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Comment by tim333 | Hacker News Reader

I see Nokia got around 2/3 the profits in 2007 when the iPhone started. I guess the profits tend to flow to those who have the best designed phones. I wonder if it'll still be Apple in another 8 years.

(http://9to5mac.com/2015/07/13/apple-smartphone-profit-share/)

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The comparison is extraordinarily apt.

Apple invests only a small proportion of its profit into R&D. http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/28/apples-rd-spending...

Samsung invests more absolutely and more proportionally. http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/global/home/what-we-think/glo...

Of course, much of an iPhone is also made by Samsung. Not sure why creaming off profits is considered a good thing or sustainable . . .

But 2007 was really before the whole app ecosystem took off. For anyone who has invested a significant amount in apps, there are much higher switching costs now than there were in 2007. Plus, besides just the actual monetary costs, people USE their smartphones MUCH MUCH more than in 2007, so there is a much greater cost in just having to learn a different OS.

The costs for switching isn't that high. Most people don't spend a lot of money on apps. More than half of the money is spent on games anyway. These are played for a while and then new games are purchased.

The handful of productivity apps won't exceed 20$ for the vast majority of users.

I buy lots of apps and games. Every time I switched platforms (webOS -> Android -> iPhone -> WP), I spent around 15$ to cover my initial needs. Compared to what I pay for a phone, it's negligible.

I probably spent more on Palm OS apps than I ever have on my newer smartphones. I remembering buying CD's for $10-$20 to get stuff like word processors and dictionaries.

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