By that measure Etsy dominates Amazon. Number of SKUs is a pretty strange measure of dominance if you ask me.
I don’t understand how Android is the dominant phone platform.
- Thread starter Exordium01
- Start date
This is a stupid opinion, sorry. This is product with as little 4% marketshare in a country of 172 million people (Bangladesh), also 4% in a country of 1.4 billion people (India). There are about 200 countries in the world, and in almost half of them, iOS marketshare isn't even 20%. There are almost 50 countries where iOS marketshare doesn't even crack double digits. It's not even a factor in many countries, with marketshare being under 5% in 14 countries (including massively populous ones like Bangladesh and India). Most people in those countries have probably never seen an iPhone in their life. Just India alone has more population than Europe and North American combined. Not the US, all of North America. And think, the vast majority of those people have never seen an iPhone in person in their entire life because marketshare is so tiny.
And you are telling me that's a dominant product? I think it's incredibly privileged to claim that the exclusively luxury high end option of a product category that almost everyone on this planet can afford is the "dominant platform". Not everyone is as wealthy as rich North Americans who can sneer at users stuck with Green Bubbles, so most people's experiences with smartphones is very very different than people who live in North America.
iPhone Market Share by Country 2024
Marketshare may not be the only thing that determines dominance, but you at least need to have a plurality among the options. The argument here isn't "marketshare by itself is meaningless". It's "despite having a tiny marketshare, iOS is dominant". You at least need a sizable marketshare for other factors to come into play. A product that barely breaks 20% usage can't be considered a dominant product. You are basically arguing Twitter is the dominant social media platfom because it's so popular in the US, and has such a high impact ecosystem so that it's all you hear about in the news. But Facebook has billions more users.
Last edited:
OpenAI just launched an official ChatGPT app. On iOS, Android version to come later. I could not care less what the marketshare distribution is for iOS / Android in Bangladesh, but I do care that the neat new apps come out on my platform of choice.
There is no argument that Android moves a lot more volume. There's also no argument that Apple makes all the money. There's also no argument that as the ASP rises, the iOS / Android mix starts to lean heavily towards iOS. Developer attention is on iOS first, because that's where the money is.
There is no argument that Android moves a lot more volume. There's also no argument that Apple makes all the money. There's also no argument that as the ASP rises, the iOS / Android mix starts to lean heavily towards iOS. Developer attention is on iOS first, because that's where the money is.
I could not care less which platform an app that already exists as a website launches on first. See how frustrating being dismissive is?
This might be a you only thing that you MUST have the latest fad app as soon as it's available. Clearly not for everyone else, or the marketshare distribution wouldn't be 2:1. If people weren't able to get the apps they needed on Android, they wouldn't buy an Android.
A huge portion of Android sales occur in very low price bands. I'm not being dismissive of the people that make up that part of the market; the pocket computer revolution is a huge boon and I'm all for it. But that part of the market isn't making a decision between iOS and Android. And that's ok! It's great that super cheap freaking pocket computers are available to nearly the entire human population. But you can't use the volume of sales into that price bracket as proof of consumer preference of Android; what it proves is people would rather have a smartphone than no smartphone. As you move through the price brackets, into the "used iPhone" territory and up, you see the iOS slice get bigger and bigger, as people who can afford to choose do. The higher the price bracket, the more money is spent on software, and the more robust the developer ecosystem. It's not about one new app, it's about all the new apps one of which is sure to catch someone's fancy.
Well of course Google is going to tell you Android is doing better
iOS is definitely dominate in western advertising, media production and tech coverage. That has a significant distortion of people's perception
Respectfully, that's like saying Asten Martins are dominant because poor people can't afford to buy them.
OK, maybe it wasn't all that respectful, but nonsense doesn't deserve respect.
If you wanted to rephrase the OP, it would be asking why some people buy Android phones even when the price is the same, because there is overlap in the pricing of Android and Apple phones.
I'd say maybe it's because even then you still can get more for your money. A Samsung S23 Ultra has a higher-spec camera than the top of the line iPhone 14 Pro Max. It also has a built in stylus, which is a nice feature. Otherwise pretty equivalent. Both have storage options up to a terabyte.
I wouldn't be surprised if at every price tier, you can get more for your money with Android, not just the highest and lowest ends.
OK, maybe it wasn't all that respectful, but nonsense doesn't deserve respect.
If you wanted to rephrase the OP, it would be asking why some people buy Android phones even when the price is the same, because there is overlap in the pricing of Android and Apple phones.
I'd say maybe it's because even then you still can get more for your money. A Samsung S23 Ultra has a higher-spec camera than the top of the line iPhone 14 Pro Max. It also has a built in stylus, which is a nice feature. Otherwise pretty equivalent. Both have storage options up to a terabyte.
I wouldn't be surprised if at every price tier, you can get more for your money with Android, not just the highest and lowest ends.
This is an assumption that I don't believe is grounded in reality.
Do you have a source for actual sales numbers by price bracket?
From what I can see, there are only two non-Apple touchscreen phones in the top thirty best-selling phones of all time.
List of best-selling mobile phones - Wikipedia
There's a bunch of Samsungs coming in in the forties or so, but above that, it's pretty much Apple all the way.
This is obviously not a cogent argument in itself, since it also reflects duration of availability and other factors, BUT: It does allow for speculation whether iPhone might actually, er, dominate those market segments in which Apple which actually participates.
Apple might well dominate the high-priced end of the market. I don't know where to find data on that, but comparing each iPhone to each of the individual competitor phones instead of ALL the competitive Android phones in its price range doesn't get at the question of whether it dominates that price tier (vs. Android). I would say it dominates the US market, and has done for a long time, even when it was getting less than half of sales, because getting close to half the market in one company vs a whole slew of competitors is what I'd call a dominant position. But again, that's just the US market, I don't know of another major market where they have that kind of position.
Last edited:
What makes a platform a platform instead of just a product? I’d argue that it’s this virtuous cycle:
Put another way, if your platform has a choice between attracting Joe who is a cheapskate and never purchases add ons or Sally who buys a ton, you want Sally on your platform. Hell, if Sally buys enough stuff, your platform will get more and more attractive and eventually you’ll get Joe without expending any effort.
But one thing was crystal clear from watching smartphones spread across Africa in the 2010s - the vast majority were not being meaningfully used as smartphones. There’s a huge cohort of ostensibly smartphones that are cheap Chinese devices that don’t even have the Play Store on them. Then above that, there’s a cohort that owns smartphones that could access the Play Store but they don’t because the cost of data plans is too high and they’re unbanked and it’s challenging to pay for things in the digital world.
So I’m not contesting your observation that there are many many countries where Android has overwhelming device marketshare. But it’s absolutely clear that the marketshare and the “use it as a smartphone”share are very very different. And even in the capitols where there is more real smartphone use, the volume of add on purchases just isn’t there. Even those who do participate in the virtuous cycle aren’t participating heavily.
But we know from App Store vs Play Store compares that Apple is actually ahead in what matters - virtuous cycle participation. And you see it in places like South Korea where despite Samsung being a national treasure, iOS is gaining market share.
- Someone on the platform is willing to buy an add on (software, a peripheral, some service)
- A developer/engineer identifies that demand and creates the add on
- The existence of the add on makes the platform as a whole more attractive
Put another way, if your platform has a choice between attracting Joe who is a cheapskate and never purchases add ons or Sally who buys a ton, you want Sally on your platform. Hell, if Sally buys enough stuff, your platform will get more and more attractive and eventually you’ll get Joe without expending any effort.
So I have some experience here. I was living in rural Sénégal when the iPhone was introduced and when I left in 2010 I moved to working in malaria prevention across sub-Saharan Africa right up until the end of 2019. I now work to dismantle disparities in the US health system. So I’m acutely aware of my privilege, thank you very much.
But one thing was crystal clear from watching smartphones spread across Africa in the 2010s - the vast majority were not being meaningfully used as smartphones. There’s a huge cohort of ostensibly smartphones that are cheap Chinese devices that don’t even have the Play Store on them. Then above that, there’s a cohort that owns smartphones that could access the Play Store but they don’t because the cost of data plans is too high and they’re unbanked and it’s challenging to pay for things in the digital world.
So I’m not contesting your observation that there are many many countries where Android has overwhelming device marketshare. But it’s absolutely clear that the marketshare and the “use it as a smartphone”share are very very different. And even in the capitols where there is more real smartphone use, the volume of add on purchases just isn’t there. Even those who do participate in the virtuous cycle aren’t participating heavily.
This is a coherent argument - that there’s some minimum amount of marketshare below which you cannot dominate. And I think the threshold effect is definitely there - it’s just not in device share, it’s in virtuous cycle participation. If you don’t have enough people buying add ons, no developer/engineer is going to make things for your platform instead of the competition. Gradually the value proposition of your competitor will improve while yours looks progressively worse in comparison. Eventually the ecosystem will shrivel.
But we know from App Store vs Play Store compares that Apple is actually ahead in what matters - virtuous cycle participation. And you see it in places like South Korea where despite Samsung being a national treasure, iOS is gaining market share.
It's true that the Apple app store generates about 2x the gross revenue as the Google Play store, but how much of that is the consequence of the same thing that makes the Google platform dominant in phone sales? People with more money spend more money. This seems completely foreseeable.
None of it? Apple wasn’t gifted high-income customers, they had to earn them. It’s not like flagship Androids don’t exist with prices as high as what you can spend on a comparable iPhone (higher for foldables).
It doesn't feel like none of it is the right answer, nor does it seem possible all of it is.
What was not foreseeable (at least by the pro-Android camp) was Apple’s ability to so successfully corner the market on high spending smartphone owners. Remember circa iPhone 5 when large screen (and relatively expensive) Samsung phones were taking off and Android as a whole was growing by leaps and bounds? The going theory at that time was that low cost devices were a beachhead for the upmarket devices - that cheap Android devices would grow the ecosystem which would make high end Android devices more attractive which would make them increasingly competitive with iPhones at the high end.
It hasn’t happened. Despite massive device share gains, those gains never meaningfully translated to the better software ecosystem that would make high end Android devices increasingly competitive. Instead Apple is growing their already lopsided share of the high end including in the home turf of the biggest high end Android OEM - South Korea.
One consequential definition of “dominance” might be the ability to deny your competitors the clients they most want - to force your competitors to aim for their second or third choice demographics. That’s what Apple is doing. They’re making it increasingly hard for Android to attract the high spending users that they most want.
So Apple has the lion's share of the top 31% of the market, but none of the remaining 69%? I mean sure, there are ways to pitch it to make it sound like Apple is a bigger player than it is, but they're definitely smaller in unit sales than Android. That's not in dispute.
Another thing to note about the chart is it's in current dollars. So the share of high price phones went up, but it wasn't because Apple did better, mostly. It was because inflation hit the phone market.
What’s notable in that chart is that Apple doesn’t just dominate the $500+ market share, it does so with devices that cost far more than $500. The Pro Max is their best seller!
Apple is gobbling up the people who actually spend money with their phones. And the ecosystem results are totally predictable from this graph. Outsized (and growing) profit from the App Store. Outsized command of peripherals (Apple Watch and AirPods). Generally a more healthy ecosystem.
Apple is gobbling up the people who actually spend money with their phones. And the ecosystem results are totally predictable from this graph. Outsized (and growing) profit from the App Store. Outsized command of peripherals (Apple Watch and AirPods). Generally a more healthy ecosystem.
That's not how I read that chart at all, and frankly as someone who desperately wants to never own an iPhone, it's terrifying.
The <$300 market is being squeezed, which honestly is not a market I ever have any interest in regardless of platform. That'll get you specs that are many years behind a current flagship on Android. Those are primarily developing world phones. I really don't really care about the bottom-of-the-barrel phones for emerging economies because I don't live in one. A chart showing only the Five Eyes countries + the EU + Japan/South Korea would be much more realistic of a comparison for the reality where most Arsians live.
For the under 20 crowd in the US the most recent numbers show that as of the last survey, 87% of teenagers have an iPhone, 88% plan their next phone to be an iPhone: https://piper2.bluematrix.com/docs/pdf/3bad99c6-e44a-4424-8fb1-0e3adfcbd1d4.pdf (pages 47-48 being the most salient ones.)
That's not what percentage of smartphone users have iPhones, that all teens including ones who don't have a smartphone at all for whatever reason. That's also a demographic that generally can't afford a $1,000 purchase-- that's purchases driven by their parents. Some of them would want an iPhone but would be only able to get a hand-me-down Motorola or Samsung or whatever. These are people who are developing lifelong preferences as they move into their prime earning years. Obviously some of that's due to the high % of adult iPhone users who have already been captured, just handing down their old phones-- but that wouldn't be a thing if the adults hadn't been captured consumers at some point in the past. The shunning for people with the wrong color speech bubble is 100% legit and real for younger consumers. It's not even slightly overblown and even as a full grown adult, I get teased and excluded.
~90% is a monopoly, and one ironclad enough to eventually force every other player out of the US market if nothing is done to break up their emerging near-monopoly.
All of the good Android vendors have fallen out of the premium market leaving very few to try to compete. Samsung and Google are the most notable, and frankly I think Google's only in the market of hardware because they've lost faith in their OEMs to really deliver good smartphones. That's not to say I agree with the decisions that Google is making with the Pixel. Rather the opposite. I own a Samsung not because I like Samsung in the slightest, but because they're the only real option left. Meanwhile those few are dumping resources into foldable phones and the phones and devices that compete with Apple are given much less attention than they should if they want to convert Apple customers.
Except it really hasn't. The chart shows an increase of 20% market share for > $500 phones growing to 31% in 5 years. Inflation on phones has been moderate over that time.
in 2019, the iPhone 11 Pro Max was the top phone starting at $1099 and the top 512 GB model was $1349.
in 2023, the iPhone 14 Pro Max is the current top phone starting at $1099 and the 512 GB model is $1399. There is a 1 TB model at $1599
That is a $50 increase in price at the very top and in 2019 the base model iPhone 11 Pro Max had 64 GB of RAM vs 128 base for the 14 Pro Max, but the other 256 and 512 GB tiers are priced very similarly.
If you want to do Samsung:
The Galaxy Note 10 Plus in 2019 started at $1099 with 256 GB or $1199 with 512. If you wanted 5G that was an upcharge of $200 for that generation (and a Verizon exclusive at launch.)
The Galaxy S23 Ultra in 2023 starts at $1199 for 256 GB and tops out at $1619 for 1 TB with the comparable 512 GB version coming in at I think $1389 at launch (recent price drops combined with "double storage" promos at launch make it hard to tell what it actually cost because that model has so rarely been available) If you were to buy an unlocked S23 Ultra today the current base model is 512 GB for $1199, so that's equal pricing. You'd get "upgraded" for "free."
That's not to say that inflation plays no role, but it's not as dramatic as it seems.
That's still kind of funny numbers anyway, since as a US consumer we rarely buy unlocked factory phones and even if we did, there's usually a trade in deal, or the Samsung "extra storage for free" deal or some other pack-in or pre-order bonus or SOMETHING to incentivize the sale.
Note that this is really an exclusively US-thing.
It literally isn't an issue in the rest of the world, where WhatsApp and Telegram are the default messengers.
Oh, I use WhatsApp extensively, especially with my European friends and speak a few languages pretty well so I can get good 'local flavor'. Living around Whatsapp for texting does allow a lot more frictionless movement between platforms, but it also means that even if there's no barrier set up by texting in terms of Apple using iMessage as lock in, Apple is still happy to have a multi-pronged approach to get you locked into their ecosystem. iMessage is just one vehicle, where it could just as easily be the Apple Watch or Apple Pay or whatever. They've found multiple ways to try to hook a customer and once they're captured into Apple, the friction for leaving is high.
Europe and even Korea are trending towards a higher % of Apple sales. These may be trends where increasing iPhone use in non-US markets will stall out or reverse, but the shared social media community worldwide talks about iPhones predominantly. TitTokkers talk about their iPhones and other Apple products, not about their Samsungs or Xiaomi phones or whatever. The mix of Android handsets in Western Europe is a little different but Apple is not a minor bit player or stagnant and the trend is (as in America) stronger among younger consumers in most of those markets. It may be that the US is just a few years ahead of the curve. Everyone is going to read the tea leaves differently, but Apple gaining market share in Samsung's home market (and sadly LG's former home turf) is IMHO meaningful.
Europe and even Korea are trending towards a higher % of Apple sales. These may be trends where increasing iPhone use in non-US markets will stall out or reverse, but the shared social media community worldwide talks about iPhones predominantly. TitTokkers talk about their iPhones and other Apple products, not about their Samsungs or Xiaomi phones or whatever. The mix of Android handsets in Western Europe is a little different but Apple is not a minor bit player or stagnant and the trend is (as in America) stronger among younger consumers in most of those markets. It may be that the US is just a few years ahead of the curve. Everyone is going to read the tea leaves differently, but Apple gaining market share in Samsung's home market (and sadly LG's former home turf) is IMHO meaningful.
Marketshare is one metric that only has value in a particular context. It says something about population, but not who that population is, whether it's growing, their influence, and so on.
Consider a different proposition: India is the most dominant nation. After all, they have the most people, end of story, right? No, of course not. India might agree with that but few others will. The US has been the dominant global nation since WWII (for good or ill) despite only having 4% of the worlds population, compared to India's 16%. Is the US dominant in every regard? Hardly. Military, yes. International influence, yes. Economic, yes. Influence in technology, yes. But it also leads in incarceration, gun violence, CO2 emissions per capita, and a a bunch of other, not positive things.
So consider military. The US is militarily dominant because that is measured against other nations. Sure, there's a pure 'money spent on the defense spending' aspect of it, but there's also more direct measures - size or power of military, general handicapping of head-to-head conflicts, etc. But does the US dominate on civilian guns? No. Because that's not a contest. France isn't trying to win that one, and consider the US being a leader there as a kind of failing.
So how do we normally consider dominance? By how one party force actions on the part of other parties. The US forces other nations to respond to it militarily. China is shaping their military directly around the US because that's the conflict that they need to be prepared for - both strategically and tactically. That's generally how we consider dominance - who is acting and who is reacting. Finding metrics for that is hard.
In tech, marketshare is certainly a component of it, but generally that's used as an easy rather than good measure. It's easy to count noses. And in a lot of cases, that's good enough. But not always. Counting Indian noses vs American noses clearly isn't adequate. It's not that Apple doesn't care about marketshare, but it's not what they care about most. Nor is it what Android cares about most. Google cares most about the aggregate revenue and profit off of Android. That's Pixel plus Play Store, plus not having to pay for customer acquisition on that share of the market (Google pays Apple about $15B/yr for search priority on iOS - that's a check they don't need to cut to Samsung, paying their engineers instead). Well, Google earned $280B, and Apple earned $205B just off of iPhone hardware sales - not including AppleCare, App Store, accessories, other service revenue, and so on. There is no question that iPhone is more valuable to Apple than Android is to Google in total aggregate - all secondary and tertiary benefits included.
How else can we determine dominance? Who is acting and who is reacting? Headlines on iPhone killer were dominant for a while, was there ever headlines of 'Moto 360 killer'? 'Samsung Galaxy killer'? No, everyone was reacting to Apple. Android is still primarily reactive to iPhone. Not always. I'm reminded of those Android phones sold in parts of Africa that have a built-in flashlight - like, full on flashlight - not the camera flash turned on. That's very clearly a narrow market innovation that was in no way a response to Apple, but by and large, Android primarily reacts to iPhone. Sometimes iPhone reacts to Android, but usually in minor way 'Apple copied the notification style!'. Yeah, okay, sure. But Android copied the entire form factor. Android is somewhat infatuated with folding phones right now. Apple doesn't have one. And Apple hasn't rushed to match that. Apple doesn't NEED to react to the folding phone trend. In fact what Apple tends to do is to look for a better implementation at solving the problem people buy folding phones to do, and make that the desired solution and force Android OEMs to respond to that. That's basically what Vision Pro is - deconstructing what people like and dislike about AR/VR headsets, fixing the flaws, adding the missing bits, and putting that product out there. They aren't even attempting to compete with PSVR or Quest. Anyone want to bet that Meta feels compelled to respond, though?
Consider this. iPhone launched in 2007. We know the famous response by RIMs executives to the iPhone. But Blackberry not only grew unit sales, revenue, and subscribers through mid-2011, they usually accelerated though that time. iPhone didn't overtake Blackberry market share until mid 2011. But Blackberry started seeking someone to buy the company 2 years later. If marketshare was a useful metric, it should have informed us that Blackberry was dominant from 2007 through 2011. Does anyone agree with that? Was it dominant? Did the company fail just 2 years after dominance? No, even though iPhone had effectively zero marketshare in 2007, it was dominant. A lot of people disagreed that iPhone was dominant - not just RIM executives, and Ballmer, but also folks in the battlefront and a LOT of Blackberry owners. But I think we can now agree that iPhone was dominant. RIM had to pivot to Blackberry 10 in order to compete with Apple. Apple never responded to Blackberry. They never added a physical keyboard, or any of the services that RIM proclaimed that customers couldn't live without. Observers could look at all kinds of metrics on iPhone vs Blackberry and see lines going up, marketshare ranking, etc. And if you invested based on that, you got fucking wrecked. If you made a strategic investment in the platform for your company, you looked like an idiot. Those were the easy metrics, not the useful ones. I have experience in data science. Most metrics are easy, virtually none are useful in isolation.
I've been an Apple investor for 25 years - since before Jobs became CEO. Retired early thanks to it. Marketshare factors in a little bit, but not much. If I had chased it as a metric, I would have invested in a LOT of failed companies and never Apple.
Consider a different proposition: India is the most dominant nation. After all, they have the most people, end of story, right? No, of course not. India might agree with that but few others will. The US has been the dominant global nation since WWII (for good or ill) despite only having 4% of the worlds population, compared to India's 16%. Is the US dominant in every regard? Hardly. Military, yes. International influence, yes. Economic, yes. Influence in technology, yes. But it also leads in incarceration, gun violence, CO2 emissions per capita, and a a bunch of other, not positive things.
So consider military. The US is militarily dominant because that is measured against other nations. Sure, there's a pure 'money spent on the defense spending' aspect of it, but there's also more direct measures - size or power of military, general handicapping of head-to-head conflicts, etc. But does the US dominate on civilian guns? No. Because that's not a contest. France isn't trying to win that one, and consider the US being a leader there as a kind of failing.
So how do we normally consider dominance? By how one party force actions on the part of other parties. The US forces other nations to respond to it militarily. China is shaping their military directly around the US because that's the conflict that they need to be prepared for - both strategically and tactically. That's generally how we consider dominance - who is acting and who is reacting. Finding metrics for that is hard.
In tech, marketshare is certainly a component of it, but generally that's used as an easy rather than good measure. It's easy to count noses. And in a lot of cases, that's good enough. But not always. Counting Indian noses vs American noses clearly isn't adequate. It's not that Apple doesn't care about marketshare, but it's not what they care about most. Nor is it what Android cares about most. Google cares most about the aggregate revenue and profit off of Android. That's Pixel plus Play Store, plus not having to pay for customer acquisition on that share of the market (Google pays Apple about $15B/yr for search priority on iOS - that's a check they don't need to cut to Samsung, paying their engineers instead). Well, Google earned $280B, and Apple earned $205B just off of iPhone hardware sales - not including AppleCare, App Store, accessories, other service revenue, and so on. There is no question that iPhone is more valuable to Apple than Android is to Google in total aggregate - all secondary and tertiary benefits included.
How else can we determine dominance? Who is acting and who is reacting? Headlines on iPhone killer were dominant for a while, was there ever headlines of 'Moto 360 killer'? 'Samsung Galaxy killer'? No, everyone was reacting to Apple. Android is still primarily reactive to iPhone. Not always. I'm reminded of those Android phones sold in parts of Africa that have a built-in flashlight - like, full on flashlight - not the camera flash turned on. That's very clearly a narrow market innovation that was in no way a response to Apple, but by and large, Android primarily reacts to iPhone. Sometimes iPhone reacts to Android, but usually in minor way 'Apple copied the notification style!'. Yeah, okay, sure. But Android copied the entire form factor. Android is somewhat infatuated with folding phones right now. Apple doesn't have one. And Apple hasn't rushed to match that. Apple doesn't NEED to react to the folding phone trend. In fact what Apple tends to do is to look for a better implementation at solving the problem people buy folding phones to do, and make that the desired solution and force Android OEMs to respond to that. That's basically what Vision Pro is - deconstructing what people like and dislike about AR/VR headsets, fixing the flaws, adding the missing bits, and putting that product out there. They aren't even attempting to compete with PSVR or Quest. Anyone want to bet that Meta feels compelled to respond, though?
Consider this. iPhone launched in 2007. We know the famous response by RIMs executives to the iPhone. But Blackberry not only grew unit sales, revenue, and subscribers through mid-2011, they usually accelerated though that time. iPhone didn't overtake Blackberry market share until mid 2011. But Blackberry started seeking someone to buy the company 2 years later. If marketshare was a useful metric, it should have informed us that Blackberry was dominant from 2007 through 2011. Does anyone agree with that? Was it dominant? Did the company fail just 2 years after dominance? No, even though iPhone had effectively zero marketshare in 2007, it was dominant. A lot of people disagreed that iPhone was dominant - not just RIM executives, and Ballmer, but also folks in the battlefront and a LOT of Blackberry owners. But I think we can now agree that iPhone was dominant. RIM had to pivot to Blackberry 10 in order to compete with Apple. Apple never responded to Blackberry. They never added a physical keyboard, or any of the services that RIM proclaimed that customers couldn't live without. Observers could look at all kinds of metrics on iPhone vs Blackberry and see lines going up, marketshare ranking, etc. And if you invested based on that, you got fucking wrecked. If you made a strategic investment in the platform for your company, you looked like an idiot. Those were the easy metrics, not the useful ones. I have experience in data science. Most metrics are easy, virtually none are useful in isolation.
I've been an Apple investor for 25 years - since before Jobs became CEO. Retired early thanks to it. Marketshare factors in a little bit, but not much. If I had chased it as a metric, I would have invested in a LOT of failed companies and never Apple.
It's not inflation at the top end that influences the population of the category segments. The top prices could go up any amount or down 50% and not affect that graph. It's only inflation or deflation that could potentially cross the boundaries of the segments that can affect the graphs.
Just watched "Blackberry" movie. Not a doc, it's a comedy.
When the iPhone was announced, Balsillie, the business-side co-CEO, was trying to complete a purchase of an NHL team and move it, so there would have been the Hamilton Penguins.
Lazaridis, the other co-CEO who was the engineer, saw the Steve Jobs presentation and couldn't understand why it wouldn't have a HW keyboard. Of course that was the reaction of a lot of people here on Ars too.
They also thought that iPhone would overload any mobile network at the time because they had been working around a 500k Blackberry limit on Verizon, an architecture that they designed to limit data usage by BB devices.
Then they noticed the AT&T CEO on stage with Jobs and it took awhile for them to process that AT&T would be going from a minutes-centric model (Blackberry) to a data-centric model, billing for data usage on 3G and then later generation networks.
I don't understand why they would be caught unawares. I'm sure there was an ITU roadmap for mobile networks which probably even included at least 4G at the time, just as 3G was on the horizon.
At one point, they realize that they need more engineering expertise -- "best engineers in Canada" -- so Balsillie goes around trying to poach engineers. He meets with the head of HW engineering at the time at Google, in his Google office. Offers him $1 million to sign with him, then $2 million.
Then pauses and says $10 million. The way he'd do it is give him stock options and he would backdate it for when RIM stock was $1. Securities fraud, which compounded RIM's problems aside from the massive publicity that the iPhone got.
Lazaridis went into a meeting with Verizon to show the BB Bold with a trackpad, He told them the trackpad would be the main mode of interaction with smart phones. Verizon asked him did he see the iPhone unveiling? They didn't want the BB Bold, they wanted something like the iPhone. So he improvises and says he will give them a full screen device but it will have the "satisfying" Blackberry click when you tap on the screen.
He'd been a holdout on Chinese manufacturing, insisting that all BB devices be built in Canada. But for the BB Storm, this screen with the click -- his engineers kept asking him "why?" -- he had it made in China. First samples had white noise which couldn't be shut off, something he saw in every device made in China, even simple speakerphones.
They set the Storm didn't succeed because of all kinds of manufacturing problems.
Early history is kind of interesting. They had a $16 million deal with US Robotics for modems. USR screwed them, finally said the samples didn't work but they stole the design and shipped their own. Balsillie came on board and sued them.
Later, Palm offered to merge with them, make the Palm Blackberry. Balsillie and Lazaridis didn't want to of course, their phones would have 45% market share at one point. Palm guy threatened to just do a hostile takeover. Their strategy was to double or triple sales to make the stock too expensive for Palm and that worked. The sales strategy was colorful, they'd go to where rich people hung out and make loud and obnoxious phone calls on their Blackberries so that the movers and shakers would notice and want them.
Turned out one of the cofounders of the company was Doug Fregin, who was never CEO. He'd go around in tank tops, shorts and headband and he'd organize movie nights for the engineers. He knew the technology and was against bringing Balsillie aboard.
Fregin in real life sold his shares in 2007, at the peak of RIM's share price. Not sure if that was before or after iPhone was revealed. In any event, a title card at the end of the movie says he's secretly one of the richest men in the world.
In the computing world you don;t win by having a better product, you win by the others screwing up by not understanding that someone else may have a better product and why it was better and updating your own to match these features that people like.
Just look at IBM in the pc market for so so many examples. IBM's screwup made Microsoft what it is, the pc clone market, and frankly most of what one expcets out of a modern computer in terms of hardware support and the like
Seems more like RIM didn't have a road map for 3G and 4G devices, a world where mobile networks and rapid advances in mobile SOCs would enable mobile devices which could display rich media, not just text.
They just thought the text-centric keyboard-dominant paradigm would last forever or at least much longer than they expected.
Again, it had to be known even back in 2007 that faster mobile networks were coming. 5G started deployment in 2019, just a little over a decade later when iPhone was unveiled. The very first 4G deployments, which already enabled video and social media, started in 2009.
They were partners with Verizon and some of the largest mobile carriers around the world. What was their plan, have faster devices but still with a keyboard dominating the footprint and a relatively small screen at top?
Did they have modern browsers even in the 2010 time frame, not to mention video and streaming apps which would follow fairly soon?
The interesting thing about all this is the original Android paradigm pretty much copied Blackberry. They had to shift gears and at least they were nimble enough not to mention having the engineering chops to do it.
Maybe it helped that Schmidt was on the Apple board at the time, so presumably him, Rubin and other Google execs decided to bail on the original plan.
Otherwise, it would have been interesting if Android stuck to the HW keyboard instead of multitouch screen.
If they had stuck to the hardware keyboard, it would have been like trying to sell a horse-drawn buggy in 1910, rather than just storming (heh) onto the market with a model that did less than the market leaders, while being generations behind and years late.
Apple definitely respond to Android or the iPhone would still max out at 4". You can expect a folding iPhone sooner rather than later, just like iPhones got USB-C and iPads got styli, despite all the protestations and rationalizations from Apple execs and fans alike why they were not good ideas for the platform. It's not as black and white as you are laying out to be. There is a LOT of cross pollination between the two platforms but Apple has a marketing team that's WAY better at stealing credit for things their engineers didn't invent.
Last edited:
I’m not convinced. Folding phones have found their niche but it doesn’t seem like they’re growing at any appreciable rate. We’re on like the fifth iteration where a lot of the design kinks should be worked out and the costs coming down. But they’re still priced astronomically and sales are modest. Perhaps more damning they haven’t developed much in the way of cultural cachet in 5 years of availability.
For Apple to launch a foldable they would need to feel like a lot of the lingering problems are fixable and I’m just not sure that’s the case. Will foldables ever have a screen your kid can’t puncture with a pencil? Will screens ever be thin enough and low powered enough that you can have an exterior screen and long battery life and keep the weight down. Those are fundamental engineering constraints of the form factor.
Apple totally steals good ideas from the Android world. I’m just not convinced that foldables are a good idea.
I don't know what rarified elite world you live in, but foldables are huge. They already account for 20% of Samsung's global smartphone sales. And this is a company that sells numerous sub $500 models. Foldable growth is 50% YoY for Samsung, and that's just one company making foldables. As for cost, it's already come down a lot. The Flip Z costs the same as the mass market flagship, the Galaxy S (non-ultra). Last time we upgraded, I got a Flip, my wife got the S. They cost exactly the same out of pocket. One thing to remember is unlike Apple, Samsung MSRP is meaningless and doesnt reflect street price.
Maybe Apple fans don't realize how big foldables are because Apple doesn't make any.
Well, this is a bit of a No True Scotsman argument, because I'm sure your arbitrary definition of "enough" will never be met until an Apple foldable launches. What I do know is that my personal Flip Z4 has longer battery life and weighs less than the iPhone 11 work gave me.
I don't know the models but the Galaxy 23 Ultra is $1199 and the Galaxy Z Fold is $1799.
I assume the internals are comparable, processors, cameras, storage, etc.
So the 50% premium can't be moving that much volume, especially when smart phone sales overall are flat or maybe slightly growing.
What kind of volume is an $1800 phone getting?
Pixel Fold also starts at $1800.
Apple probably would prefer that you buy a $1200 phone -- or even an $800 one -- and also buy an iPad of some kind.
They might be more interested in a foldable if they can get the price delta much lower than 50% higher than the base SKU of the most expensive model.
Or if they think it would spur a greater cycle of upgrades than the candy bar form factor. So their implementation of the foldable UX would have to be compelling.
But again, an $1800 phone would not deliver the kind of volume they're interested in.
Get it under $1500 or more like $1400, then it might be possible. But again, they make more money making you buy two devices instead of one trying to replace two.
Also, if you're having to carry a device which will be twice as thick in folded mode, that's also a non-starter for many.
I assume the internals are comparable, processors, cameras, storage, etc.
So the 50% premium can't be moving that much volume, especially when smart phone sales overall are flat or maybe slightly growing.
What kind of volume is an $1800 phone getting?
Pixel Fold also starts at $1800.
Apple probably would prefer that you buy a $1200 phone -- or even an $800 one -- and also buy an iPad of some kind.
They might be more interested in a foldable if they can get the price delta much lower than 50% higher than the base SKU of the most expensive model.
Or if they think it would spur a greater cycle of upgrades than the candy bar form factor. So their implementation of the foldable UX would have to be compelling.
But again, an $1800 phone would not deliver the kind of volume they're interested in.
Get it under $1500 or more like $1400, then it might be possible. But again, they make more money making you buy two devices instead of one trying to replace two.
Also, if you're having to carry a device which will be twice as thick in folded mode, that's also a non-starter for many.
I would believe the Vision Pro more likely as an eventual iPhone replacement/supplement than a foldable Apple phone.
False. Samsung sold over 200 million phones in 2022. In an interview in July a senior exec claimed they sold almost 10M foldables across all models in the same time period. So more like 5%. After 4 years.
Brainfart - was thinking of the prior year iPhone 13.
Last edited:
The rarefied elite world I live in is a lower-income public school in a midwestern suburb. I’m constantly in meetings with other staff members and parents, who often have their phones handy. Nonetheless, I’ve never once seen a foldable phone in the wild.
The Fold is comparable to the iPhone 15 Pro Max which is also a $1500+ phone. The mainstream foldable that Samsung sells is the Flip which has an MSRP of $1000. Street price for Samsung phones is SIGNFICANTLY less, especially 3 months or more after release. Right now if you buy straight from Samsung, there is a $600 trade in credit. After the initial launch window, it's common to find Samsung phones for 50% off MSRP. The Flip Z4 which is still a current phone (Samsung follows the same strategy of Apple of selling last year's flagship as next year's midrange) has an MSRP for $600, and is available for much less if you don't buy unlocked straight from Samsung.
I don't know why the Fold is used as the example for how much foldables cost, when the Flip accounts for 70% of preorders and the bulk of sales (~60-70%). The Fold is the halo product, but real people buy much cheaper models. Nobody points to the Pro Max and declares the iPhone is a flop as a product line, because they cost too much.
I get it, Apple fans don't like foldables because Apple hasn't invented them yet, so they don't technically exist, but you don't need to make up shit about their flaws. Foldables are not necessarily significantly more expensive than slab phones.
I think this demonstrates the blindspot online commenters have when discussing foldables more than any other comment in this thread. People who are buying foldables may not be comparison shopping using a spec sheet. It's truly ironic because people who buy iPhones aren't always comparison shopping with a spec sheet either. To make an awful car analogy as is tradition, it's like if you are buying a pickup truck, appealing to MPG won't be the most persuasive argument for a prospective buyer.
The bottom line is the form factor itself provides benefits that go beyond the internals. Worth noting, the foldables are outselling the best selling year of the Note, and that was the last Samsung product that forced Apple to change direction with form factor.
Last edited:
Wonderful anecdata you've provided but it doesn't mean anything compared to actual data.
The only conclusion you can draw from your anecdote is that nobody you personally know owns a foldable. That doesn't say anything at all about how popular foldables are. I guess most smartphone buyers aren't midwesterner Americans who attend low income suburban public schools? Not a very helpful insight, but I guess it's good to know.
Not surprisingly, foldables are most popular in Europe and East Asia.
Last edited:
No, not in the same time period. 10 million was how many foldables Samsung sold in 2021. For a segment that is growing at a rate of 50% YoY, sales figures from 2 years ago are outright misleading because they are so out of date as to be irrelevant to where the market is, and where it is heading. The very next year, Samsung sold 14 million foldables beating their own expectations. That number is growing way faster than the rest of the smartphone market.
Samsung continues to bet on foldables with Galaxy Z Flip & Fold 5
Some might argue that smartphones have reached a peak level where year-on-year evolutions don’t seem so great. At the same...
9to5mac.com
Thanks, I thought it was pretty wonderful too! If nothing else, it shows that you don’t have to live in a “rarefied elite world” to never come across a folding phone, despite seeing dozens to hundreds of folks’ phones each year.
Samsung and now Google both sell tablets although the Google one is arguably not a general purpose device. I'm sure Samsung would love to sell you a Galaxy S + Tab S (or at least a Tab A). They've offered that option of phone+tablet to buyers for a decade, but clearly that's not an attractive enough proposition for the people who are buying foldable devices.
Going back to the earlier proposition and assuming that the only foldable is $1,800 street (already disproven), you suggest the alternative is a $1200 phone and a $600 tablet? Yeah you're still spending the same money and might get two devices that have particular benefits that a foldable phone can't match but...
... no matter how you fold your tablet, it won't fit in your pocket. Well, I guess nominally you could fold it into pocket size once, just don't expect it to ever work again.
I'm not a folding phone owner, of either format, but I can understand why the companies and some consumers are interested in that format. There are a lot of products that don't fit my lifestyle but if they fit someone's lifestyle, then they should probably exist.
For the ~50% of the population that keeps their device in a purse/bag it's a non issue how thick the device is when folded.
For other folks, somehow society didn't collapse in the Nokia 3310 era. Thickness is a concern but it's not like these devices are "so thick nobody would buy them".
You’re right - I was looking at 2021 numbers . But… by your number (14M) they make up about 7% of Samsungs sales from 2022, not the 20% you stated just an bit ago. And analysts think 14M is all foldables of which Samsung sold less than 12M - about a 20% YoY growth, not 50%.No, not in the same time period. 10 million was how many foldables Samsung sold in 2021. For a segment that is growing at a rate of 50% YoY, sales figures from 2 years ago are outright misleading because they are so out of date as to be irrelevant to where the market is, and where it is heading. The very next year, Samsung sold 14 million foldables beating their own expectations. That number is growing way faster than the rest of the smartphone market.
Samsung continues to bet on foldables with Galaxy Z Flip & Fold 5
Some might argue that smartphones have reached a peak level where year-on-year evolutions don’t seem so great. At the same...
https://www.gizchina.com/2023/03/03/samsung-sold-nearly-12-million-foldable-smartphones-in-2022/amp/
And those sales are not evenly distributed. Foldables make up 40% of Samsung’s premium phone sales in South Korea.
https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/ar...bles-to-account-for-more-premium-phone-sales/
—-
The takeaway is that no one other than Samsung is doing anything with foldables. Foldables are growing at a glacial pace for a 4 year old technology and still only accounts for around 7% of Samsungs sales. And much of the growth is coming from Samsung’s home market.
This isn’t a meaningful success story.
This is the exact same story the Note followed. Wildly popular in Samsung's home market, derided by Apple fans in the US, explosive yet modest sales, complete obliviousness to how useful and beneficial the form factor is if you carry a purse because the online commentariat is so male dominated ("a phablet would never fit in a pocket! What, are we to wear cargo pants everywhere? Even when wearing a suit?!?"), and now it's the only form factor on the market. The lone small screened phone Apple sold in recent memory was discontinued because of lackluster sales.
Samsung's innovative design is now EVERYWHERE, even in the circular halls of Cupertino. It won over Apple's postage stamp sized design definitively, thoroughly, and convincingly. And it's not like you can argue that phablets didn't really take off until Apple showed everyone how it's done by reinventing the category as is often claimed when Apple rips off the design of others.
It's easy to discount and dismiss success unless Apple is behind it. Apple is really at the back of the pack here, and it shows how their ultraconservative attitude to design is biting them in the ass with their flat growth. People don't care as much any more when a new iPhone launches, because it's the same as last year, just a bit faster with a bit better cameras. The biggest iPhone news in YEARS was they finally added... a USB port? So fucking lame and sad what the brand has become. It's the IBM of smartphones. Apple has been caught flatfooted before when the market trends shifted. Looks like it's happening again. Lucky for Apple they are fucking gigantic, so can afford to miss the boat a second time. They are so fucking rich they can just charter their own private boat to catch up.
Nobody but Samsung is doing anything with Android. When will people get over this ridiculous newfangled Android fad and realize that Blackberry is the one true phone OS?
Last edited: