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Comment by engrenage | Hacker News Reader

Samsung profit share has nowhere near caught up with Apple.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/27/samsung-has-not-de...

Looks like you've been taken in by misinformation.

Strange, my Appleinsider link, from a few days after yours, shows that Samsung have closed the gap massively over the last year or so and was within 3 percentage points at the end of last quarter, a whole two months ago and just before the new iPhone announcement. Not generally a big sales period for Apple.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/31/apple-takes-53-of-...

They've been publishing that data for years and never once questioned it before. I wonder what happened that got one of their staff so riled up about the issue? Oh yes, probably Samsung overtaking Apple in smartphone profit share.

Presumably you didn't read your link. It just passes through the analyst report which has been debunked: https://mobile.twitter.com/asymco/status/362256388342284292/...

Samsung PCs tablets, dumbphones, and smartphones all combined are about the same size as the iPhone alone.

Feel free to continue basing your position on wrong information though.

Nope. Completely different analysis from a different group. You'll notice one claimed that Samsung was now in the lead while the other had the same trend but thought Samsung was still slightly behind.

It's still clearly a totally false comparison, combining Samsung's other businesses with their Android businesses and comparing that with just the iPhone.

I see you edited to link to Asymco.

http://www.asymco.com/2013/08/21/amp-index-update/

His estimate puts it at 57% to 43%, but with the same trend. Could easily crossover by his method this quarter too, may have already happened.

It really all hinges on what kind of jump 10 days of sales of the new devices (in limited countries) can achieve.

That chart puts Apple's profit share at above 60%. So you are flat out wrong.

The AMP is an average of several metrics including units shipped, both smart and non-smart, and revenue where we know Samsung surpasses apple.

You realise all these estimates are for two months ago, right? What's happened in the last 8 weeks to change this trend?

edit: look at the dots, the line is a trailing average over the last 12 months.

What's changed is Samsung not doing as well as their PR would have you believe:

http://allthingsd.com/20130607/fears-of-slowing-galaxy-s4-sa...

Are you emotionally invested in Samsung's success (or Apple's failure)? Because if so, Gizmodo's right over there dude. I come to HN to read insightful analysis, not to read a bunch of people Grubering about whatever imaginary tribe they think they belong to.

The linked article is pretty Gruberish. If you don't like analysis of an opinion piece, perhaps this was the wrong comment section to read.

Yeah, very true. My grumpiness gets the best of me sometimes.:(

I guess I wish the HN response to a Gruberish article would be people analyzing it for what it is, not people gloating about how they think their team is, uh, winning or whatever, then arguing about the numbers that they think proves it. Maybe the post I was responding to was some sort of pro-Android Gruber parody or something. If that's the case, then it was awesome, because it really captured some very subtle nuances about how that brand of commentary operates.

I'm just fascinated by the myth-making that surrounds Apple.

How could anyone read an Apple pundit claim that profit is the only metric that matters and not nearly die of cognitive dissonance after so many years of excuses/reasons why beleaguered Apple's Mac OS 9 and X was better. And yet it's par for the course.

And now here's an article which claims to be about Ballmer (a figure of fun for the Apple crowd) but is really about how Apple is morally superior for not being capitalist!?

It's hilarious, fascinating and a bit sad. And strange to be at the inflexion point where they go back to all the stories from the Windows vs Mac OS days e.g. they've already cast both Google and Samsung, to play Microsoft's role as the evil villain who copied all their good ideas and didn't deserve success.

And have you read the Appleinsider piece that gets trotted out to defend Apple's profit share lead? It's a very, very odd read. But you mention that Apple have not got the profit lead anymore and you get several links to it, and several repetitions of the "Samsung numbers are dodgy" talking point. It's a very organised media bubble.

And the "Google copied Apple" trope is such garbage. Danger, Inc. was the innovator here, releasing their first Hiptop/T-Mobile Sidekick 5 years minus 3 months before the iPhone. Danger co-founder Andy Rubin left them a year later (let's hear it for non-compete unenforceablity in California!) to co-found Android, Inc., which was bought by Google in another couple of years, still 2 years prior to the iPhone's release.

There's no way in hell the first Android phone could have been released 5 quarters after the iPhone without it being long in gestation.

You can't expect anyone to take this seriously. The hiptop was nothing like the iPhone.

And in 2007 before the iPhone was released Android looked like a blackberry clone: http://blog.steventroughtonsmith.com/2012/05/2007s-pre-m3-ve...

Well the Hiptop had an app store, which the first iPhone didn't, so there's certainly differences, but they're both basically PDAs.

You're forgetting the Sharp Zaurus, why are you being such a Danger fanboy? /s

And here you are, pretending not to have been proven wrong about Samsung's profit share, elsewhere in the same thread.

The linked article is not claiming apple is morally superior. It is claiming that Apple is strategically different, and highlighting Ballmers's focus on short term profitability as a mistake.

Amazon is another example of the same thing.

You seem to be obsessed with bashing Apple and some putative 'apple crowd'. If you calm down and read what has been written you'll see that nobody else here is bashing anyone or making derisive assertions about other groups of people.

Why are you doing this?

It seems like Apple Insider is conflating operating profit with profit (net income); specifically, Apple's net income vs. Samsung's operating profit.

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