Because they're not - they both sell in the smartphone segment.
Even the definition of smartphone segment is very vague. For Apple it is iPhone (the two varieties) and for Nokia whatever they decide to put Symbian into.
No, Apple sells at double the price of some Nokia smartphones. It's comparable to the N Series. Again this isn't really relevant since the vast majority of smartphone sales are made through subsidised contracts.
Apple average sales price is double to Nokia smartphones.
If you want to compare Nseries, which consists of about 7 active products, Apple outsells it, by unit. Even with the constraints discussed earlier. With two, almost identical products.
If you're a company or a shareholder yes. If you're a customer it's availability, variety, desirability and price. That's why numbers are important - more people choose Nokias than iPhones.
That is far from the complete picture. In many countries people are unable to choose iPhone for carrier reasons, and because someone else chooses their (work)phone.
Why? Since Nokia sell many more smartphones than Apple then their component acquisition problems are likely to be worse.
Cant you really see? When a company A says they have supply issues and company N says they have also supply issues. It is not reasonable to just assume the impact has been the same.
The fact you state is one of the reasons, other reasons are amount of products, the time products have been to market and so forth.
Yup. But if may not be the one you want.
But it may not be the one you end up coming home with, in Apples case this is not nearly as big possibility.
The problem is you're averaging prices - Nokia's ASP on smartphones goes from about 190 Euro to about 500 Euro depending on model.
No, the problem is you dont have the facts. Nokia smartphone (and mobile computer solutions, as they call Nseries) ASP is 190 euros, stated by Nokia in their previous quarterly report.
http://www.nokia.com/about-nokia/financials/quarterly-and-annual-information/q3-2009
Apple stated ASP of over 600 dollars int their last conference call, that is about 400 euros
You pay a bit more but it's not going to deter people.
That is your claim, but I doubt all (even British) people are unaware of wonders of multiplication or that 88 quid is not money. Really, if price would not matter Nokia would be really stupid to even make cheap(er) phones and yet they do. I wonder why.
I know. That's precisely why they will never dominate the mobile phone industry and run a real risk of being marginalized if they maintain that strategy.
Aiming for domination is such a drag, they have been doing rather well with their single digit share of computer unit sales, by aiming the premium price class with less than premium hardware and excellent software. They have much bigger chunk of dollar sales and especially margins. They are doing about the same with the iPhone. And really, aiming to making best products, and being profitable is a fine goal, not everyone needs to make commodity stuff.
Risk of being marginalized? Not any time soon. In just one and half years they have become the second largest mobile *platform* (including iPod Touch, for obvious reasons, following only Nintendo DS). Apple is the only one with viable application store, with most software. And amount of software is not important per se, the amount of good software is and in that the iPhone platform is even bigger winner.
Counting all Nokia smartphones as one would be crazy talk, they have different keyboard layouts, different screens, different cpus, different gpus (when even available), different memory sizes (always cramped).
And I do not even want to start about the dev tools.
I totally agree - however the spin being put on this by some people is that Nokia are losing all their share and suing Apple out of spite and
That spin is stupid. But Nokia surely has been losing their share. In two years they have lost 15 points of market share (in your beloved units) even more in dollars and even more in profits. They want it to stop but obviously this is not the way they are trying to do it.
really what is happening is that Nokia know they don't have a competitor at the high end so they're transitioning to the mid tier.
Sorry? Now you lost me completely. Nokia does not have a competitor at the high end? Which is this "high end" you are talking about now? N96? N97?Neither of those has sold nearly as well as Nokia was expecting.
They sold 4.5M Nseries devices during the last quarter, I cant imagine Eseries being your high end, those sold 4.4M. Apple sold 7.4M iPhones with 600 dollar average price, RIM sold 8.3M phones, and then there are HTC, Samsung and more. No competition? WTF?
The point is their in a pretty healthy position unless they do stupid things like unwise mergers.
Sure, they have lots of money in the bank and they are still profitable (lets forget the networks), though profits have been cut heavily. So they are not going away soon, but frankly, *especially* in the high end, the aging product portfolio of Nseries with Symbian is not very appealing at the moment. And they have to do lots of work to turn the boat around.
N900 is coming, but the Maemo platform is still a year, or one step, from the mainstream (Nokias own words).
