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Technology Stocks : Apple Tankwatch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sylvester80 who wrote (1634)	3/9/2011 6:33:03 PM
From: rnsmth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 32692

I think we'll just be delighted to have all the little Androidians fighting each other to the bottom of the profit ladder. They can make it up in volume ;)

To: sylvester80 who wrote (1634)	3/9/2011 9:55:44 PM
From: pyslent	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 32692

"Stopping the Android march to ever higher market share..." Why don't you connect the dots for us Sly. This isn't the Android cheerleading thread or even the Mobile OS thread, this is an Apple Tankwatch thread. So, can you explain to the group how increasing Android share contributes to the tanking of Apple? Apple currently has 80% of the high end market (new phone sales), the only segment of the market in which they compete. This gives them 4% of the entire cell phone market. Android currently holds maybe 8% of the market. Now let's imagine a world in which Apple holds onto their share and Android expands to cover the other 96% of the non-Apple market. How does it impact Apple's business? With their lucrative slice of the market, they are raking in over 50% of the profit for the entire handset industry. Market share in smartphones has no impact on that figure as long as Apple can continue to dominate the high end of the market, just like they do with the PC market. Now I have said myself that with smartphone market share comes developer interest, and developer interest is indeed critical for Apple to keep the interest of the technorati. However, that's only true to a certain extent. In my extreme example above, of course, the $20 phone in India has no bearing on developers whether it happens to have Android or not. Those users are not buying apps, they aren't paying for data plans, they are Android phones (and smartphones) in name only. As Android moves downmarket, that incremental growth has less and less bearing on Apple; it's only good for fanboy bragging rights. Just my opinion.