In fact, with our projects, we've now seen the the profit potential completely reverse, with Android now in the lead and the shift actually accelerating. This comment from the article you linked to, seems to indicate there are some problems with its conclusions:
It's a worthwhile trend to discuss, but as usual for Business Insider, your facts and conclusions are completely off.
1) Google Play revenue isn't reported for China, because Google Play barely exists in China, and won't until the government un-bans the many banned Google services and allows paid apps on Google Play instead of just the free apps it's currently limited to. Your irrelevant conclusion says "So although it appears from the chart above that Apple is safe in China, it's not. Only 18% of users are on iPhone in China, and 59% are on Android." Not only are your market share numbers off (Android's share is at least 80% in China, and iOS is more like 10 - 12%) The 80% on Android are almost entirely on Android open-source derivatives with no access to Google Play. So it's worth noting that China simply doesn't have a single, competitive app store to Apple yet, and when it does it's unlikely that it will be from Google.
2) The reason why there is such revenue parity in South Korea and Japan is because those countries invented and lead the world in freemium games. Before smartphones, those countries had high-end feature phones with massive revenues already being generated from freemium games. In most of the world, iPhone users spend more on apps than Android users. In Japan and South Korea, the same games are released on both platforms with the same freemium model and enjoy much more closer revenue metrics because those cultures have spending money on freemium games deeply ingrained in their consumer behavior, regardless of platform. This topic has been covered many times in many places, you should try reading the Internet some time.
3) The rest of your statements which are cleverly worded to sound like facts instead of things you made up, are simply inaccurate. You say: "And Apple has fallen behind on a couple of key trends among phone users: The desire for big screens and the desire to share content easily in a variety of apps and media. On iPhone, the screen now looks tiny and old fashioned compared to Samsung's Galaxy models." This is entirely unsupported by any actual statistics. For example, more people are leaving Android for iOS than the other way around. Also, while Samsung and the Android ecosystem sell more phones than Apple by far, the vast majority are low end and low price models. Even with the big screen competition out there, Apple sells more phones in the iPhone's price range than Samsung and all other rivals combined. And they don't compete in the low price phone market. Point being, Apple's target audience isn't leaving for Android, and if anything the reverse is more true. It's just that the fastest growing part of the global smartphone market is the low end, and Apple isn't even competing there. So their total smartphone market share globally is small (about 13%). However their share of the top 20% of the market is more like 65%, and growing. Their usage stats and user satisfaction stats continue to beat all competition, so the "trends" you make up above are just you recycling past misinformation, probably also from BI.
It is interesting that Google Play revenue is catching up to iOS App Store revenue worldwide (and is about equal to or even slightly greater than App Store revenue in Japan and South Korea). But a more interesting question is this: if globally, Google Play revenue is less than half of iOS App Store revenue, when Android already has more than 4 times the installed base of iOS, and 80% of the global market, how will they ultimately surpass iOS revenue since there isn't another 80% of the market to take? And since they won't be able to go from 4x the iOS installed base to even 5x, because they are running out of market share to take?
Lastly, your Blodget-esque conclusion "It's not a trivial question: Selling iPhones to a small minority of rich people may be good for profits in the short term, but if Apple loses too much ground across the entire mobile "platform" in the long run, it will be have real problems." is more made up fluff that sounds good but is totally unsupported. Selling the most profitable product to the top 20% of a market isn't a short term strategy. It is in fact the best and most long term profitable strategy in any market, as shown time and time again in every industry. Look at the watch industry - the vast majority of profits come from a small percent of the most expensive brands and models, and always have. The fact that Apple beats Android in all usage metrics, commerce metrics, revenue metrics, and even creates more revenue for Google themselves than Android does (yes, Google makes more money from ads on iOS than Android), all while having a tiny fraction of Android's market share, and it has been this way for YEARS now, is the ultimate proof that their strategy is working just fine.
I know it's just pissing in the wind to ask BI to check their facts, and provide intelligent and accurate coverage of technology instead of click-baiting junk news, but since this is my first time reading an article here in about a month, I thought I would ask again.
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