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It won't last forever. Smart phones aren't high tech and once Apple isn't "cool" anymore and cheap overseas competition forces prices down, profits will follow.
Who'd thought in 2002 that Internet Explorer would no longer be the dominant web browser; desktop and mobile?
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jgakenhe wrote: cheap overseas competition forces prices down, profits will follow.
Great... because we all know what cheap foreign crap and razor sharp profit margins leads to. 
Contrary to popular belief, nobody owes you anything.
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With respect, I'd buy a Japanese car every day of the week before I'd buy an American car on a single day of a single week.
They're cheaper, more reliable and offer a far superior experience in each aspect I've considered.
Further to that, it was the manufacturing techniques of the Japanese that were imported and taken on from the Japanese by Ford back some decades ago now. W. Edwards Deming is who you can thank for that.
You can read more of the particular affair here: Wellness: The Good the Bad and the Opportunity[^]
"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life." - John Lennon
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enhzflep wrote: They're cheaper
Really? My Accord was hardly cheap. In fact, across the product lines of Honda, Toyota, Mazda and Mitsubishi they all tend to fall into the middle or high end of their markets. Leaving the Koreans (Hyundai / Kia), Fiats and Mexican made Fords & Chevys at the low end.
More to the point I was actually talking about about CHEAP electronics from fly-by-night Chinese manufacturers. Did you read the article in the OP? Only Apple and Samsung make profit in the smartphone industry. All the others are actually losing money! What kind of corners are they now prepared to cut? What kind of support can you expect? What kind of R&D will they invest in to take the next step?
Contrary to popular belief, nobody owes you anything.
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jgakenhe wrote: Who'd thought in 2002 that Internet Explorer would no longer be the dominant web browser; desktop and mobile?
I thought it. I thought it.
No, wait... I think I just hoped it. Yeah, I hoped it. 
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Just another of many reasons not to buy their products.
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You would rather deal with an unprofitable company? Odd... 
Contrary to popular belief, nobody owes you anything.
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In many cases, it's a far wiser financial choice. You only need after-sales support in the event that the item proves to be defective. You only need advertising if you don't have access to a good source of peer-provided information.
I buy RC equipment from a mob in Hong Kong. I can buy a 9 channel, 2km range digital uc-controlled transmitter for about $60 or $70. I bought one 4 or 5 years ago and have been extremely happy with it.
On the other hand, I could go and buy a Spektrum DX7 for $300, get 2 fewer channels, reduced range and a requirement to buy expensive receivers.
Spektrum is far more profitable in terms of both gross revenue and that which is related to costs.
There's no way in hell I'd be going for the more profitable company in this case. It just doesn't make good sense.
If you find such an approach odd, it's likely we don't see eye to eye on a great many other things too. 
"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life." - John Lennon
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Maybe its because I work for a machine tool OEM. We vet our suppliers and don't do business with companies who are losing money. We've found losers cut corners and don't innovate.
enhzflep wrote: There's no way in hell I'd be going for the more profitable company in this case. It just doesn't make good sense.
I don't recall suggesting that the more profitable company is automatically the best company. But a company that is losing money is not a good bet.
BTW - I wonder if your mob in Hong Kong employs children in their factories? I wonder what the conditions are like? I wonder how many hours they need to work to survive?
enhzflep wrote: it's likely we don't see eye to eye on a great many other things too.
Indeed.
Contrary to popular belief, nobody owes you anything.
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Mike Mullikin wrote: BTW - I wonder if your mob in Hong Kong employs children in their factories? I wonder what the conditions are like? I wonder how many hours they need to work to survive?
Now there's a few good questions. I've not wondered, because I'm not in a position to actually know. I could speculate, but would prefer not to. I hope the workers there are happy to be working there and have conditions that would be deemed fair and reasonable.
I'm not automatically going to buy a more expensive unit in the hope that a greater number of dollars filter down to the employees on the floor. In fact, the company that's the topic of discussion here has shown itself in the past to facilitate poor working conditions - even though they're taking 'all' the money.
Obviously, the equipment I prefer (Turnigy) and the Spektrum/JR stuff is all made in China. I'm not really sure what if any difference the nationality of the company having things made there has on the conditions of the workers.
They're also good points you raise with regards to innovation and corner-cutting. I guess it depends entirely on the management in the company and the choices they're prepared to make. It also depends on the nature of the good/service whether or not innovation and corner-cutting are important or not.
In many cases, they're losing money because they make something 'too-good' for the asking price. They strive to offer both low price and to set themselves above the pack with high quality - more often than not a fatal combination. Fine when you're charging a premium, but not at the other end of the market. Recognizing a company/product that falls into this category has brought me much joy over the years and left me with considerably more pocket money to pursue other adventures.
Of course, in many cases the companies losing money are not worth touching with a 10ft barge pole.
Fortunately, my experiences have been positive.
"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life." - John Lennon
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I wonder what percentage of profits from desktop operating systems Microsoft garners? Surely it's at least 92% and has been for several decades.
I wonder what percentage of profits from search and ads Google garners? Gotta be huge, right?
I wonder why people get so freaked out by Apple's profits on smart phones?
Contrary to popular belief, nobody owes you anything.
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My guess is that (as opposed to your two examples) they only sell 18% of the devices, but are 90% of the profit.
TTFN - Kent
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That probably speaks more about the faults of the competition (Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola and Nokia[Microsoft]) than about Apple.
Mike get's on his soapbox:
I'm actually surprised by the level of animosity against Apple exhibited by so many in the CP community. Yeah, I know its primarily a Microsoft developer community but the Microsoft v. Apple zero sum games are ancient history. Microsoft won the desktop war. End of story. But this hatred of all things Apple is childish. Since when did making a profit selling technology become evil? Hell, Microsoft's and Google's corporate profit margins are higher than Apple's. People will rant about how Apple does this or doesn't do that in their OSes or Apps... so? Don't use it. Never in my life have I ranted about how Android does or doesn't do something. I don't currently use Android so its not my concern. Lastly, the concept of all Apple users being arrogant Apple zealots or mindless sheep is truly insulting. I actually see more zealotry coming from Android users & Microsoft users (to a lesser degree) than Apple users these days.
Contrary to popular belief, nobody owes you anything.
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I read that as "Apple has huge margins on their ridiculously overpriced smartphones."
They aren't even that good.
I mean, the keyboard only has capitals! 
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Google's cross-platform standard combines the best of iBeacon and The Physical Web. "Hello Mr. Yakamoto and welcome back to the GAP!"
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There’s some exciting news for the ASP.NET community this week on the Visual Studio blog that we wanted to take a moment to point out. Nik Molnar and Anthony van der Hoorn, the creators of Glimpse, have joined Microsoft on the Visual Studio team! ASP.NET (MVC) developers rejoice!
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The new upgrade to PHP is feature-complete, but users are warned not to use it in production yet. To very small approximations of "lightning-fast"
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Shoot, I thought you said "PDP 7". 
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Microsoft CEO talks about his thinking around product differentiation and being ahead of the curve in this Q&A with Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley. "Hello, my friend. Stay awhile and listen."
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Microsoft is continuing to expand their work in translation services through their Document Translator app which can rapidly translate documents, from Microsoft Office files to Adobe PDFs. Because Machine Translation is the coffiest!
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The latest version Mozilla's Firefox browser now blocks Adobe's vulnerability-riddled software as standard. Mark Schmidt, the head of the Firefox support team at Mozilla, tweeted that all versions of Flash Player are blocked in the browser as of its latest update.
#OccupyFlash
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Yay!
Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being “society’s supervisors,” who deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.-Neal A. Maxwell
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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The problem for IT professionals today is one of survivorship bias. That is, our tendency to focus singularly on survivors (people, technology or processes) that have made it across the complex software development life cycle and ignore every point of failure along the way.
“Where must we go, we who wander this wasteland, in search of our better selves..."
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One Process to rule them all,
One Process to find them,
One Process to bring them all
and in the Dark Cloud bind them.
Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being “society’s supervisors,” who deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.-Neal A. Maxwell
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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Investment firm predicts lower than expected profits for the company All that income? What an albatross!
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