Apple Makes Gains in U.S. Smartphone Market Share

[samcraig]

Loved my TRS-80, but never used it or any of the programming I learned on it beyond the 6th Grade.

My daughter's school does all their communications and collaborations via Google educational services.
The device used to access it is irrelevant.
A point I was trying to make in earlier posts before I realized this is the wrong crowd for this type of discussion.

Schools are seeing the benefit of web only devices (Chromebooks for example). They're cheaper to buy, cheaper to maintain. No huge software license deals to get locked into either.
My daughter loves it because she can access her school work or school email from any browser.

A lot of school district administrators are seeing this and not renewing those expensive contracts.

I agree with you 100%. Being platform agnostic makes the most sense. Of course it also prevents kids from saying "oh - I forgot to bring my iPad home so I couldn't do my assignment" if the software/platform they are using can be accessed anywhere there's a browser and internet.

 

[cmichaelb]

I really don't think it's right to call android the largest "smartphone platform", because:
2. Android is hugely fragmented. iOS devices are mostly all running the latest iOS software and even ones that aren't can all run apps without modification.

I'm orry, but some older iOS devices, that are not running the latest iOS version, cannot run all apps.

I have run into that several times.

 

[imageWIS]

Maybe one of these days Apple's share price will again reflect reality.

And it doesn't currently reflect reality, why...?

 

[inkswamp]

Everyone in my office and friends all moved away from the iphone for various reason, mostly how it was so locked down, being bored of ios, lack of improvement across the new ios versions and that android phones have bigger/better screens now.

The numbers are there. Anecdotal evidence doesn't contradict them. The trend is consumer movement away from Android toward iOS, and it's been that way for the last few quarters if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Fatalbert]

Why is it a problem to not be able to run Mac apps? Do they have any exclusive apps that are indispensable for education? I mean, once the kids leave school, the vast, vast majority of them will never touch a Mac again in their entire lives. Why is the ability to run Mac apps in school any advantage whatsoever?

If you can't run Windows apps, you've gotta at least run Mac or Linux apps. Google PCs can only use Google Chrome, which is stupid.

 

[samcraig]

If you can't run Windows apps, you've gotta at least run Mac or Linux apps. Google PCs can only use Google Chrome, which is stupid.

For schools - the very fact it only runs ChromeOS (and Chrome) along with tons of web-based apps is exactly the advantage. Low priced machines, no cost for software - and web based so that at home or at school - students/teachers can access their documents without worrying about platform. A student doesn't need to choose MAC or PC. And the laptop doesn't HAVE to travel back and forth.

But it really comes down to what it's being used for. Clearly a Chromebook isn't going to be the best choice if you're teaching video editing (for obvious reasons)

 

[Fatalbert]

For schools - the very fact it only runs ChromeOS (and Chrome) along with tons of web-based apps is exactly the advantage. Low priced machines, no cost for software - and web based so that at home or at school - students/teachers can access their documents without worrying about platform. A student doesn't need to choose MAC or PC. And the laptop doesn't HAVE to travel back and forth.

But it really comes down to what it's being used for. Clearly a Chromebook isn't going to be the best choice if you're teaching video editing (for obvious reasons)

What is it about Windows that makes it worse for these tasks? Almost anything can run web apps. Plus, using Windows gives you the advantage of being able to use all kinds of random apps that a class may need (ChemSketch for chemistry, for example). If you're looking for an app, Windows is most likely to support it, then Mac, then web.

 

[ymmit]

And it doesn't currently reflect reality, why...?

2 ways that it can be looked at:

1) APPL has been falling pretty hard for doing fairly well; they just didn't beat analysts' predictions, but y/y they were better. Most news out of Wall Street these days seems to predict doom, but the stats aren't backing that up. So, maybe it will finally stop falling and begin to show growth again to match the growth of the company. It doesn't have to be excessive growth, but it should grow. The company it doing well.

2) APPL went crazy high last summer. Some might say that it was significantly overpriced, and that is reasonable. In that respect, the stock could be returning to 'reality'.

You could also argue that stocks always reflect reality, but I don't think that's true. Stocks reflect Wall Street's perception of reality. It doesn't always correspond to the actual state of the company.

 

[TallManNY]

2 ways that it can be looked at:

1) APPL has been falling pretty hard for doing fairly well; they just didn't beat analysts' predictions, but y/y they were better. Most news out of Wall Street these days seems to predict doom, but the stats aren't backing that up. So, maybe it will finally stop falling and begin to show growth again to match the growth of the company. It doesn't have to be excessive growth, but it should grow. The company it doing well.

2) APPL went crazy high last summer. Some might say that it was significantly overpriced, and that is reasonable. In that respect, the stock could be returning to 'reality'.

You could also argue that stocks always reflect reality, but I don't think that's true. Stocks reflect Wall Street's perception of reality. It doesn't always correspond to the actual state of the company.

Well stock prices are supposed to be based on future income and value in a company, so in a way they are predictions about the future. As such, we can never be sure that they reflect reality at the time. We can look back and see if they were right, but that usually means that a stock didn't change. Microsoft has remained basically unchanged for years, so I guess it has correctly reflected reality (i.e., Microsoft has two great money makers, Windows and Office and it has failed at everything else. So it can pay its dividend and retain its value but not do much else).

Apple's high stock price needed a few things to be warranted. But in some ways it really wasn't super high. To justify that $700+ price it needs (1) for iPhones to remain about 20% of the slowly growing smartphone market, (2) for iPads to hold onto about 50% of the quickly growing tablet market, and (3) for Apple to come up with something else that is pretty big to sell at some point in the next year or three. Frankly all three of these things could happen. Obviously though the market now thinks that Apple will fail in at least one of these areas.

 

[thasan]

Microsoft covered the OS part with Windows Phone 8. And it looks like Nokia and HTC, et al have done it with phones that aren't iPhone clones. And correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think that Apple invented the portable music player, tablet or smarthphone.

You missed the 'change the market' part' mate