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

I did a spell working on homicide investigations in the US, and I was consistently amazed by the gulf of difficulty between obtaining legally solicited data from Apple vs. any other company. Most companies drag their feet with subpoenas and search warrants to some degree, but most will just accept it and eventually send what you’ve requested. Apple wouldn’t give you shit unless you had it signed by a judge in your state, a judge in Cupertino, and the prosecutors office in Cupertino. You then had to serve the subpoena/SW in-person at their Cupertino HQ. Say what you want about Apple, but there’s no question that they go above and beyond their competitors when it comes to their users’ privacy.

The spat playing out in the news between Cook and Zuck might seem like posturing on both sides, but I think Apple’s argument is genuine. They believe that people should be able to pay more for more control over their data. Facebook believe that the harvesting data is necessary to keep the internet cheap or free to maintain low access barriers. Both are valid points. But it seems to me that the more aware you are of what Google and FB do with your data, the more willing you will be to shell out for devices and services which not only promise not to give your info to every Tom, Dick, and Harry but also have NO INCENTIVE to do so. The median consumer isn’t dumb: they know there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The bulk of the price difference between Android and Apple phones isn’t down to operational efficiencies or technology, it’s down to the vastly different business models.

With Apple devices, you know how the sausage is made (i.e. your hard earned cash). With Android, you don’t—-but most people figure it out sooner or later. The more tech savvy the consumer becomes, the more they’ll realise what the real “price” of an Android phone is, and the more attractive Apple devices (or any product which doesn’t make consumers pay for stuff in ways they don’t fully control, consent to, or understand) become.

Of course, one could argue that emphasis on privacy differs from culture to culture, but the data privacy piece also bears on rapidly changing understandings of healthy tech use. In lots of places, people just don’t care as much about privacy as the average American does. London is one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the world, and the vast majority of Londoners couldn’t care less. But consumers are increasingly learning how technology can not only add but detract from their lives. There was that Netflix doc (which I didn’t see) about why social media is addictive and makes a bunch of people unhappy etc., then there’s this latest report about how FB is bad for lots of people, but there’s a larger trend there and it is catching up with those areas within the tech industry.

To varying degrees of obviousness, Apple exudes alignment with what its customers actually want for themselves. Apple compiles data on your phone usage; if you want to use your phone less, Apple helps you do that by letting you put time limits on your usage of whatever apps you want to use less. The power of these subtle features at ensconcing product loyalty is often overlooked. Your average punter’s market macro analysis tends to view consumers as crude neoclassical utility functions, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that consumers notice thiede little tells on some level or another. We’ve evolved to be able to judge whether someone can be trusted based on their actions. Phones aren’t people, but they are a proxy for a corporate entity which everyone understands is a consortium of people who want to make money. These are devices we have increasingly intimate relationships with. These devices are demonstrating increasing levels of sentience and intersubjectivity. I know this sounds far-fetched at first, but it makes sense when we consider that the shift to AI is not a 0-to-perfect AGI but rather a gradual shift in which machines will steadily accumulate feature of sentience. The main change, though, is consumer knowledge. When we learn about how our digital overlords make their trillion dollar sausages, we can say: ok, Apply IS charging me an arm and a leg for this stuff, but at least everything is above the table, and at least they’re looking after me once I buy into their ecosystem. A new android customer now is more likely to know that Android is owned by Google; they are more likely to know how Google makes money, and they may be more aware of the deleterious daily grind of being bombarded with highly targeted marketing designed to make you pay the difference (as the person I’m replying to mentioned). If you can afford it, if you value your time and attention, and if your recognise how the forces on online marketing can influence your behaviour in ways you don’t want it to, you may well decide that you’d rather pay an extra few hundred bucks for the Apple product.

Indeed, the Americans here need no reminder of how much economic self-interest people may be willing to sacrifice for a greater measure of perceived transparency and probity.

Apple (a company that never publishes or leads with their tech specs) would be the biggest loser if Huawei stayed in the market. That Huawei that never reached 2% (or even 1%) mobile marketshare in the US

Yes. It has been like that since the day iPhone was launched. Arguably the whole (modern) Smartphone Market history.

So I am kinda surprised to see some of the reaction here. And it was easy in the old days when iPhone was in Financial Segment with ASP and unit volume. Now it is hard to judge without those Data. And no where on the site do they mention how they calculated the profits.

Also worth mentioning Apple used to make 95%+ if not more than 100% profits because other vendors were losing money.

But as far as education goes, phones aren’t as good as a laptop as far as form factor. But better than nothing I suppose!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28638939

[2] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-profitable-is-apples-a...

Apple also sells their handsets through carriers, big box stores, and online through places like Amazon. You can often buy their stuff for less at these places yet the stores are still packed because people will pay more if it's a better experience.

The context is that Brazil has high import duties on manufactured goods. Apple doesn't manufacture domestically. Samsung does.

I am in Toronto and if we are talking 25 miles radius there are like hundreds of shops that can sell/replace/fix android based phones.

These threads keep saying the profits are sales and marketing as if artificial. On the contrary, user-centricity even to point of dev-hostility is a specific product market fit tradeoff Apple pursues, giving the whole brand a halo effect and premium.

Devs need to roll with that or will continually find themselves misaligned.

That's true, but it was still a half-hearted effort.

In the US, consumers don't usually see the full price tag. Carriers just put phones on payment plans (the iPhone 13 Pro Max 128GB is currently $36/month for 30 months on Verizon, for example), so it's a lot easier for consumers to buy expensive phones without ever having to think "wow, this thing is >$1k", especially since they'll probably trade it in after a year or two for a newer model.

I don't see such an ad campaign being very successful here unless carriers stopped financing devices (which they have no incentive to).

Example: because your childs first step matters, after which it cuts to a good video shut in a hurry on an iPhone, or a terrible one on $CHEAP_PHONE)

It's conceptually similar to the protections in the west. Protect users, but share data with the 5 eyes. It's just that they won't block you from searching for Uyghur or Winnie the Pooh or something similar in the process.

It's kinda interesting because this concept seems to work fine in China for the simple reason that they have so many domestic services. Other countries that just try to copy the China model without the domestic information services(i.e. Iran) have a huge mess on their hands.

It may happen anyway but these scenarios are never easy or clean-cut.

Anyway, it just popped into my mind that I dreamt about buying a phone last night and the shop's owner just found a box with 60 iphones 13 that a customer finally didn't buy. But he had opened each box and the cardboard was ripped for each box so it was a massive loss for him. Funny coincidence.

Even for the first time buyers, if all their friends are on iMessage, they practically have to buy an iPhone.

What I think it's really showing is that the Android economic model creates different incentives: Apple gets money when you buy the phone, apps, purchases in apps, and things like music or movies through their services. They certainly like it if you buy a new phone every year but all of those different groups share a common leader who wants to keep you as an Apple customer.

When you buy an Android phone, the CPU manufacturer won't see another dime until you buy a new one. A vendor like Samsung may or may not depending on whether they have some other service you use or get kickbacks from the carriers. Google likely sees ongoing revenue but they don't care about the hardware as long as it doesn't make you switch to iOS. Each of those parties adds overhead which Apple doesn't have and they will make decisions which are rational for their business but perhaps not your satisfaction.

1. https://samvimesbootstheory.com/

It seems the competition still doesn't get that Android is not good enough to compete with Apple on the luxury/premium market. Most of the "extra" software developed by the competition is bloatware and spyware. The core design is developed only by Google who is weaker on design than Apple.

That's why Apple gets the bulk of the premium market and leaves the competition to battle on the cheap segment.

WebOS had some real potential, too.

I'd argue that there hasn't been a single phone released since the Galaxy S10 that is an improvement on that phone. Sure it might have better specifications on paper, but they are all worse products due to the features that all flagship phones have removed over time (removable storage, headphone jacks, going down to pentile 1080p screens to name a few). For my needs, the entire phone industry has turned to utter crap while prices have continued to climb to pay for ever more camera modules, increasing Qualcomm prices (with the same crappy upgrade support), and marketing costs.