@ Treefingers
Again you are missing the whole picture. You are comparing Apples with oranges. The Apple iphone is a smartphone and not a simple cellular device. Next time don't compare iPad with normal mobile cellular device!
It is now the number one smartphone maker in the world. You talk about samsung ( it's sales were 13 million in previous quarter). Nokia is at 16.4 million (this quarter). iPhone is at 20+million sales (this quarter).
http://www.onlinemarketing-trends.com/2011/07/us-smartphone-oem-marketshare-apple.html
Apple now controls 27% of the US smartphone market
Yes, I referred mainly to OS’s as it seemed more appropriate given the sentiment of the thread. Marginal changes in sales of actual devices are perhaps less indicative of future trends in the production of hardware and certainly don’t indicate which company may or may not create a monopoly. Apple’s growth is nowhere near the level implied by your original post that seems to state its “meteoric rise” may even be absorbing reams of business from other manufacturers.
Again you are dead wrong. No cellphone maker gained more than 0.2% market share, whereas Apple gained 1.2% market share.
The most recent quarter shows Apple increasing its market share of mobile communication device sold from 2.3% (2010’s 1st quater) to 3.9% (2011’s 1st quater); 4% is hardly pervasive. Apple’s share is still a fraction of other companies such as Nokia who, even after losing 5% of its share, sold 25% of all devices purchased. Furthermore, Samsung sold 16% and even LG sold more than Apple with 5.6% of the share.
From where are getting these numbers? You are dead wrong. Apple now controls 8.7% of the total US handset market.
http://www.comscore.com/Press_Event..._May_2011_U.S._Mobile_Subscriber_Market_Share (your own link)
From what I can gather, none of the Andriod adopters ( top 5 OEM makers) gained market share in hardware sales Samsung/Motorola).
Samsung stuck at 24.8%
Anywho... I would think that the company most likely to move into a dominant position would be Google with whatever device it decides to endorse for one simple reason: Mobile devices are a complimentary product to Google’s core offering, Google.com.
You can log on to google.com from any device. You do NOT need an Andriod OS. Infact it is the other way round. Google is complimentary to what the cellphone does.
From my experience, especially with cellphones, the more integrated it is : the better the performance. Otherwise, you get a crappy piece of s**t. In PC's it did not matter (Windows) because they were much more powerful ( in comparison to the software needs); however, you can only put so much into a small piece of hardware.
This creates a daunting situation for companies whose core product is the mobile hardware itself as they are up against a company who may even be willing to run a loss on its secondary offering. How does one compete with a business that doesn’t care about turning a profit?
The biggest counterargument to this is : If everything free outsells everything else, then Linux would have had 100% market share and Windows, OS X 0% each. However, this is not true.
Please show me any (top 5) smartphone maker that experienced hardware sales anywhere close to what Apple experienced.
Well if you don't make money on what you sell, ultimately it would be unsustainable to keep up the same level of R&D investment that you did previously. Apple earns hundreds of dollars per handset sold. Whereas Google earns modest amount in comparison to this. Apple will pour billions and billions of more dollars into development of software and hardware, but Google can only match it with millions. Ultimately, Google OS would not be able to cope up.
Another case: If you are versed with Airline Industry, you would know that initially budget airlines gain a lot of traffic, but due to extremely low margins (possibly losses), they wind down and are then taken over by the former fully fledged airlines. The main purpose of business is to earn money. If you don't earn, I'm sorry you won't last very long.