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Comment by foobar1962 | Hacker News Reader

foobar1962

I just had a conversation with somebody who asserted that Apple was bad (proprietary etc) and Samsung was good, and that Apple was 3rd phone maker behind Samsung and Huawei.

He may be right about Apple being 3rd, but Apple looks to be the only one making a decent profit from their phones.

How do they manage that when they have to pay for both hardware and software development, when all the others get the software for free?

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Because when the iPhone came out it was very expensive but significantly ahead of competition.

People paid for it, even people who couldn’t afford it found a way to pay for an iPhone

The huge cash burst into Apple meant everyone was scrambling to deal with them.

Then economies of scale, negotiating leverage with third parties and sheer momentum propelled them

> Because when the iPhone came out it was very expensive but significantly ahead of competition.

From a CPU perspective, they still are:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-re...

(for the rest of the features, that's indeed debatable)

Fun fact: Samsung made the chip for the first iPhone. Steve Jobs was so dissatisfied with the experience that Apple bought PA Semi to design the chips in-house.

The thing is, that CPU bit is not really relevant for the average consumer, anymore. Flagship phone CPUs have been good enough for web browsing and casual app use for about 2 years.

Not that I'm against extra horse power, we'll find a use for it. But we're in "desktop land", almost, for smartphone CPUs. They're good enough.

The real smartphone battles now are in camera quality, gaming oomph and battery usage.

CPU bit might be relevant for those who care about Privacy. Apple markets the fact that all processing (some ML/AI stuff) is done on device and not on the cloud, hence requiring good processing power. But as you mentioned the battle is skewed towards Camera and Battery usage.

> Flagship phone CPUs have been good enough for web browsing and casual app use for about 2 years.

I think it's been longer. I'm on a non-flagship from last year, watching YouTube in PiP mode while writing this comment. Way more than necessary power for causing use.

Depends of course on your use case. I've been using my flagship phone for 7 years now. It has fulfilled all my needs without any problems, with one hand tied behind its back even.

Probably also a case of modest needs, but still.

CPU is far more relevant if you want to keep your phone for 4+ years. The 2 year upgrade cycle on a smartphone is a major expense for many people.

Smartphone tech has matured. A smartphone CPU from 2011 would have been a drag in 2015, a CPU from 2018 will probably still be adequate in 2022.

I've got an iPhone from 2014 and it holds up for me in 2019. I replaced the battery last year and it was like a new phone.

That's less true for low end phones. People design software and websites for the average to slightly below average phone.

When you buy the highend they become average in a few years which is completely useable. However, low end phones quickly fall behind the curve and only keep dropping.

Now, that’s not to say the phone will physically last longer. Just that having headroom becomes more noticeable over time.

Still pretty much true. Sub 150$ Xiaomi phones from 2016 are still going strong (Redmi 3). And there are plenty of sub 150$ offerings with something like Snapdragon 636/710 and 4GB of RAM which will be more than enough for years to come unless you are into some hardcore smartphone gaming (oxymoron).

In many countries people keep their phones until they die, loose them or get stolen. There isn't a 2 year upgrade cycle.

Not sure how my 4 year old Galaxy S6 still chugs along as fast as the day I got it. I'll purchase a new battery before getting a new phone (still on the original, which still makes it through the day on a charge). I'm pretty sure I could easily get another 4 years out of this. CPU and RAM are not an issue. I don't need or want AR or gimmicks that don't actually add value or productivity. Just a tool. My email and texts all still work fine as well as all of the business apps I need, websites I visit, etc. You don't need to upgrade every 2 years, or probably even every 4 years. People are more than welcome to spend the money if they wish, though. They've been trained well into thinking they do.

That was a high end phone when you bought it. Samsung still sells the S6 and the people buying it today have less headroom to keep it 8 years.

During last 4 years probably RAM increase is more relevant than CPU: 1GB -> 2GB -> 3GB and now some have 6GB.

It’s directly tied to battery power, and battery life is still a big concern. But largely I agree.

>Fun fact: Samsung made the chip for the first iPhone. Steve Jobs was so dissatisfied with the experience that Apple bought PA Semi to design the chips in-house.

I thought PA Semi's specialty was in power management and many didn't consider the acquisition a success as most key figures left the company not too long after the acquisition. Are you sure that Apple actually designed the SOC in-house? Wasn't it Intrinsity, Samsung's collaborator, that co-developed Samsung's Hummingbird core (also used in Apple's A4) to compete with Qualcomm's APs and go beyond the 1Ghz barrier, changed the game?

I always thought the Hummingbird was the breakthrough that made the A chips competitive -- Apple bought Intrinsity afterward.

> How do they manage that when they have to pay for both hardware and software development, when all the others get the software for free?

It's their ecosystem, all their hardwares work very well between each other. You have Apple messenger on a macbook connecting to your iphone. For android you need to download pushbullet. I'm not in the ecosystem I prefer Android but I can see why people such as consumer would continue to buy Apple stuff. I'm not entirely sure about their laptops though...

Also Apple make a lot of money from services such as itune and their app store. Itune made more than Spotify. It all works together with their close ecosystem.

It's a real pain to move from apple to android because text messages goes straight to apple server. You need to sign off and jump a hoop to get text message back to android. Also getting mp3 off of itunes or getting bandcamp mp3s on to itune. It's like LA fitness, at least in 2010, where if you want to cancel your gym membership you need to download the pdf from their website and then mail it to the provided address and then they'll charge you anyway one extra month.

You're saying Apple's making the money from the ecosystem, but that's not what the parent is asking. The parent is asking how Apple is making a money on each individual iPhone, which they absolutely are. Even if you never buy into the rest of the Apple ecosystem, merely purchasing an iPhone means Apple is making a profit from you.

Lots and lots, I might even say majority, of people who bought iPhones don't have Mac or any other Apple device but iPhones.

It's also only recently that the Apple ecosystem is relevant with Continuity stuffs. Before that, iPods, iPhones and iPads are all very isolated and don't require Apple ecosystem much.

> For android you need to download pushbullet.

TIL people are still sending SMS from their PC...

I'd say most of us will either use the Signal client or web.whatsapp.com without bothering connecting the actual devices together.

If you use google messages you can text through https://messages.android.com/ .

They target the high end where all the profit is.

I am of 2 minds about this.

On one hand, smartphones are more or less commodities now. Most established smartphone makers can make great phones (at this point I only compare cameras and even then, they also to all be great) so it is only natural that margins become pretty thin. But right now they are just too thin and the ecosystem is not really healthy.

We don't really need another Apple making huge margins on its smartphone business though.

>We don't really need another Apple making huge margins on its smartphone business though.

I think I'd argue we need another two or three. Monocultures are almost never a good idea in the long term.

I bet monoculture will come to an end when most devices get to run web sites good enough.

Even Google is now facing the issue that despite Project Treble, most OEMs don't care to release newer versions or provide the respective upgrades, thus rending useless whatever they show at IO.

> when all the others get the software for free?

Because it shows.

"How do they manage that when they have to pay for both hardware and software development, when all the others get the software for free? "

Content and Apps. Apple takes a nice bite.

Samsung sells a commodity. Then people use the Google Play store and google makes money. I guess Samsung dreams of it's own phone OS. Was it LG or Samsung who bought WebOS?

It was LG.

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