Author: Horace Dediu

Android vs. Google

When I heard about Android being positioned against the iPhone, I thought about how that decision must have been justified internally at Google. I wondered how Andy Rubin added up the benefits of his product vs. the risks of losing whatever value Google derived from the iPhone.

On the benefits side, Android’s original business plan called for zero direct revenues with indirect revenues from search. The actual value would be somewhat dubious during the half decade it will take to get a significant installed base. Of course, with the Google-as-retailer model, Android can also be justified as earning some margin from devices, but as we’ve seen, these numbers don’t add up to much.

On the risk side there is the potential loss of the screen real estate on the iPhone (see photo above). Being the default search engine in mobile Safari might be worth hundreds of millions to Google.

Silicon Alley Insider reports a rumor that Apple’s current deal with Google to provide default search functionality for the iPhone is currently worth over $100 million per year to Apple in revenue sharing.

So the iPhone may be a bigger money maker for Google than Android will, at least for a long time.

Which begs the question of whether by picking a fight with Apple, Android is biting the hand that feeds it.

If there is any logic to this Android adventure it might be that Google really feels it needs to have an option on the future mobile computing platform and that Android is worth the risk of losing placement on the iPhone.

I, for one, don’t think this is a risk worth taking.


Calibrating iPhone Growth

I calibrate my growth rates on the assumption that Apple will overtake the combined share of the two money-losing handset vendors.

Sony Ericsson and Motorola are the weakest competitors in terms of portfolio and competence with software. Their sales, units and profits shares for 2008/2009 are shown in the graph above (source: Morgan Stanley).

Therefore, my thesis is that Apple could beat these two weakest competitors in 3 more years.

Here is the basic top-down view:

In 2009 174 million smartphones were sold out of a total of 1.13 billion phones (IDC, Strategy Analytics). Using a 10% CAGR on this figure gives 1.65 billion phones in 2013

Apple obtained 2.1% share in 2009 and about 1.5% share in 2008. My forecast share for Apple:

2010: 3%

2011: 4.1%

2012: 5.5%

2013: 7.5%

During the last quarter, Sony Ericsson held 4.5% share and Motorola 3.7% therefore my 2013 target for Apple is a little less than the sum of what these two hold today.

This results in unit sales for Apple of 125 million units for 2013 and a compound annual growth rate of 50% a year.


One Million Americans Switching to Smartphones Every Month

Comscore revealed their latest survey resultsfor the US mobile subscriber market. From the latest data and the data previously released in October we can put together a few insights.

The number of smartphone users increased by 3.2 million, growing at over 1 million new users per month.

Apple and Android added about 1 million users each. RIM added 1.4 million with Symbian adding about 200k users. Palm lost 441k users and Microsoft lost about 44k users.

Non-smartphones lost 2.1 million users and 1 million subscribers were added to the top line.

The non-smartphones lost 1% share in the quarter and 6% since February. Smartphones make up 17% of all users.

Google has overtaken Symbian to rise from last place in the platform installed base and is closing on Palm.

At 5% share erosion per year, the non-smartphone market will completely disappear in about 14 years, though I feel 10 years is a more likely target with 5 years until the market is 50% penetrated.


60% of Top 100 Brands on the App Store

I wanted to check how popular the App Store was for the world’s brands. As a quick experiment, I went through the first 100 names in the Forbes 1000 list (ranked by Revenues) and found that 37 had some app store presence.

I then went through the next 100 and found that 61 out of top 200 companies had applications.

Finally, I went through the Interbrands top 100 brands of 2009 and found that 57 were officially promoted on the App Store.

What perhaps is telling is that this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are some companies that have multiple apps with sub-brands also listed.

The real question is not which brands are on the store, but why aren’t all of them there.


Estimating iPhone’s Nosebleed Gross Margins

Apple’s latest re-statement of financial statements eliminated subscription accounting for the iPhone not just for the past quarter but for the entire history of the product, back to mid-2007. This allows a more precise estimate of the gross margin of the product and the results are eye-watering.

Apple does not reveal the margin for any product. They do provide an overall margin for the company (shown in the dotted line above).

The only challenge is to “back into” the GM for iPhone based on what we know of the margins for the other product lines and filling in the iPhone as the last piece of the puzzle.

To do so, we need to have some idea of what the other products’ margins are. Fortunately, this is not that hard.

We start with the easiest and work up:

The Software products business line ($2.4 billion last year) is easily the most profitable on a unit basis as software does not require much cost in manufacturing. A solid ballpark estimate is 80% GM (which is what Microsoft typically gets.)

Next, Music ($4.2 billion revenues). The estimate for music is fairly straight-forward. Apple and the industry have leaked the terms many years ago. Apple pays the labels most of the revenue of the music and keeps about 10% to operate the store. On the App Store there is a 30% margin off the selling price but that is offset by higher direct costs (shipping billions of free apps and free updates). I stick with 10% margin for the Music business line.

Third, Peripherals. The peripherals business is not particularly large for Apple, but they do a fair amount of peripherals with $1.5 billion last year. My estimate for peripherals margin is 45% based on some comparables.

Fourth, the iPod ($8.1 billion). The iPod has had a fairly well understood cost structure. The main variable is the cost of the memory, which, as a commodity, varies greatly quarter to quarter. Nevertheless, there is a strong consensus that iPod margins have kept around 29% to 30% over a few years. Teardown analysis coupled with spot pricing for memory chips gives a consistent average.

Fifth, the Mac ($14.7 billion). The Mac is a difficult product to estimate margins for due to the relatively wide variety of SKUs in the market, the complex components, various quality/warranty issues, transportation costs and the point in the life cycle of any given Mac. The best estimates however hover around the same as the iPod: 30%.

Once these values are available, and knowing the proportion of sales attributable to the iPhone vs. the other products, we can get an estimate of the gross margin.

Recent GM estimates are all shown in the graph attached. Here are a few observations:

  1. The overall GM was tied very closely to the Mac/iPod prior to the iPhone.
  2. Gross Margin has been increasing since the iPhone
  3. The iPhone GM is consistently above 60% and is chiefly the reason for the increasing of the overall GM

The expanding margin for the whole of Apple is quite a story in itself (especially vis-a-vis the tragicomedy of the other PC vendors). However, what really stands out is how high the iPhone margin is.

Knowing why it stays so high in the face of an assault of “iKiller” devices is a clue to how Apple creates value.


Nexus One: 80k units in first month -Flurry

Google sold about 80,000 Nexus One smart phones in their first month on the market, according research firm Flurry,Dow Jones Newswires reports.

By contrast, Apple sold about 600,000 iPhones when it launched the device in 2007, the story notes; the Motorola Droid sold 525,000 in the first month, according to Flurry.

Flurry estimates sales by measuring mobile applications usage and then extrapolating overall ownership.

Andy Rubin, head of Android said they hoped to sell 150k units, so this would be a very good start for the brand.

I would also like to estimate the revenue that Google probably earned from this phone so far. Assuming HTC receives a gross margin of 35% and the bill of materials is $174, then Google would have a gross income from the device of about $270/unit (based on $529 price).

Google could still have to pay for shipping, returns, warranties, etc. so their income might be closer to $220.

The income before operating expenses would therefore be $17.5 million in the first month.

I should point out that this would be the first income Android has ever received as the software is available free of charge.


When to Sell

I would sell AAPL when hateful articles are no longer written. When the consensus that Apple is dominant is overwhelming then sell. When computing has de-facto shifted to mobile, then sell.

When there are no more iKiller wannabes and when competitors no longer seek to “take on the upstart” then sell.

As long as there are doubters, whether due to ignorance or reactionary fear and loathing, the stock is underpriced.

If you doubt and hate Apple, please post and comment and give me the confidence to hold.


Yahoo Finance “Key Statistics” Are Wrong

Deagol, one of the most accurate forecasters of Apple’s financial performance rages against the failure of mainstream databases to correctly report financial data. Having witnessed incompetent analysis and lapses of basic fact checking from paid and certified financial professionals, I’m not surprised.

As the theme of this blog goes, there is an asymmetry of information in the world. Take advantage of it.

Read Deagol…


They want the thing in the movies

Mike Monteiro writes:

I went back for a second helping of Avatar this Sunday. There’s a scene early on in the movie where one of the scientists walks across the lab carrying the “mobile computer slab of the future.” We’ve seen one of these in almost every sci-fi movie of the last 50 years. It comes free with a jetpack, I suppose. Except this time, one month later, my 12 year old son turns to me and whispers “Look Dad, it’s an iPad.”

The iPad isn’t the future of computing; it’s a replacement for computing.

Right on!

I like root access as much as the next guy, but at least I can understand that you don’t sell a car by convincing the buyer that the car manufacturer’s engine was developed from freely modifiable blueprints that were available to other car manufacturers without a license fee.


iPhone will come to Verizon when Verizon rolls out a network compatible with the iPhone

Obviously, not everyone is on the cluetrain…

Credit Suisse analyst Jonathan Chaplin :

“Our analysis suggests that Apple will eventually sell the device at all carriers; however, there is a much greater probability that AT&T keeps exclusivity for another 12-18 months than investors realize,” he writes. “We think this has profound impacts for Apple, the carriers and the other handset OEMs.”

The iPhone on Verizon: The April Fool’s Joke That Works Every Day.

(footnote: Sorry about the graphic but I could not bear putting up the world’s worst logo).