
Apple And RIM Take Majority Of Cell Phone Industry Profits - boundlessdreamz
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/01/the-spoils-go-to-the-smartest-apple-and-rim-take-majority-of-cell-phone-industry-profits/
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martythemaniak
Whilst playing around with Wolfram Alpha last week, I checked out Apple and
RIM side-by-side:

<http://www64.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple%2C+rim>

It's interesting to note that RIM is about 1/3rd of Apple in almost every way,
which makes sense given that they make only the BlackBerry, whereas Apple
makes a whole lot more stuff.

Anyway, I expect both of them to keep doing pretty well for the next little
while (as we all roll our eyes at the "ohmigod iphone killer, ohmigod
blackberry killer" crap) with commodity handset manufacturers (Samsung, LG,
Moto) increasingly having to rely on Android in order to have at least a
chance of keeping up with Apple and RIM.

~~~
DougBTX
[http://www64.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple%2C+rim%2C+googl...](http://www64.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple%2C+rim%2C+google)

Alpha is fun, didn't know that Apple and Google were so similar.

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mdasen
It seems like Apple is doing itself quite a disservice only serving AT&T (or
whatever partner they've chosen in your country). RIM is able to sell to a lot
more potential buyers than Apple is and Apple is losing out on customers who
chose a RIM device based on carrier availability.

I'm sure AT&T and others are doing a lot to make the exclusivity worthwhile,
but at some point wouldn't selling 2-3x more phones make better sense? If
Apple were smart (and I'm not saying they aren't), I'd think they would want
to make sure that the iPhone/iPod touch became _the_ platform for mobile
computing. They're already getting there as evidenced by the huge number of
App Store applications, but they seem to be treading dangerously as other
companies won't play by Apple's one-carrier handicap.

Apple doesn't want to end up where it did on the desktop - an also-ran whose
"our way is the only way" saw their marketshare crumble. Granted, in this
case, I'd say that Apple would be a major player also-ran, but there's no
reason why they can't be #1 and build an almost Microsoft-like lead here if
they sold more openly.

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jimbokun
The fact that profits, not revenue or market share, are most important seemed
to go over the heads of Apple's PC competitors for a while, too. Apple's
growth prospects, profit margins, and expansion into the iPod business
famously led to their market cap eclipsing Dell's several years back, after
Michael Dell had recommended selling all of Apple's assets and returning the
proceeds to investors as Apple's best business strategy. On Wolfram Alpha, I
see Apple's market cap is now about 6 times that of Dell.

<http://www28.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple+dell>

Is a similar fate in store for the volume cell phone makers?

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earl
Profits normally (an economist would say always, but they often forget
monopoly and rent seeking via government) move out of commodized services and
into noncommodities. Hence you should expect to see such behavior.

