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I have a hard time thinking this matters. 68% of smartphones worldwide are Android devices. Close to 70% of profits from smartphones worldwide go to Apple (http

by kunle 14y ago

I have a hard time thinking this matters. 68% of smartphones worldwide are Android devices. Close to 70% of profits from smartphones worldwide go to Apple (http://www.bgr.com/2012/08/06/apple-mobile-industry-profit-share-q2-2012/ http://www.bgr.com/2012/08/06/apple-mobile-industry-profit-s...) which doesn't make Android devices. On pretty much every metric except eyeballs, Android is losing (including the value of eyeballs - advertising doesn't matter if the people seeing your ads cant pay for your product), so why does 68% of market share matter?

hahainternet 14y ago
I have no idea how you think this is a relevant point. Clearly people seeing Android ads can afford to buy Androids, as they have 68% market share. Profit only matters if you own Apple. I'm more concerned with the variety of options I have as a consumer, and the competition between manufacturers driving them to produce better hardware.
mtgx 14y ago
It mattered for Microsoft. Once it had 90% market share, every other OS/platform became almost irrelevant in the consumer space.
- wklauss 14y ago
  I think that was an odd situation that had a lot to do about how software was distributed and consumed then. Even if Android keeps gaining marketshare -lets say it gets to 70/75%- I don't think this will play the same way as Mac/PC did in the 90s. Most of what people do these days with a computer / phone is platform agnostic (web browsing, for instance).
tesseractive 14y ago
This involves a pretty dangerous assumption, which is that the current methods of monetizing phones are the only ones that matter -- and it sounds as though you're trying to make an even more unpleasant assumption, which is that wealthy people are the only people that matter. This is Hacker News -- a site for people who set out to build things that don't exist yet. the ability to target 68% of the world's smartphone-using population seems pretty interesting to me. For example, consider an education platform, as Nicholas Negroponte attempted to with the OLPC project. Whether there's monetization or not, there might be an interesting opportunity there. Open your mind a little. Not everything is about the profit-making horserace.
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  >>Open your mind a little. Not everything is about the profit-making horserace. At the end of the day, it's money that makes the world go round. If you're making more profit than your competitors, you're getting ahead, because you have more money for R&D, more money for marketing, more money for buying promising start-ups, and more money for lawsuits. I mean, the fact that Apple has a war chest of tens of billions of dollars in cash - more than the treasuries of many countries - paints a really bleak and hopeless future for Android.
  - dannyr 14y ago
    Some Android manufacturers are profitable though. This is like comparing two people with one making $1 million & the other $100,000. Then saying that the latter has a very bleak future. And I have to disagree with you, I don't believe that money makes the world go round. In your world maybe.
    - spiralpolitik 14y ago
      While money doesn't make the world go round it does pay for producing your next set of products. So if you aren't making money on your current handsets, eventually you'll run out of capital to continue developing your next gen handsets.
  - ajross 14y ago
    This is wrong even in the context of economics. The whole history of the tech industry is a story of cheaper mass market solutions winning out over more expensive ones. Apple is the "IBM" in this chapter and Android is the "DEC" (or "Apple" I guess, though that's confusing). That's not a great place to be, even though it makes you more money in the short term.
  - natrius 14y ago
    "...paints a really bleak and hopeless future for Android." Siri, remind enraged_camel to read this comment again in five years. Having a lot of money on hand doesn't mean you can easily spend all your competitors out of business.
cooldeal 14y ago
So the metric that matters in the web server market is that Microsoft is killing Apache, Nginx by taking a huge percentage of the profits with IIS? It's funny how pereception can be manipulated when you have a bunch of influential bloggers pushing an agenda and talking about statistics that fit their slant.
dannyr 14y ago
Android is very popular in a lot of poor countries which means it's not going to make much money as the IPhone. Even in the US, Android is more popular in the lower-income demographics. However, smartphones could be life-changing for poor people. They probably won't be able to afford a computer but an Android phone for under $100 is within their reach. Poor people with smartphones mean they have access to more information and will be able to communicate easier. I've read stories about how basic phones with SMS empowered people in poor countries. They could do much more with smartphones. So if everything is about the money, yeah, Android is definitely losing.
eli 14y ago
Keep in mind that marketshare refers to sales not usage. So it's 68% of smartphones shipped in Q2 2012 were Android.

by kunle 14y ago

hahainternet 14y ago

I have no idea how you think this is a relevant point. Clearly people seeing Android ads can afford to buy Androids, as they have 68% market share. Profit only matters if you own Apple. I'm more concerned with the variety of options I have as a consumer, and the competition between manufacturers driving them to produce better hardware.

mtgx 14y ago

It mattered for Microsoft. Once it had 90% market share, every other OS/platform became almost irrelevant in the consumer space.

wklauss 14y ago
I think that was an odd situation that had a lot to do about how software was distributed and consumed then. Even if Android keeps gaining marketshare -lets say it gets to 70/75%- I don't think this will play the same way as Mac/PC did in the 90s. Most of what people do these days with a computer / phone is platform agnostic (web browsing, for instance).

tesseractive 14y ago

This involves a pretty dangerous assumption, which is that the current methods of monetizing phones are the only ones that matter -- and it sounds as though you're trying to make an even more unpleasant assumption, which is that wealthy people are the only people that matter. This is Hacker News -- a site for people who set out to build things that don't exist yet. the ability to target 68% of the world's smartphone-using population seems pretty interesting to me. For example, consider an education platform, as Nicholas Negroponte attempted to with the OLPC project. Whether there's monetization or not, there might be an interesting opportunity there. Open your mind a little. Not everything is about the profit-making horserace.

enraged_camel 14y ago
>>Open your mind a little. Not everything is about the profit-making horserace. At the end of the day, it's money that makes the world go round. If you're making more profit than your competitors, you're getting ahead, because you have more money for R&D, more money for marketing, more money for buying promising start-ups, and more money for lawsuits. I mean, the fact that Apple has a war chest of tens of billions of dollars in cash - more than the treasuries of many countries - paints a really bleak and hopeless future for Android.
- dannyr 14y ago
  Some Android manufacturers are profitable though. This is like comparing two people with one making $1 million & the other $100,000. Then saying that the latter has a very bleak future. And I have to disagree with you, I don't believe that money makes the world go round. In your world maybe.
  - spiralpolitik 14y ago
    While money doesn't make the world go round it does pay for producing your next set of products. So if you aren't making money on your current handsets, eventually you'll run out of capital to continue developing your next gen handsets.
- ajross 14y ago
  This is wrong even in the context of economics. The whole history of the tech industry is a story of cheaper mass market solutions winning out over more expensive ones. Apple is the "IBM" in this chapter and Android is the "DEC" (or "Apple" I guess, though that's confusing). That's not a great place to be, even though it makes you more money in the short term.
- natrius 14y ago
  "...paints a really bleak and hopeless future for Android." Siri, remind enraged_camel to read this comment again in five years. Having a lot of money on hand doesn't mean you can easily spend all your competitors out of business.

cooldeal 14y ago

So the metric that matters in the web server market is that Microsoft is killing Apache, Nginx by taking a huge percentage of the profits with IIS? It's funny how pereception can be manipulated when you have a bunch of influential bloggers pushing an agenda and talking about statistics that fit their slant.

dannyr 14y ago

Android is very popular in a lot of poor countries which means it's not going to make much money as the IPhone. Even in the US, Android is more popular in the lower-income demographics. However, smartphones could be life-changing for poor people. They probably won't be able to afford a computer but an Android phone for under $100 is within their reach. Poor people with smartphones mean they have access to more information and will be able to communicate easier. I've read stories about how basic phones with SMS empowered people in poor countries. They could do much more with smartphones. So if everything is about the money, yeah, Android is definitely losing.

eli 14y ago

Keep in mind that marketshare refers to sales not usage. So it's 68% of smartphones shipped in Q2 2012 were Android.