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Except Apple doesn't seem to care about achieving huge market share for the iPhone. They care about money, and by delaying the iPhone 5 they've managed to make

Except Apple doesn't seem to care about achieving huge market share for the iPhone. They care about money, and by delaying the iPhone 5 they've managed to make even more money than usual. It must be habit that we go for the market share argument so often. A corporation's responsibility to its shareholders isn't to spread its logo across the land like a religion, but to return value (real dollars, not imaginary market share dollars) for their investment. That was slightly more ironic than I intended. Besides, there are plenty of other "hidden" reasons for Apple to sue these Android handset manufacturers. Steve Jobs feels betrayed by Eric Schmidt, Samsung makes eerily close copies of the iPhone, Apple doesn't attack HP and RIM because this isn't about actual patent infringement but taking out the smaller manufacturers who can't defend themselves against Apple Legal.

illumin8 15y ago
With a market cap of 23.06 billion, Samsung isn't exactly a small company. I think Apple is going after companies where it believes it has a significant chance of winning. Whether you believe software patents are a bad idea or not (I certainly don't like them), Apple has aggressively patented a lot of key features in iOS and it seems that many Android handsets are infringing.
- jsnell 15y ago
  Are you sure their market cap is that low? I find it a very hard number to believe.
- rrrazdan 15y ago
  Well I think your figure is wrong. Samsung is huge. Samsung Electronics has a market cap of 253 trillion won or 240 billion dollars[1]. The group's 2010 revenue was 201 billion dollars or thrice as much as Apple. They aren't big, they are absolutely huge. [1]http://thechinesenewsoflasvegas.com/business/market-cap-of-top-10-group-affiliates-hits-723-trillion-won/ http://thechinesenewsoflasvegas.com/business/market-cap-of-t... [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung
- fpgeek 15y ago
  Apple has aggressively patented a lot of key features in iOS and it seems that many Android handsets are infringing. Seriously? Did you consider spending maybe a few minutes looking at the patents Apple is asserting in these lawsuits before forming your opinion? To take the current example that drives me nuts, the 2 (of 10) patents Apple asserted against HTC that were "upheld" (air-quotes specifically intended) as part of the initial determination at the ITC are from the 90s (94 and 96, IIRC) years before anything innovative meaningfully related to iOS was a gleam in anyone's eye. Even better, as asserted by Apple, Hacker News is infringing on one of those "upheld" patents when it turns this text into a clickable link: http://www.google.com http://www.google.com Apple's lawsuits have only an accidental (at best) relationship to any IP that is part of iOS and nothing to do with any key features of iOS whose related IP Android handsets might allegedly be infringing. Instead, Apple rummaged around in their archives to find everything halfway-plausible that they could throw at their Android competitors. It may be understandable business and legal strategy, but it is also deplorable and the patent system needs to be fixed so that it is not exploitable in this way (as well as many others, of course).
trezor 15y ago
Samsung makes eerily close copies of the iPhone As a former iPhone-owner gone (Samsung) Android I resent that comment. iOS is a one-dimensional, inflexible and locked down platform which bored the hell out of me and this was the primary reason I went over to Android. Android and Samsung's phone (the Galaxy S, which I have and which they are sueing for) is nothing like the iPhone and every single day I'm very happy for it.
- AllenKids 15y ago
  Apple certainly thinks very different, and the court will decide, won't it?
  - poppysan 15y ago
    I think they are merely trying to intimidate a competitor...
    - AllenKids 15y ago
      What you think is not important in the court. I too think these kind of lawsuits are boring as hell, luckily there is a system to sort it out, it may not be perfect, but that's what we've got and a whole lot better than a flamewar.
      - poppysan 15y ago
        I never intended my opinion to be law, just my own view. No flamewar on my side...
        AllenKids 15y ago
        Oh, I'm not accusing you of that. It's just how things supposed to be handled, Apple and Samsung are all big boys. We as costumers really should not be bothered with their petty squabble to be honest. Nothing drastic will come out of this case.
- 15y ago
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
> Except Apple doesn't seem to care about achieving huge market share for the iPhone. They care about money, and by delaying the iPhone 5 they've managed to make even more money than usual. It must be habit that we go for the market share argument so often. A corporation's responsibility to its shareholders isn't to spread its logo across the land like a religion, but to return value (real dollars, not imaginary market share dollars) for their investment. Citation needed. I'm just a dumb programmer but I'm pretty sure that Apple at 30% market share makes more money than Apple at 19% market share. Please edutate me if not correct.
- p0ppe 15y ago
  The profit margin is more important than market share. Profit = products sold * profit margin. If you have to decrease your profit margin, to increase market share, the total profit might suffer.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    Why would they have to decrease profit margin?
    - mgkimsal 15y ago
      I don't think the OP was saying that they'd definitely have to do so, but it's typically something companies do to increase market share generally speaking. Reduce price point means reducing profit margin, but often increasing market share because the lower price means more people can buy. Apple typically hasn't done this (or certainly not to the extent other mfgs do) but certainly still like talking about their increasing market share.
    - AndrewDucker 15y ago
      Because you can now buy an Android phone for less than £100. If Apple want to compete with that they'll have to compromise on both quality and profit margin.
      - 15y ago
watty 15y ago
If you really think they don't care about market share and money or being the top dog, you're wrong and they've fooled you. That's their number one concern, they're a business.
- rimantas 15y ago
  Indeed they are the business. Business means making money not market share. That post misses one small graph: the profit share of Apple in mobile space.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    Are their profit margins growing disproportionate to their market share?
    - rimantas 15y ago
      What does this even mean? Which is better, having 80% of the market and 10% of profits, or having 20% of the market and 50% of the profits?
      - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
        That's the picture today with smartphones accounting for 28% of the total phone market. If Apple's market share doesn't keep up with smartphone adoption their profit % will go down. That's simple math. The notion that Apple doesn't care about market share is absurd.
        wynand 15y ago
        Right, but we have to limit ourselves to the upper segments of the smart phone market. If we include the cheapo Androids when talking about smart phones then Apple's relative market share may very well drop in the coming years (unless they come up with a lower-end iPhone but even a low-end iPhone would probably not exactly be low-end). But I agree that they cannot afford to lose ground to HTC, Motorola, LG and Samsung's high-end phones.
nextparadigms 15y ago
Apple cares a lot about market share. Why do you think they keep bragging with statistics every chance they get? Being a leader in market share is very important for developers and it's important for customers, too. Also more market share means more sales - so more money and profit. Why wouldn't they want that? You don't think they cared about their market share with iPods, or their market share in the tablet market? They may not care about market share at any cost, but they do care about it quite a lot. They may have said they don't care about market share in the old Mac days, but it's not like they could do much about it, so what else could they have said?
- jokermatt999 15y ago
  I'm an Android fan, but marketshare between Android and iPhone doesn't tell the whole story, at least for developers. I haven't seen numbers on it in a while, but iOS is much better for devs in terms of making money. iOS users buy more apps, and if you're developing to make money, that's pretty good deciding factor. Of course, may not want to develop for Apple for other reasons (store policies, not wanting to get randomly rejected, etc), but I'd assume money is the driving factor for many. Now, that isn't to say that Android won't be making good profits. It's just that Apple has a cash cow with their App Store's 30% cut (and now mandatory payments in app). Actual market share matters less, because that's not necessarily where they're continuing to make money.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    iOS users buy more apps I own both an iPhone and an Android. I haven't bought any Android apps because Android apps are crap and I won't pay money for shitty weekend hacks. if you're developing to make money, that's pretty good deciding factor That's a pretty weak argument -- do the math, most apps on iTunes aren't even making up for sunken costs. Quite the contrary I would say, since the Android Marketplace is filled with crappy apps, you can create value quite easily.
    - rufugee 15y ago
      Wow...troll much?
fpgeek 15y ago
Here's the thing, even if you grant the premise: Samsung copied the iPhone and iPad from top to bottom and Apple will win their lawsuit, I still think it looks fearful. First, by suing, Apple has vouched for the quality of Samsung's products. It is the Windows look-and-feel lawsuit all over again. Right or wrong, Apple has just stood up and admitted that Android (or at least Samsung's take on Android) is "good enough". That's just a mistake and you only make it out of fear. Now think about what a lawsuit says about what is going on inside Apple. Suppose Apple truly believes they have a kick-ass portfolio of next-generation products that will blow Samsung and the rest out of the water this fall. Would they really waste their time and attention on the complex, multi-theater, drawn-out, unpredictable war that suing Samsung is going to be? They aren't HTC, there is no hope of squashing them quickly (not to mention the huge supplier relationship). Or would they just say "eat our dust" and move onto the next thing (transitioning to new suppliers if necessary)? Even beyond the lawsuit, there just seem to be so many recent examples of Apple signaling that they don't believe that they can win in the marketplace (e.g. the in-app purchase fiasco). To me, that smells like fear and a lot of it.
- admiralpumpkin 15y ago
  The Apple lawsuit doesn't vouch for Samsung's quality, quite the opposite. Their argument goes something like: Samsung is purposely copying iOS's appearance and iOS's products' appearances, creating confusion in the marketplace as to which product is the original HIGH quality product, and which is the LOW quality knock off. __ Your second argument is falsely premised on the idea of limited resources. Apple can easily have a good upcoming product portfolio AND pursue lawsuits. They are not resource-limited. They don't have to choose between lawsuits and good up-coming products. ___ Being a huge multi-faceted corporation, it is difficult, in my opinion, to discern their motivation down to a simple, single human emotion. That said, if I had to guess, or put myself into Apple's mind, I would focus on Jobs' thinking. In my opinion he isn't scared, he is offended. He views his products as acts of creation--as art--and here is someone aping his art, and poorly at that. This offends him deeply.
  - fpgeek 15y ago
    First, if Apple is suing Samsung over their alleged knockoffs, then they are good knockoffs, not bad ones. Apple loves bad knockoffs. Bad knockoffs enhance the reputation of their products by emphasizing how special and hard to copy they really are. Why would they even dream of shutting down the kind wonderful advertising that money can't buy? Second, of course Apple is resource-constrained. Every company is resource-constrained, but the resources they are constrained by are not always the same. In Apple's case, the resource that I suspect is most constrained is the time and attention of their top, strategic managers. That's why I find the Samsung lawsuit so telling. Unlike most of Apple's other lawsuits (e.g. HTC, Motorola), the Samsung lawsuit / situation drains a lot of that top-level time and attention. What are the drains? We can start with the huge supplier relationship. What do you keep sourcing from Samsung? What do you transition? What are your contingency plans if Samsung pulls together a piece of technology you want (e.g. an iPad-size "Retina Display") before the supplier you are transitioning to does? And think of all of the negotiations, planning and so on that go on around this. These are all particularly important because one of Apple's key advantages over its competitors is how it manages and captures key parts of its supply chain. Next, Samsung is a large, diverse technology company with a robust, complex patent portfolio of its own. You can staff out the analysis of the countersuits, but deciding what to do based on that analysis is a different kettle of fish. If there are problematic patents, how hard are they to work around technically and operationally? What sorts of unexpected legal developments affect not just the legal strategy but Apple's technical and/or business strategies as well (and what do you do about them)? What about depositions and testimony (see Larry Page and Oracle)? And by the way, Apple and Samsung don't just have a simple US legal battle going on, they are lawsuits going in something like 10 countries on 3 continents. The sheer number of moving parts in this mess is a problem by itself. The more I look at the Samsung lawsuit, the more I see Apple spending a large chunk of their most constrained resource on it. I've drawn my own conclusions about what that means.

illumin8 15y ago

With a market cap of 23.06 billion, Samsung isn't exactly a small company. I think Apple is going after companies where it believes it has a significant chance of winning. Whether you believe software patents are a bad idea or not (I certainly don't like them), Apple has aggressively patented a lot of key features in iOS and it seems that many Android handsets are infringing.

jsnell 15y ago
Are you sure their market cap is that low? I find it a very hard number to believe.
rrrazdan 15y ago
Well I think your figure is wrong. Samsung is huge. Samsung Electronics has a market cap of 253 trillion won or 240 billion dollars[1]. The group's 2010 revenue was 201 billion dollars or thrice as much as Apple. They aren't big, they are absolutely huge. [1]http://thechinesenewsoflasvegas.com/business/market-cap-of-top-10-group-affiliates-hits-723-trillion-won/ http://thechinesenewsoflasvegas.com/business/market-cap-of-t... [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung
fpgeek 15y ago
Apple has aggressively patented a lot of key features in iOS and it seems that many Android handsets are infringing. Seriously? Did you consider spending maybe a few minutes looking at the patents Apple is asserting in these lawsuits before forming your opinion? To take the current example that drives me nuts, the 2 (of 10) patents Apple asserted against HTC that were "upheld" (air-quotes specifically intended) as part of the initial determination at the ITC are from the 90s (94 and 96, IIRC) years before anything innovative meaningfully related to iOS was a gleam in anyone's eye. Even better, as asserted by Apple, Hacker News is infringing on one of those "upheld" patents when it turns this text into a clickable link: http://www.google.com http://www.google.com Apple's lawsuits have only an accidental (at best) relationship to any IP that is part of iOS and nothing to do with any key features of iOS whose related IP Android handsets might allegedly be infringing. Instead, Apple rummaged around in their archives to find everything halfway-plausible that they could throw at their Android competitors. It may be understandable business and legal strategy, but it is also deplorable and the patent system needs to be fixed so that it is not exploitable in this way (as well as many others, of course).

trezor 15y ago

Samsung makes eerily close copies of the iPhone As a former iPhone-owner gone (Samsung) Android I resent that comment. iOS is a one-dimensional, inflexible and locked down platform which bored the hell out of me and this was the primary reason I went over to Android. Android and Samsung's phone (the Galaxy S, which I have and which they are sueing for) is nothing like the iPhone and every single day I'm very happy for it.

AllenKids 15y ago
Apple certainly thinks very different, and the court will decide, won't it?
- poppysan 15y ago
  I think they are merely trying to intimidate a competitor...
  - AllenKids 15y ago
    What you think is not important in the court. I too think these kind of lawsuits are boring as hell, luckily there is a system to sort it out, it may not be perfect, but that's what we've got and a whole lot better than a flamewar.
    - poppysan 15y ago
      I never intended my opinion to be law, just my own view. No flamewar on my side...
      - AllenKids 15y ago
        Oh, I'm not accusing you of that. It's just how things supposed to be handled, Apple and Samsung are all big boys. We as costumers really should not be bothered with their petty squabble to be honest. Nothing drastic will come out of this case.
15y ago

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

> Except Apple doesn't seem to care about achieving huge market share for the iPhone. They care about money, and by delaying the iPhone 5 they've managed to make even more money than usual. It must be habit that we go for the market share argument so often. A corporation's responsibility to its shareholders isn't to spread its logo across the land like a religion, but to return value (real dollars, not imaginary market share dollars) for their investment. Citation needed. I'm just a dumb programmer but I'm pretty sure that Apple at 30% market share makes more money than Apple at 19% market share. Please edutate me if not correct.

p0ppe 15y ago
The profit margin is more important than market share. Profit = products sold * profit margin. If you have to decrease your profit margin, to increase market share, the total profit might suffer.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Why would they have to decrease profit margin?
  - mgkimsal 15y ago
    I don't think the OP was saying that they'd definitely have to do so, but it's typically something companies do to increase market share generally speaking. Reduce price point means reducing profit margin, but often increasing market share because the lower price means more people can buy. Apple typically hasn't done this (or certainly not to the extent other mfgs do) but certainly still like talking about their increasing market share.
  - AndrewDucker 15y ago
    Because you can now buy an Android phone for less than £100. If Apple want to compete with that they'll have to compromise on both quality and profit margin.
    - 15y ago

watty 15y ago

If you really think they don't care about market share and money or being the top dog, you're wrong and they've fooled you. That's their number one concern, they're a business.

rimantas 15y ago
Indeed they are the business. Business means making money not market share. That post misses one small graph: the profit share of Apple in mobile space.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Are their profit margins growing disproportionate to their market share?
  - rimantas 15y ago
    What does this even mean? Which is better, having 80% of the market and 10% of profits, or having 20% of the market and 50% of the profits?
    - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
      That's the picture today with smartphones accounting for 28% of the total phone market. If Apple's market share doesn't keep up with smartphone adoption their profit % will go down. That's simple math. The notion that Apple doesn't care about market share is absurd.
      - wynand 15y ago
        Right, but we have to limit ourselves to the upper segments of the smart phone market. If we include the cheapo Androids when talking about smart phones then Apple's relative market share may very well drop in the coming years (unless they come up with a lower-end iPhone but even a low-end iPhone would probably not exactly be low-end). But I agree that they cannot afford to lose ground to HTC, Motorola, LG and Samsung's high-end phones.

nextparadigms 15y ago

Apple cares a lot about market share. Why do you think they keep bragging with statistics every chance they get? Being a leader in market share is very important for developers and it's important for customers, too. Also more market share means more sales - so more money and profit. Why wouldn't they want that? You don't think they cared about their market share with iPods, or their market share in the tablet market? They may not care about market share at any cost, but they do care about it quite a lot. They may have said they don't care about market share in the old Mac days, but it's not like they could do much about it, so what else could they have said?

jokermatt999 15y ago
I'm an Android fan, but marketshare between Android and iPhone doesn't tell the whole story, at least for developers. I haven't seen numbers on it in a while, but iOS is much better for devs in terms of making money. iOS users buy more apps, and if you're developing to make money, that's pretty good deciding factor. Of course, may not want to develop for Apple for other reasons (store policies, not wanting to get randomly rejected, etc), but I'd assume money is the driving factor for many. Now, that isn't to say that Android won't be making good profits. It's just that Apple has a cash cow with their App Store's 30% cut (and now mandatory payments in app). Actual market share matters less, because that's not necessarily where they're continuing to make money.
- bad_user 15y ago
  iOS users buy more apps I own both an iPhone and an Android. I haven't bought any Android apps because Android apps are crap and I won't pay money for shitty weekend hacks. if you're developing to make money, that's pretty good deciding factor That's a pretty weak argument -- do the math, most apps on iTunes aren't even making up for sunken costs. Quite the contrary I would say, since the Android Marketplace is filled with crappy apps, you can create value quite easily.
  - rufugee 15y ago
    Wow...troll much?

fpgeek 15y ago

Here's the thing, even if you grant the premise: Samsung copied the iPhone and iPad from top to bottom and Apple will win their lawsuit, I still think it looks fearful. First, by suing, Apple has vouched for the quality of Samsung's products. It is the Windows look-and-feel lawsuit all over again. Right or wrong, Apple has just stood up and admitted that Android (or at least Samsung's take on Android) is "good enough". That's just a mistake and you only make it out of fear. Now think about what a lawsuit says about what is going on inside Apple. Suppose Apple truly believes they have a kick-ass portfolio of next-generation products that will blow Samsung and the rest out of the water this fall. Would they really waste their time and attention on the complex, multi-theater, drawn-out, unpredictable war that suing Samsung is going to be? They aren't HTC, there is no hope of squashing them quickly (not to mention the huge supplier relationship). Or would they just say "eat our dust" and move onto the next thing (transitioning to new suppliers if necessary)? Even beyond the lawsuit, there just seem to be so many recent examples of Apple signaling that they don't believe that they can win in the marketplace (e.g. the in-app purchase fiasco). To me, that smells like fear and a lot of it.

admiralpumpkin 15y ago
The Apple lawsuit doesn't vouch for Samsung's quality, quite the opposite. Their argument goes something like: Samsung is purposely copying iOS's appearance and iOS's products' appearances, creating confusion in the marketplace as to which product is the original HIGH quality product, and which is the LOW quality knock off. __ Your second argument is falsely premised on the idea of limited resources. Apple can easily have a good upcoming product portfolio AND pursue lawsuits. They are not resource-limited. They don't have to choose between lawsuits and good up-coming products. ___ Being a huge multi-faceted corporation, it is difficult, in my opinion, to discern their motivation down to a simple, single human emotion. That said, if I had to guess, or put myself into Apple's mind, I would focus on Jobs' thinking. In my opinion he isn't scared, he is offended. He views his products as acts of creation--as art--and here is someone aping his art, and poorly at that. This offends him deeply.
- fpgeek 15y ago
  First, if Apple is suing Samsung over their alleged knockoffs, then they are good knockoffs, not bad ones. Apple loves bad knockoffs. Bad knockoffs enhance the reputation of their products by emphasizing how special and hard to copy they really are. Why would they even dream of shutting down the kind wonderful advertising that money can't buy? Second, of course Apple is resource-constrained. Every company is resource-constrained, but the resources they are constrained by are not always the same. In Apple's case, the resource that I suspect is most constrained is the time and attention of their top, strategic managers. That's why I find the Samsung lawsuit so telling. Unlike most of Apple's other lawsuits (e.g. HTC, Motorola), the Samsung lawsuit / situation drains a lot of that top-level time and attention. What are the drains? We can start with the huge supplier relationship. What do you keep sourcing from Samsung? What do you transition? What are your contingency plans if Samsung pulls together a piece of technology you want (e.g. an iPad-size "Retina Display") before the supplier you are transitioning to does? And think of all of the negotiations, planning and so on that go on around this. These are all particularly important because one of Apple's key advantages over its competitors is how it manages and captures key parts of its supply chain. Next, Samsung is a large, diverse technology company with a robust, complex patent portfolio of its own. You can staff out the analysis of the countersuits, but deciding what to do based on that analysis is a different kettle of fish. If there are problematic patents, how hard are they to work around technically and operationally? What sorts of unexpected legal developments affect not just the legal strategy but Apple's technical and/or business strategies as well (and what do you do about them)? What about depositions and testimony (see Larry Page and Oracle)? And by the way, Apple and Samsung don't just have a simple US legal battle going on, they are lawsuits going in something like 10 countries on 3 continents. The sheer number of moving parts in this mess is a problem by itself. The more I look at the Samsung lawsuit, the more I see Apple spending a large chunk of their most constrained resource on it. I've drawn my own conclusions about what that means.