Perhaps they could spend time first making their very own Kies software work correctly, and same for their existing apps.

It’s notable that my experience with my (essentially raw) Google Nexus One is much better than friends and relatives with Samsung Galaxy S, and when I look into it, it’s often because Samsung has fiddled with something or “improved” it, or just as often, completely missed the point.

“Har de har har. Apple went almost a decade without profits until they were bailed out by Microsoft. Their current computer market is almost entirely held aloft by the iDevice halo effect.”

The money was inconsequential what helped apple was the agreement that Microsoft made to continue development on the mac. The so called halo effect is not what sells macs. They sell high end/laptops because the computers and os are more reliable and they have free support in store. Their computer business has been growing more than the PC market since long before the iphone and ipad.

“Mature markets always favor companies that cater to customer needs. The “take it or leave it” model is never sustainable.”

This makes no sense Apple caters to the customer, the mature market you speak of do not. Apple retail is by design about customer service. You should check how apple rates next to other computer companies like hp and dell in the ‘mature’ market. Apple’s last decade begs to differ with your opinion.

“Err, what? I am saying, right now, that Apple’s history does not validate the “they love the PC versus Mac” market — it says the contrary. Apple was never happy as a niche player, just as they’ve done everything in their power to avoid becoming a niche player in the smartphone industry (some providers are now having two-for-$0 deals on the iPhone 4, clearly sanctioned by Apple given that Apple must sanction all discounts. I suppose that flips that ridiculous argument around).”

I agree apple does not want to be a niche player but they also don’t want a monopoly, ala microsoft or google. Just the high end profitable part of the market which is what they have. Let the Android market race to the bottom like the ‘mature’ PC market has done.

“The Amazon Kindle Fire is adding millions of Android development targets, making it a more lucrative platform (there are no special hoops to target the Fire, beyond simply submitting to the Amazon store). It absolutely supports the platform. Those apps often use Admob, and thus benefit Google.”

This is true until amazon decides they want those ad dollars and they are very capable of capturing that revenue.

“Aside from the fact that this would be very dangerous for Samsung to do (if I didn’t have gmail, Google Maps, or the Google Market on my S2, there is no chance I would have bought it), let’s imagine that alternate universe where Google *didn’t* create Android.”

The same was said about competing with the same people who you supply  with components. I think they will do this very thing one day with google. Why would they leave that money on the table and what can google do about it.

“Talking about the overall cell phone market is the real canard that defies the obnoxious bias of the writer. It’s like saying that Apple has most of the profits of the calculator market because a computer can also do calculation tasks. A smartphone has perilously little in common with a dumbphone, beyond overlapping one single function of it.”

The smartphone market is rapidly becoming the cell phone market, everyday brings us closer to that point probably by this time next year.

Awesome. Every single technology viewer hailed it as a Microsoft bail out of Apple, but in the distortion field of the Apple zeitgeist, now it was Microsoft desperately seeking relief from Apple’s onslaught. Awesome.

No but microsoft did make the deal because they were worried about the antitrust case the DOJ was preparing.

“Oh Samsung might make a client, but it would almost certainly be miserable. The excellent gmail and Google Maps features of anointed Android devices is a major advantage of the platform. Apple is rolling with some ancient Google Maps version and a miserable gmail app.”

One day bada will be good enough and so will the google clients they create to access the services. They will probably get into ads also. The people buying Android dont care as long as its good enough.

“The Fire is doing gangbusters because Amazon has the Apple-like content making. There are incredibly few who could pull that off.”

True but once its been done by one company more will follow.

Ah, the free canard. Are people aware of how little Windows Mobile licenses cost? I would wager good money that Samsung spends *far* more on their Android development efforts, per device, than they ever did on Windows Mobile licenses. The same goes for every other maker.

The free bit is a noisy distraction.

When vendors sold Windows Mobile devices, they had zero commitment to it _and it showed_. A Motorola Windows Mobile device was a miserable PoS (I sadly lived with a couple of them) because to Motorola it was an unfortunate necessity that they diversify across OS’.

Right now all of the major makers are very much behind Android. Yeah, they have alternative OS’, but Samsung, Sony, HTC, LG, and Motorola all essentially bet the farm on Android (they had to coordinate on something because the Apple option was a juggernaut).

Google has to decide whether to a) prop up their Android partners (Samsung, HTC, Moto, SE, etc) or b) go 100% Moto in a vertical OEM/OS play with massive advertising subsidies.

Apple maintains high end market share.

Samsung, HTC, Moto need to a) either trust/rely upon Goog ad $’s to help them subsidize their devices to remain competitive against Appple or b) go big on their own OS/advertising platform. Samsung launched their own AdHub platform which should work across their phones/tablets/TV’s/PC’s

Amazon is the big disruptor here.

I could see Samsung and Google allying to make sure Android gadgets are free of IP claims.

Apple executive vice president and chief financial officer Fred Anderson. “Our cash balance at the end of Q2 was in excess of $1.4 billion, our inventories were just over $500 million, and despite the quarter’s loss, we generated positive cash flow from operations.” Revenues for that quarter were $1.6 billion and they had $1.15 billion in receivables. Immediate payables were just under $1 billion with about another billion in accrued expenses. The next quarter had slightly higher sales, slightly lower liabilities plus they wrote off almost $400 million for the purchase of NeXT.

No, Apple wasn’t doing well but their 10-Q filing for September 1997 doesn’t agree with you. Maybe they’d have to cease operations and suspend many expenses to run for another few years, but Apple was still solvent with 20% margin on sales at the time.

Vendors were not months away from “cutting off” supplies, but the favorable terms Apple was getting from suppliers was clearly going to be affected in the near future. Apple would have been forced to tap the same junkyard class parts sources the PC industry was using.

As far as who makes money on phones, it is interesting to see the break down… as Microsoft makes more off Android than they do off Windows 7 and (unless something has changed) Google makes more off iOS search than they do off searches through the Android OS…

Microsoft never really had very good software – they still do not – though Exchange/Outlook is not bad for most business needs, there certain is a lot of horrible software and horrible systems developed on the Windows platform. Maybe that’s part of their success, but its interesting to see the differences between Win/Tel and Andro/’open’/OEMs …. Now that Google is also an OEM and other OEMs are co-opting the “open” Android OS. I would also say Android parallels the Win/Tel side with crappy software, but this time the Andro/OEM group has less software in total, less support in total and a lot of bad possibilities coming up.

What happens when the OEMs are big enough and smart enough to ignore Google and make their own portable OS …. and have ‘curated’ apps and a fancy walled garden?