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Apple Widens Lead Over Nokia as Most Profitable Handset Manufacturer

lamadude said:
This Ars Technica article shows another side of this story, Nokia has 37.9% of the worldwide smartphone market share, apple much less. This means that apple makes enourmous profits of the relatively few iphones they sell. As an iphone user I don't know if I should be happy or sad about that, in a way they're kind of exploiting the iphone users.
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Exploiting? Seriously??? Because Apple doesn't choose to sell products in the bottom pricing tiers? :rolleyes:

iPhones sell in the same pricing range as comparable phones. Pre. DROID. Storm. Hero. And whatever Nokia sells at that level. THEY'RE ALL THE SAME PRICE! (Though the Pre is seeing some bargain bin pricing recently.) And many of those competitors only match Apple's price after rebate. (And aren't rebates exploitive?)

Gripe about premium pricing on Macs all you want, but iPods and iPhones are priced competively or are even cheaper than their competitors.

Don't blame Apple just because Apple doesn't choose to sell "buy one for a dollar and get one for free" crap phones.
 
fimac said:
Brilliant :apple: :)

...but the competition is heating up; I'm hoping that iPhone OS 4 sees Apple innovate in the areas of notifications and home-screen widgets!
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And perhaps live application multi-tasking (i.e. the Pre).

The thing that concerns me about the iPhone is the once-a-year updates though. With new phones like the Droid and HD2, waiting till June or July for the next iteration of iPhone can be a killer.

I'm hoping Apple kicks out their own killer hardware soon from the P.A. semi purchase.
 
fimac said:
Brilliant :apple: :)

...but the competition is heating up; I'm hoping that iPhone OS 4 sees Apple innovate in the areas of notifications and home-screen widgets!
Click to expand...

So since the jailbreak community has been enjoying home screen widgets and home screen apps is apple still innovating in this area or copying?
 
Mr Maui said:
And perhaps live application multi-tasking (i.e. the Pre).

The thing that concerns me about the iPhone is the once-a-year updates though. With new phones like the Droid and HD2, waiting till June or July for the next iteration of iPhone can be a killer.

I'm hoping Apple kicks out their own killer hardware soon from the P.A. semi purchase.
Click to expand...

Before iPhone, phones don't even have any feature updates.

No, none of these iPhone competitor for the week will make any significant impact.
 
Mr Maui said:
The thing that concerns me about the iPhone is the once-a-year updates though. With new phones like the Droid and HD2, waiting till June or July for the next iteration of iPhone can be a killer.
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Agreed. Apple is going to have to accelerate the development cycle to stay ahead in this game. I just hope they realize it...
 
lamadude said:
This Ars Technica article shows another side of this story, Nokia has 37.9% of the worldwide smartphone market share, apple much less. This means that apple makes enourmous profits of the relatively few iphones they sell. As an iphone user I don't know if I should be happy or sad about that, in a way they're kind of exploiting the iphone users.
Click to expand...

You're missing the point.

Apple puts a lot of time and effort into something that no other company focuses on and yet which lots of people are more than happy to pay for: user experience. People are always quick to accuse Apple of overcharging by comparing the raw hardware/manufacturing costs to retail markup but that's only part of the picture. That doesn't take into account the time and money spent honing the user experience.

Prior to the iPhone, I LOATHED cell phones. I hated carrying them around. I hated using them. I hated the way all the "great" features were buried under layers of unintuitive menus and button-pushing. It costs R&D money to come up with something better. I'm happy to pay for a product from a company that provides a better user experience, and judging from the trajectory of the iPhone's sales, I'd say I'm not alone in that.

jubjub said:
Exactly. Funny how people love it when Apple makes a huge profit but hates it when Microsoft or any other company does the same.
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I'm going to get hay fever with all these strawman arguments around here lately.

Can you link to a few posts on MacRumors where people express hatred of Microsoft making money? I know there aren't a lot of MS fans around these forums, but I've never seen someone say they "hate it" when Microsoft or any other company makes a profit.
 
I am so happy for Steve Jobs and his team for their amazing achivements. Imagine, going from computers to be the #1 cell phone manofacturer in the world.

Everything what Steve Jobs touch becomes gold and fun.

Very happy news.
 
lamadude said:
Not sure how apple feels about it, but sounds fine by me, they sell PC's that happen to boot the Mac OS. if the name PC was reserved for computers that run Windows then PC's shipping with Ubuntu or another Linux distro, or even empty hard drives wouldn't be PC's either.
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PC=Pocket Computer=iPhone
 
lamadude said:
That same Ars Technica article also shows that RIM (makers of blackberry) are growing much faster than apple's iPhone. Not trying to bash the iPhone, I love it, but it's funny how you can see essentially the same article in two different sources. On the mac website apple "wins", on the more general Ars Technica website Nokia and RIM "win".
Not saying MR's approach is wrong, it just depends on whether you look at market share and yearly volume (Nokia), growth (RIM) or profit (Apple)
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Well, you have to look a bit more careful when you check out how iPhone sales grow. Wikipedia has a nice chart with the sales of each quarter. You saw seven percent growth in the third quarter 2009 compared to the year ago. Had you checked in the first quarter, growth was 88 percent. In the second quarter, it was 626 percent growth.

Fact is that 3Q 2008 was when the iPhone 3G was introduced. At that time, everybody had been waiting for the new phone. Sales were less than a million in 2Q 2008, then shot up almost by a factor ten in 3Q. In reality, that quarter was two quarters sale in one.
 
Consultant said:
Before iPhone, phones don't even have any feature updates.

No, none of these iPhone competitor for the week will make any significant impact.
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First, I never said anything about the impact they would or wouldn't have. However, current and upcoming competitors already include 1 GHz processors, OLED screens, multi-tasking of apps, and even some simple things like Flash. Although I love the iPhone, and believe it to be the best smartphone OVERALL, in 7-8 months at their next update, Apple will really have to WOW people to maintain that edge. The biggest advantages they have at the moment is the App store and its 100,000 apps, but others will start making headway here as developers try to take advantage of making money on other smart platforms as well, and their "slick" factor.
 
Mattie Num Nums said:
Wonder how much Nokias profits will be once Apple is forced to pay the licensing fee's they have been ducking.
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Ever wonder how much wider the margin will get as they close the gap on the volume of phones sold? Apple's 2.5% marketshare and $1.6B vs Nokia's 30% marketshare and $1.1B. THINK ABOUT IT.
 
jubjub said:
Exactly. Funny how people love it when Apple makes a huge profit but hates it when Microsoft or any other company does the same.

But hey.. as a shareholder.. I say Go Apple!! :)
Click to expand...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Apple is not distributing profits to shareholder, for how long now? As shareholder you are not getting a single cent out of all this profit. The paradox is that as shareholder you can get a piece of the cake only selling shares. You have only one chance to make money, then you are out business (for the shares sold, that is).

This may change in future, but as it is now it looks as screw up relationship shareholders/company IMHO.
 
Consultant said:
3 months ending 2009-09-30

Research & Development (millions)
Nokia 1,257.00
Apple 358.00
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Well maybe when Apple starts to develop and run cell phone network equipment maybe, just maybe you might be comparing "Apples to Apples". Right now this and several other dubious analysis here is compounding the sloppy analysis of comparing Nokia's and Apple's overall CORPORATE profits. Not headset profits, but the WHOLE company.

Here is a clue. Nokia, the overall corporation, is a FAR more product and services diversified company than Apple is.

http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/company/financials



Now when is the last time you remember Nokia had anything innovative?
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You mean like developing next generation 4G infrastructure products?

http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/portfolio/products

Not to mention doing smartphones years before apple was doing smartphones.



Most people would say Nokia is burning their R&D money with little to show, therefore the lower profit.
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Sheesh .... most people should be more worried about actually comparing similar things finincially instead of making dubious leaps of

Apple == iPhone
Nokia == headsets

Nokia has been a conglomerate for an extremely long time.
 
Mr Maui said:
And perhaps live application multi-tasking (i.e. the Pre).

The thing that concerns me about the iPhone is the once-a-year updates though. With new phones like the Droid and HD2, waiting till June or July for the next iteration of iPhone can be a killer.

I'm hoping Apple kicks out their own killer hardware soon from the P.A. semi purchase.
Click to expand...

Excellent points!

I would love to see major iPhone OS updates on a faster cycle.

bruinsrme said:
So since the jailbreak community has been enjoying home screen widgets and home screen apps is apple still innovating in this area or copying?
Click to expand...

Good question.

I personally doubt that an Apple solution would "look like" something from the homebrew community.
 
lamadude said:
This Ars Technica article shows another side of this story, Nokia has 37.9% of the worldwide smartphone market share, apple much less. This means that apple makes enourmous profits of the relatively few iphones they sell.
Click to expand...

Reason for that is, that pretty much all higher-end Nokia phones (N series) are counted as smart phones, even if most of them are anything but smart. They've been around for years and are used as regular cellphones by the vast majority of people.
Quite understandably, Nokia can't rake in as much profit with these legacy phones as with smart smartphones. If you take Blackberry as competitor, you will see that they make almost as much money per phone as Apple. No reason to be worried, just because big N sucks donkey balls at the moment.
 
fimac said:
Good question.

I personally doubt that an Apple solution would "look like" something from the homebrew community.
Click to expand...

Intelliscreen is pretty slick and very professionally done.

I love jailbreaking and what it offers, however to have the features and options on a stock phone would be sweet.
 
fifthworld said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Apple is not distributing profits to shareholder, for how long now? As shareholder you are not getting a single cent out of all this profit. The paradox is that as shareholder you can get a piece of the cake only selling shares. You have only one chance to make money, then you are out business (for the shares sold, that is).

This may change in future, but as it is now it looks as screw up relationship shareholders/company IMHO.
Click to expand...

As a stockholder, I don't mind Apple holding onto the profits at the moment (31B+ in cash), when the stock price has made me 106% in the past year. Having $31B in cash allows Apple to continue to create the best products on the market, and create them in ways everyone else wants to compete with or flat out copy. Remember when other manufacturers had a hard time getting flash memory for their devices because Apple entered into contracts with the manufacturers tying up much of the flash memory by paying CASH. Many of the other manufacturers were pissed because they couldn;t do the same.
 
jubjub said:
Exactly. Funny how people love it when Apple makes a huge profit but hates it when Microsoft or any other company does the same.
Click to expand...

Well, in case #1, that money was earned because it was given voluntarily. In case #2, people didn't have a choice and were pretty much coerced into giving their money to that specific company. That might explain why.
 
LagunaSol said:
Agreed. Apple is going to have to accelerate the development cycle to stay ahead in this game. I just hope they realize it...
Click to expand...

And here I thought they were going too fast. I don't even have time to enjoy my 3GS before the next iPhone comes out :p.

If other manufacturers price their phones around the same as the iPhone, how can Apple be making so much more? Is it the margins and the high subsidies from carriers?
 
lamadude said:
This Ars Technica article shows another side of this story, Nokia has 37.9% of the worldwide smartphone market share, apple much less. This means that apple makes enourmous profits of the relatively few iphones they sell. As an iphone user I don't know if I should be happy or sad about that, in a way they're kind of exploiting the iphone users.
Click to expand...

Bravo. Nokia floods the market with throw aways absorbed by telco plans. Big deal. The money is not in that.
 
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