In January I noted that there were more iPads sold by Apple than PCs from HP, the largest PC vendor in the fourth quarter. Including all tablets, this is the distribution of market shares by units shipped. Note the different color palettes for Windows and non-Windows. By the metric of tablets+PC’s Apple appears to be … Continue reading “The value of the OS X monopoly”
Last week I made an attempt to measure the iPhone’s manufacturing cost given new data points from the Foxconn field trip. The post generated a great amount of new knowledge and the feedback was very valuable. The main value to me came from stepping back and looking at the entire cost and value structure for … Continue reading “iPhone sine qua non”
This is a summary view of Apple’s income statement for the fourth quarter of 2009, 2010 and 2011. The full size is 999×893 pixels. Click on image below for full size bitmap. The convention used is to show revenues in the first column, cost of sales in the second followed by operating expenses, taxes … Continue reading “A three year view of Apple's fourth quarter”
The global mobile OS market shares for Q4 shows a continuing (but diminished) leading share. At the end of last year Android’s unit share reached 51% which is down from about 57% during the third quarter. iOS reached 23%, followed by Symbian at 12%, RIM at 9%, Bada at 2.4%, Windows Phone at 1.6% and … Continue reading “The opportunity cost of Windows Phone”
Last year we began offering revenue and operating income comparisons between Apple and Microsoft. It was becoming evident that the iOS franchise was beginning to overtake both in revenue and profitability the Windows franchise. To offer more dimensions of comparison this time I am adding Google’s top and bottom lines for comparison (click image for … Continue reading “The world's biggest startup”
It’s perhaps fitting that an industry that produces illusions is in itself an illusion. The absence of public scrutiny of its finances and business model leads to a lot of myths or misconceptions. Some of these are discussed anecdotally in books and other works[1], but the absence of data makes the anecdotal evidence unsatisfying to … Continue reading “Hollywood by the numbers”
Yesterday’s post described the history of personal computing platforms over the past 37 years. It showed a distinct shifting of “eras” between traditional personal computing and the emergent mobile computing represented by device-based platforms. Underlying these lives (and deaths) of platforms were the growth (and decline) of fortunes of companies and people. I hoped that … Continue reading “The conditions for survival and prosperity”
Thanks to Jeremy Reimer I was able to create the following view into the history of computer platforms. I added data from the smartphone industry, Apple and updated the PC industry figures with those from Gartner. Note the log scale. The same information is available as an animation in the following video (Music by Nora Tagle): … Continue reading “[Updated] The rise and fall of personal computing”
Here are the highlights from RIM’s latest quarter: 14.1 million BlackBerry smartphones shipped, 13 million sold through 150k PlayBook shipped with sell-through slightly higher. 800k PlayBooks shipped so far. BlackBerry subscriber base up to 75 million High growth cited for U.K., France, South Africa, Mexico and Argentina, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. RIM is the #1 … Continue reading “The parable of RIM”
Guessing the next Apple product has become the parlor game of choice for a whole generation of technology journalists and analysts. The premise of the game is that given a track record of breakthrough products, there is always another one just around the corner. Being the one to predict this next breakthrough product creates credibility … Continue reading “Hiding in plain sight”
