base level iPhone for $100 bucks I heard somewhere. Up till now ATT has been funding Apple to the tune of 300 bucks a unit.
Is google funding the Android purchasers? I don't know.
Don't know many folks who buy off contract. Everyone I know buys thru ATT except a few who have gotten jailbroken devices to run on T-mobile.
Still Apple makes $300 a unit vs maybe $100 per Android device if they aren't on buy one get one free special. At the fire sale point someone is taking a hit and subsidizing the phone. But by and large consumers don't really see the difference much.
Seems like Apple continues to try and make its cash stockpile larger with better business practices that ensure long term viability as a corporation. The Android makers will continue to Cuisinart themselves to try and get greater market share, but profits will go to the .app store controllers in the end, while the Android device manufacturers will just be working to make ends meet and not really get ahead.
Manufacturing cost between Android and iOS devices is pretty similar.
Apple makes sizeable profit by ATT subsidies and still makes a bigger bundle by controlling the app store.
I expect a bigger jump in profits with the Verizon announcement. Too bad I don't have Apple stock. Should have bought some a long while ago.
2 for one deals of some Android devices might suck some folks in.
Coverage might also have some folks more inclined to steer clear of carriers without good coverage.
I think that Android devices will become the pre-eminent smart-phone device, but there will also be 20 or so competitors squabbling over the market and trying to introduce things into their devices which could fragment the market. The Android market will not have nearly the profitability nor the cohesiveness of iOS even with superior numbers of units sold.
But both Android phones and iPhones will be loved and used by consumers. It is a great thing there is a choice. Unfortunately, I personally believe that RIM will falter and that is too bad. More choice is always good.
Eventually, however smart-phones as we know them will be obsolete and irrelevant. Who will lead the charge? Apple. Why? They are the ones with a track record of bringing products to the market which make people want to buy them. Will they create the new product?
Probably not.... they usually are not the first one in.
But they have proven resourceful in buying up new technology and refining it to make the early players look cludgy while their products appear novel and become the de-facto standard.
He means that given the choice, the market decided that they preferred something other than Apple more than they preferred Apple.
I would look at it differently...... so far people have preferred multiple smart phones. Apple continues to sell more iOS devices each quarter than the previous one as do Android based machines.
Hmmmm ..... so last time I checked the price of an iPhone vs an Android device was relatively similar. Not sure what the "abnormally high markup" you refer to is.
Apple will do fine with the iPhone. Android phones will eventually take the lions share of the market, but that won't be the profitable part of the market. Even if apples eventual share of the total smartphone market is 10%, they will still be larger and more profitable than the majority of Android phone makers. And they will be more diverse.
Back 12 or so years ago Dell said apple should sell its assets and pay its stock holders back. But once Steve Jobs took back the company he started, they have had explosive growth. Now they have more than 40 billion in cash and their company value is second only to exxon at over 300 billion. They usually aren't the greatest innovators, but they are able to buy up and leverage the technologies available. They package things in a way that has appeal.
Apple actually benefits enormously from tight control of their products contrary to your thoughts that it might be something that hurts them. The majority of people don't care if something is open source or open architecture or not. They just want functionality for what they want to do. People want a toaster that toast things when they press a button. Apple might not innovate or even create all of the functionality of their devices, but when they sponge existing technologies and package it properly they have enough control over the product to make it work without a hitch. That is what most people want.
Apple will continue to make the big profits and bring products to people that dazzle. The rest of the market will scramble to keep up with apples repackaging of currently available tech that appears amazing and new. I guarantee that 10 years from now, money will not be made using smartphones. Something else will be here which will make all smartphones useless and non-profitable. Where will apple be? Likely Apple will be in the forefront of the newest tech using their enormous purchasing power to assemble a new great product which will make consumers want it.
The open model is only as good its ability to organize and keep cohesiveness. If the android and it's apps become splintered and fragmented, then consumers will become confused and unsure of the devices. Sure there are some who want to do more and on an iPhone you can jailbreak it if that is your inclination, but the majority of folks still find the stock iPhone more than adequate for their needs and they don't care about philosophical debates about openness.
Apple will be coming out with products that nobody anticipated and will try to catch up. Apple will still be making big profits in the future because their business model is not dependent on producing a high volume of cheap devices with low profit margins. They are fine with a lower percent of the market and leading the market in creating new things that people will want.
As much as I enjoy the polemics of a food fight on Fox, I do believe that much of the media today simply does not deal with reality very well. It is much more lucrative to create hysteria and fund your enterprise than to promote sanity and reasoned approaches to life. If everyone were suddenly sane and logical then I doubt they would spend a lot of time watching fox or any of the other jerry springeresque "informational" shows.
But this all does not serve our country well. We need reality to make our democracy work...not polemics and promotion of idiocy and political food fights. Where is the education of this country headed if cable news is providing information to a sizeable chunk of the populace?
I concur.
They already made a prescient movie about this.
Welcome to "Idiocracy".... coming soon to a country near you.
The old slider boxes they had way back when cable first started were way better than what they have now.
Back in the day I used to know some kids who pirated thousands of programs. Their goal was to collect every piece of software available for the Apple II. They had thousands of programs on thousands of discs..... a huge loss of revenue for the software industry?... not really
They were collectors. They spent all of their lunch money on discs and what software they could.
But they didn't even use it or know how most of it worked. Sure they were pirating, but if a kid pirated visicalc... was it really a loss in revenue? No, they didn't have a reason to use it.
So before everyone assumes that there is any sort of direct loss of income to software companies, they really need to understand the demographics. How many CAD programs is the average teen going to use. Is the average pirate going to use much of what they pirate or do they just want to have it?
Personally, I just buy the few programs I want to use, download GPL programs I need and that is about it, but some people just want to have all of the latest stuff.
Another thought:
Today things are just different.
With the new iphone/ipad apps, the issue of piracy will largely disappear I believe, because the software is too cheap to bother pirating (aka effort) and there are too many (titles) to have for random reasons. Most apps cost less than the average soft drink from a vending machine.
Great cause it matters that our decision making should come from poll results. Of the 72% against video games, how many have played computer games at all other than solitaire at work when they are bored.
Upholding Logical Fallacy is definately how the courts should make decisions.
Polling is a terrible way to tell a story. So full our biases and the biases introduced by the line of questioning. With questioning you can lead folks to agree to so much and disagree with so much. It depends on what you are asking.
as others have posted:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gMcZic1d4U
You can use a wonderful apple bluetooth keyboard with it. We have many in our house including a swedish on for my wife and a portugues one for me. Since I have started using them, I find that they are much better than even my favorite old clunky IBM keyboards you could drive a bus over. I used those for years. Once you get used to these Apple bluetooth keyboards, they are really fast to use. Only thing that maybe could be missed is the numeric keyboard, but then again I am not a banker or accountant.
Best of all you can use the BT keyboard with an iPad.
My wife's mother passed on when she was young. Now that we have our own kids, she wishes she could talk with her mom about the simple struggles her mom had to go thru raising her and her brother. There are all the milestones and small details, stories, and information that only a mother may know. My wife wishes she could find out so much about the times she doesn't remember when she was young.
Record for the children what their early lives were like.
"the provable effect of piracy is when the investors walk away from a project because they won't get their money back before pirates saturate their market with ripoffs"
maybe... but you are talking about apples and oranges. The music industry is certainly different than medical devices. I do not know of any garage level medical device makers. Medical device folks have to worry about knockoffs from other large industries or governments. That is a separate issue from what your average garage band or musician has to worry about.
None of my friends in the music industry are saying to themselves... damn.... too bad I wasn't born 20 years ago when people couldn't pirate music as easily. I guess I will quit doing my music and my art. I will quit making songs.
Nobody does this.
Most people I know have more venues to get their music out than existed 20 years ago. They can make their music more cheaply, by themselves, and distribute it themselves too. There are far more opportunities for musicians to make money now than at any other time in history.
Piracy doesn't damage the music industry so much as it gives exposure to more music for more artists. It is like its own distribution and advertising system. Of course the RIAA doesn't think this way, but they are part of the old model and are trying to preserve that modality of operation. The future of music seems to be bypassing them.
I have bought several hundred more music CD's from listening to downloaded music than I ever would have bought without having heard the bands I had never heard of. The only difference is I can listen to a downloaded song and go to the artists website and buy a CD there. Most of the money goes to the artist.
Apparently with all of the wildly large costs for pirating 24 songs people should just start trying to make it a business.e I you made an nice 24 song compilation, you could probably sell 100k copies for about a buck the world over. You would then have the necessary profits to pay off this sort of settlement. Might as well give the illegal a try if they are going to impose such giant penalties eh?
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
I wish behaving like a child could make me twice as smart. hehehehe.
part of gaming for a large number of people is assuming a persona you are not and that includes being a rude-boy.
And yet everyone gives out their real name on Facebook when they have the choice to give a fake one.
Somehow I didn't use the real me in my facebook ID. It is completely not me and that is fine. Keeps out the folks I dont want to see my crap. Not that they cant see it if someone is really really interested, but it keeps out the idle peekers.
A Blizzard employee went ahead and put his name out there as detailed on this site. In short, a little digging has found the guy's phone number, home address, the names and home address of his parents, his siblings' names, the valuation of his property, the name of his spouse, his facebook account, pictures of his home, pictures of him, his twitter account, his age, and so on.
Guess that is the last game I will be buying from them. I like my pseudo anonymity.
The author needs to know that his assumption that the mini-jack is purely 2.0 sound is false. Even my old mac mini has a mini-jack and it supplies both digital and analogue sound thru the same jack depending upon the connector used. I have beautiful 5.1 surround and so will those who get this machine. ah I see someone else posted the error... well I'll repost so more will see itl.