This is a nice phone, but I'm sorry - if you think Apple "remains in total control of the industry" with sub 20% marketshare and shrinking you are delusional.
Whatever you may think of the theorerical advantages that Apple has, its not working for them outside of the US.
Do you measure BMW, Rolex and Gucci, by market share? Or profit share? There are more meaningful measures than market share and picking a measure the company isn't particularly interested or aiming for in is a strange choice.
If Apple has 20% market share but 50+% profit share, then what does that mean?
BMW is definitely in control of the luxury car industry, which is quite huge worldwide in terms of revenue and more importantly, profit. It depends on how narrowly you define "industry."
You Apple fanboys are constantly moving the goalposts. First it was who sells more devices, then it was who had more revenue. Now you've lost the "who has more profits" argument as well. What's it going to be next? Who uses more aluminum in their devices?
I never understood why people are so proud of a company having significantly higher margins than their competitors. Unless I owned _stock_ in a company (and then refused to buy their products), I'd rather buy my stuff with as razor-thin of a margin as possible.
But thanks for the link, I'll be using these statistics in future debates against the iCult.
Margins are an indication of how good the product is. Either you compete on quality, or you compete on price, basically. Also, value != price alone, or even the margin the company is making on the product (they could just be more efficient and better at execution than their competitors).
Margins are an indication of how much you're getting screwed by your supplier.
Now don't get me wrong, a number of Apple-users are rational beings. They actually argue to me that they get huge value from iDevices, and I'm fine with that. If its your cup of tea, yes, go on and get it. (And I won't call these guys part of the iCult. Rational Apple-users are indeed... rational).
However, people like you argue that high margins are a good thing. NO THEY'RE NOT. Margins are:
* Cost of the device MINUS cost that Apple spent to create the device
The larger the margin, the more Apple is screwing you out of your money. Period. No rational consumer should EVER be happy about being conned out of tons and tons of money.
And to see these idiotic members of the iCult, so proud... so happy to waste money, and BRAG about the margins that Apple is stealing from them... it really is enough to make me lose faith in the free market.
I'm not so infatuated with Apple products as I'm disgusted with the quality of the competition. When Android phones and tablets actually become usable and won't break after a few months, I might consider saving money on them.
The iCult doesn't exist, you are just trying to justify your own buying decisions. But go ahead and keep thinking otherwise, I really don't care.
Oh look, an actual _argument_. As I stated before, if you actually don't like Android or any of the other competition, I'm perfectly fine with that.
But as long as you "brag" about Apple's profits, you are masochistically accepting punishment from a company that you hold dear. You are bragging about how much Apple manages to take your money away from you...
And that just isn't right.
So IMO, keep the arguments against Android, argue about why other systems are bad. But whatever you do, do NOT pretend like Apple's huge profits are a good thing for you as a consumer.
BMW's higher profit margins than Hyundai is not good or bad for consumers; are BMW owners getting the same car for the money they pay? Can Hyundai compete with BMW in the lux market? I don't think BMW owners feel f*cked over by BMW because BMW makes more money per car than Hyundai does.
As long as we aren't forced to buy Apple products, i.e. we have a free market, Apple's huge profits don't matter to consumers. Perhaps Apple has a monopoly on smartphones that don't suck balls, but until the DOJ sees it necessary to break them up for it, I reserve judgement.
BTW, I happily use a Nokia 920, not an iPhone, but I'm tired of these Apple cultists economics-ignorant conspiracy theories. The cult argument is usually used by people who just can't understand free markets.
You know what? Maybe I'll start shopping at HSN instead of Amazon, because as we all know, HSN's higher margins obviously means that they're a superior store than Amazon's crappy margins. </sarcasm>
Red herring. If HSN and Amazon are selling the same crap, prices correlate more directly to value. Otherwise, if an apple costs 50 cents and an orange costs 25 cents, which one do you want?
In case you don't know, Strategy Analytics are the ones who define "units sold" as "units shipped". I'd imagine they are capable of taking similar shortcuts with profit share estimates.
I doubt that the scanner will be on the front, because it will take valuable screen space (there are no hardware buttons on android)
I also doubt the apart from a bunch of phones there will be many using this technology. It didn't catch with the motorola phone because the sensor was prone to errors.
This is a nice phone, but I'm sorry - if you think Apple "remains in total control of the industry" with sub 20% marketshare and shrinking you are delusional.
Whatever you may think of the theorerical advantages that Apple has, its not working for them outside of the US.