Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Captures 75% of Global Handset Market Operating Profit in Q2 2021

counterpointresearch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 265 posts

Re: Apple Captures 75% of Global Handset Market Operating Profit in Q2 2021

#61

Post by conductr »

mohanmcgeek wrote: post #23
conductr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks to me there’s plenty of competition. Apple just consistently wins. Consumers are willing to pay more per device and it flows through to profit. The others are competing on price and their margins reflect it.

There isn't. Only first time smartphone buyers have a choice.. you'll lose all your appstore purchases when you switch and having repurchase everything is going to dissuade anyone from switching. Even for the first time buyers, if all their friends are on iMessage, they practically have to buy an iPhone.

I don’t buy the lock in argument. Not because it’s false but because every thing has lock in to some extent. It’s just user preference, taste, and familiarity are stronger than losing app purchases. People used to completely repurchase their music collection every 10 years or so. Albums, 8 tracks, cassettes, CDs, etc. They value reliably that Apple is known for and the risk of changing and not liking another platform is large. New users look at their friends and think, “everyone seems to like iPhone. Seems like a safe bet even though it’s expensive”. I’d argue it’s still not expensive given how much utility they provide.

I find analogies useful. When I was young I started eating fries with ketchup. As an adult, I don’t get to say ketchup lacks competition because I don’t like other condiments. Even within the ketchup vertical, I have a brand preference. I could buy a store brand and save 50% but I don’t. I like what I like and I pay for it. Non iPhone users either don’t like iOS or just don’t want to pay the premium Apple charges, otherwise I’d argue many more people would be on iPhone.

Re: Apple Captures 75% of Global Handset Market Operating Profit in Q2 2021

#62

Post by cies »

cs702 wrote: post #48
NineStarPoint wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect it’s more about the competition than those companies willingly leaving that level of profit on the table. In the android market, people have the option of switching to a competitor if you’re not price competitive yourself. For IOS, apple is the only game in town on hardware.

Maybe. I'm not so sure. In theory , a company like, say, Samsung could stop making cheaper, money-losing phones and invest primarily on making increasingly better, premium, profitable phones like the Galaxy Fold, but they choose not to do that, year after year.

What differentiates those premium phones? It runs the same Android of which I rather have a stock version than the bloat-ware rubbish that phone makers install on there for me.

The iOS devices link into a web of ease-of-use, and come with a reasonably well make stock version of iOS.

And then there's trust. Whom does an average user trust more with their data? (Apple/USgov, or Google/USgov+Samsung/SouthKorea+...)

Re: Apple Captures 75% of Global Handset Market Operating Profit in Q2 2021

#63

Post by chii »

cs702 wrote: post #48
NineStarPoint wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect it’s more about the competition than those companies willingly leaving that level of profit on the table. In the android market, people have the option of switching to a competitor if you’re not price competitive yourself. For IOS, apple is the only game in town on hardware.

Maybe. I'm not so sure. In theory , a company like, say, Samsung could stop making cheaper, money-losing phones and invest primarily on making increasingly better, premium, profitable phones like the Galaxy Fold, but they choose not to do that, year after year.

> focus primarily on making premium, profitable phones like the Galaxy Fold

believe it or not, apple's supply chain and verticals and operations are much more efficient than samsungs'. Tim cook did wonders during steve job's era to scale out their operations. So much so that samsung cannot really compete at the same quality.

Re: Apple Captures 75% of Global Handset Market Operating Profit in Q2 2021

#64

Post by justicezyx »

cs702 wrote: post #18

...with only a 13% share of units. That is, all other vendors together sold 87% of units, but earned only a combined 25% of industry-wide profit. The vast majority of those other vendors are companies headquartered in Asian countries with a long history of promoting market share, access to information, and knowledge transfer at the expense of short-term profit. They might be making less money willingly to grow/mainta…

> Asian countries with a long history of promoting market share, access to information, and knowledge transfer at the expense of short-term profit.

Apple doesn't transfer anything right?

Re: Apple Captures 75% of Global Handset Market Operating Profit in Q2 2021

#66

Post by SanchoPanda »

hnaccount_rng wrote: post #9

Wasn’t it more than 100% a couple of years ago?

Correct, It was north of 100% for several quarters when HTC was flailing and Samsung was net burning money trying to establish the Galaxy as the dominant premium Android phone. I'll try to pull up the industry report that had those numbers.

Quick link while I look: https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2016/11/04/apple-gra...

Re: Apple Captures 75% of Global Handset Market Operating Profit in Q2 2021

#67

Post by johnchristopher »

xoa wrote: post #42
johnchristopher wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking with a MediaMarkt employee last week, we were talking smartphones and we both were dumbstruck about iphone prices. We agree it's good hardware/products but the price is insance. Yet people buy them in bulk. The brand is that strong. Apparently people also rush to replace their old models every year or two. Anyway, it just popped into my mind that I dreamt about buying a phone last night and the shop's o…

> and we both were dumbstruck about iphone prices. We agree it's good hardware/products but the price is insane. I'm honestly dumbstruck that people like you are dumbstruck. It's not very hard, and whether you your self use powerful handheld computers/cameras much it's objectively obvious others do a lot. Just do the normal ROI calc. Apple makes a feature for this called "ScreenTime". How many hours a day is the aver…

> Do the math. What is so shocking about spending What's surprising is that for the vast majority the same can be done for <20ç/hour.

Re: Apple Captures 75% of Global Handset Market Operating Profit in Q2 2021

#68

Post by thefounder »

kleiba wrote: post #26
intrasight wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good news for Apple is that the next phase is AR, and I expect that Apple will captures the lion's share of the profits there too.

My bet is that AR is going to go the way of 3D TVs.

100% sure...or shall I say like the VR? It has its use but we are not there yet. Maybe in 10-20 years.

Re: Apple Captures 75% of Global Handset Market Operating Profit in Q2 2021

#69

Post by handrous »

johnchristopher wrote: post #22
conductr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks to me there’s plenty of competition. Apple just consistently wins. Consumers are willing to pay more per device and it flows through to profit. The others are competing on price and their margins reflect it.

I was talking with a MediaMarkt employee last week, we were talking smartphones and we both were dumbstruck about iphone prices. We agree it's good hardware/products but the price is insance. Yet people buy them in bulk. The brand is that strong. Apparently people also rush to replace their old models every year or two. Anyway, it just popped into my mind that I dreamt about buying a phone last night and the shop's o…

> I was talking with a MediaMarkt employee last week, we were talking smartphones and we both were dumbstruck about iphone prices. We agree it's good hardware/products but the price is insance.

They start at $400, right? Only really, really budget Android phones come in much under that.

> Yet people buy them in bulk. The brand is that strong. Apparently people also rush to replace their old models every year or two.

I have encountered three major species of iPhone owner:

1) Breaks a screen every couple of years, just replaces the phone when it happens.

2) Upgrades every year or two but leverages iPhones having a much better used market than Android to recover half or more of the original price via resale or trade-in, so they only pay full price for the first phone. (some of these now simply lease their phones, for convenience)

3) Holds on to each phone 4+ years, since the phones receive updates for so long. Pays full price every time, but goes a long time between upgrades.

Re: Apple Captures 75% of Global Handset Market Operating Profit in Q2 2021

#70

Post by oblio »

cies wrote: post #62
cs702 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. I'm not so sure. In theory , a company like, say, Samsung could stop making cheaper, money-losing phones and invest primarily on making increasingly better, premium, profitable phones like the Galaxy Fold, but they choose not to do that, year after year.

What differentiates those premium phones? It runs the same Android of which I rather have a stock version than the bloat-ware rubbish that phone makers install on there for me. The iOS devices link into a web of ease-of-use, and come with a reasonably well make stock version of iOS. And then there's trust. Whom does an average user trust more with their data? (Apple/USgov, or Google/USgov+Samsung/SouthKorea+...)

Believe it or not, but "stock Android" has been tried about 10 times. It failed. Only techies care.

Regular users want a ton of features.

Edit: Sales numbers tell you all you need to know about "stock Android" success :-)

Post reply on HN