I like Florence much better. More laid back.
Ugh, I hate Inditex, especially Massimu Dutti with its 1:1 Ralph Lauren store copy.
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iPhone Market Share Dips Slightly as Android Increases Lead in Global Smartphone Race
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I like Florence much better. More laid back.
Ugh, I hate Inditex, especially Massimu Dutti with its 1:1 Ralph Lauren store copy.
There are 20 Android phones on display scattered throughout the Verizon store... but there are just 3 iPhones sitting on display in the back corner of the store.
And yet... the iPhone still represents a HUGE amount of Verizon's smartphone sales.
The iPhone is not a secret anymore... people have heard of it by now. It doesn't need a fancy display to sell a ton of units.
Who cares if Apple has better profit margins for the iPhone 5S? The total profit is what matters for shareholders. If Samsung has a total profit of $2B and Apple $1B, as a shareholder would you really care if Samsung reaches its margin selling 10M units while Apple sells 2M?
Apple was never super string outside first-world countries anyway. Measuring "Android" versus iOS is silly anyway... Because you're falling into the same trap with Google that Microsoft laid 3 decades ago with DOS/Windows.
If the US numbers were 10 pieces of pie, Apple has 4, microsoft and Blackberry have 1, and Android's 4 pieces are split with Samsung having most all the OTHER makers shoved into less thsn 2 pieces of pie. Apple is fantastically bigger than everybody else except Samsung.
The only people that get PAID for android are Microsoft and maybe Samsung... Everybody else in the Android game is treading water, and selling out to phone companies with pre installed malware.
I don't know why everybody worships Android quite so much. Google is the new "Microsoft" a bored rich kid with too much money wanting to be the boss of everything. Google isn't evil "right now" but the minute something happens to its two founders the capitalists will molest users in all their orifaces harder, faster, and dryer than Facebook ever did.
Apple is the "grown up" in the room. Their business model works if they have 10% or 50% of the market... They still get wildly rich. Theyre grown ups and dont have to have all the toys to be happy. Google and Microsoft are both playing the "loss leader" game to hold some other position of monopoly. We jumped from IBM as a monopoly to Microsoft as a monopoly to now Google has a near monopoly in search and ad revenue... Why would we REPEAT that mistake and not root for Apple this round??
That is why they said they did it and they did promise to lower the prices of the devices in Brasil. However, several years later the prices are the same and the plant in Jundai has horrendous working conditions. Sure, there are a few jobs, but those jobs are very miserable for the workers.
This is good
All of you iPhone users should be happy with this. This is showing the market is getting more competitive. As much as I hate Microsoft I'm glad they are also getting better numbers. This increases competition forcing these companies to make BETTER phones.
I was on the iPhone 4S but really sick of Apple's stagnation. I'm on the Android S4 but if Apple's next phone is really good I could go back.
This is what's great about competition, the consumer does win, because companies are forced to try and make the best product.
All of you iPhone users should be happy with this. This is showing the market is getting more competitive. As much as I hate Microsoft I'm glad they are also getting better numbers. This increases competition forcing these companies to make BETTER phones.
I was on the iPhone 4S but really sick of Apple's stagnation. I'm on the Android S4 but if Apple's next phone is really good I could go back.
This is what's great about competition, the consumer does win, because companies are forced to try and make the best product.
Yup Apple is the grown up .. Actually grown old..
Yup Apple is the grown up .. Actually grown old doddering senile.. You get it I think.
Yup Apple is the grown up .. Actually grown old doddering senile.. You get it I think.
I did not say a free phone is "for the most part" a smartphone. An ANDROID phone is "for the most part" a smartphone. Over the years FREE phones have been shifting from mostly dumbphones to mostly smartphones running android. That is all I am saying.
Ok, let me step back a minute. When I think of smartphones, I think of a phone that requires a data plan. You could technically create a clam shell phone running android with no 3G or LTE chip in it. It could have a 1.5 inch non-touchscreen LCD display. Is such a phone a smartphone? Yes it technically has Android, but it cannot connect to the internet, it has no touch screen, and it has no qwerty keyboard. I would not consider that a smartphone.
Yes, Apple has usually offered free offerings, but its always last years IT phone. There are two reasons why I personally think Apple COULD BE doing bad in this market:
1. People shopping in the cheap smartphone market want to be just as trendy as the rich people. They are more likely to buy a cheap knockoff of the IT phone or a phone that looks different enough to pass as a more expensive phone. If you have a phone that is easily recognizable as a 2 year old phone, people are less likely to buy it because its not "trendy". Now, Apple is trying to get rid of this by coming out with the 5C, but I dont think the 5C is different enough from the 5 to capitalize on that newness factor. Even the salespeople at Verizon market it as "pretty much the same thing as the 5".
2. For a select group of people, they dont buy certain brands because of the status it brings. I know these people exist because my mom is one of them! Lets take the following scenario: my mom walks into walmart and sees a pair of jeans for $20. She then goes to Belks and sees a pair of name brand jeans on sale for $15. My mom would ultimately buy the $20 jeans at Walmart because if she bought the $15 pair of jeans, people would think she spent more on them when she really didnt. She does not have a lot of money and doesnt want people to think she spends lavishly. She thinks if she buys a name brand, people will think she likes to spend more money. She is the type of person who would choose an Android over an iPhone because it gives off a "cheaper" vibe. She is programed by society to think iPhone = expensive and android = cheap. The actual price of the phones doesnt matter, what matters to her is whether society thinks its an expensive phone or not.
Now these two arguments are completely based on psychology and how your brain perceives different brands. You may think that this is bogus, but I think there is a lot of underlying psychology that goes into consumer purchases that people do not see on the surface.
None of what I say is based on fact or scientific studies, it is all based on my own experiences and how I perceive things. For instance, for the above argument I take one statement: "iPhones do poorly in the FREE smartphone market". I am not saying this statement is true of false. What I am doing is pretending it is true and then saying this: "if its true, is there any logical explanation to back this theory up?". That is where I get my two points above. I am just saying, although Apple offers a FREE phone, does not mean it is aggressively going after the free phone market.
Yes and no. The iPhone has made enough of an impact that it doesn't necessarily need a lot of advertising to sell. But if someone who were completely brand neutral were to walk into a store and see the latest and greatest Android phone set in a well built display right in the center of the room, proudly showing off the latest and greatest apps and features on a big screen, it's gonna draw some attention, and that attention will lead to sales.
No matter how big you get, no matter how well known you are, you never stop advertising. Because your competitors sure as hell won't.
Nice to see Windows Phone gain some marketshare. Its a really nice OS.
Sorry to see BlackBerry decline further. I really like my new Q5, its a fantastic smartphone but most likely hit the market far too late before BlackBerry had a bad name for themselves.
Sorry to see BlackBerry decline further. I really like my new Q5, its a fantastic smartphone but most likely hit the market far too late before BlackBerry had a bad name for themselves.
It is a shame you know why?
BlackBerry had THE best email system of ANY of these new phones. NOTHING even comes close.
And that's because you are looking at a statistics without understanding it.
The market is the phone market, not the smartphone market. And in the last five or six years, every year the price point where phones were "smart phones" has gone down. There are people buying cheap phones, phones at medium prices, or expensive phones. The percentages of these customers are not changing. What changed is that six years ago only people buying really expensive phones had smartphones, and now people buying slightly cheap phones have smartphones.
Apple's percentage among "expensive phones" has been growing year after year. Apple's percentage among "all phones" has been growing year after year. Apple's percentage among "cheap phones" and "non-smart phones" has been rock solidly stable at zero
The only number that really counts is percentage of all phones, and that is growing. If three years ago someone switched from a very nice $200 feature phone to a $200 Android phone, that didn't matter one bit to Apple, but the share in the "smart phone market" went down. Today, when someone switches from a $80 rubbish feature phone to a $80 rubbish Android phone, that matters to Apple even less, but again the share in the "smart phone market" does down.
Flip Phone on Steroids
still nowhere near what the poster a few posts back suggested exists
Holy crap! That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen in my entire life!
...well, no. Not really. It's probably more like the 3rd stupidest thing.
I totally agree. These Samsung fans are truly obnoxious.
Do we even want to know what the two stupidest things are?
Or is the thought too frightening?
Still is in my opinion. Emails, Messaging and BBM have never been faster and as instant on any other phone I've owned. I've never used an Android phone though, so for all I know, the grass could be really green in Android-land.
Jobs co-founded the company and took over leadership of the Macintosh team. What do you mean he 'was never part of that group'?
I've read quite a lot about Steve Jobs and followed his life and career for some time, and for all his faults, it's my belief that money was never his primary motivation either. I do think his ego was tied to the success of each product. But I also think he genuinely wanted to see his products change the world for the better. I use the word 'world' to mean as many people as possible.
But perhaps his ego was also attached to the financial success of the company. If he fought for a lower price for the Mac as history claims, why then didn't he fight for a lower-priced iPhone when it was within his power? I'm really not sure.
And that's sad if true. I asked another commenter to make comparisons with democratic government. What happens when big business donates to a political party? Does that buy it the right to disproportionate power and influence? I'm sure it does. But to my mind it goes against everything democracy is supposed to represent.
I can accuse you of elitism again if you like?
I mostly agree with what you're saying here. Yes, I paid what I did for every Mac, iPod, iPad and iPhone I've ever bought because I thought the extra value outweighed the extra cost. Bear in mind though, I'm heavily invested in the Apple mindset and ecosystem, and even I am struggling to justify the cost of the iPhone. What does that mean to Apple? Well, it might mean I upgrade less frequently. Or it might mean I choose the iPhone with less storage than I would ideally like. It also means I'm not quite as excited about Apple as a company as I could be, and that will reflect in the way I talk about it with other people. So even with me, a mostly happy Apple customer of close to 20 years, it's negatively affecting my relationship with the company and its products. Many other customers will be much closer to the edge than me, and the price will be the difference between an Apple sale (and possibly many future sales) and a lost customer.
This is totally pointless. There are probably 100 phone manufacturers churning out very cheap phones that run a cheap open version of android.
it is insane that analysts and supposed news sites still report this like it is the be all and end all. Apple commands a premium for it's products and as such will not be popular in places where a basically disposable phone will be.
This should be easy to understand.
it is insane that analysts and supposed news sites still report this like it is the be all and end all. Apple commands a premium for it's products and as such will not be popular in places where a basically disposable phone will be.
This should be easy to understand.
From a business standpoint (maybe not the idiot goons on Wall Street) making more profit selling fewer items is better. REAL business is not about getting the highest score, its about making the best RETURN on the money your investors give you. That's why Apple's stock is crazy high priced.
This is the same attitude of the Walmart crowd when they like up at the All-you-can-eat feed-o-trough and eat until the electric scooter can't roll and fight over Black Friday trinkets. Having things and making money is not the same as living well and being happy. The people that run Apple understand that difference.
You raise a good point. In the USA, the price difference between an iPhone and a cheap phone is maximum $200. Monthly bills stays the same. So what do you do when you don't want to spend a lot of money in Europe? Get a relatively cheap contract for about $35 per month with, say, a Moto G for $199.
Conclusion: the actual price difference between Androids and iPhones is *much* higher in Europe than in the US.
Everyone who didn't buy the 5 or 5S is waiting for a larger iPhone. That coupled with the fact that there is now a vast array of quality Android phones and Android is a mature platform with a massive catalogue of apps. And the fact that there is no viable competitor in the low end market, it would only make sense for Android to continue to gain marketshare.