jbelkin

Nokia Gets No Respect Against Apple, RIM

The problem is that a year ago, everyone dismissed Apple & the iPhone as a newcomer who would NEVER get any traction against the big boys - guess what - the big boys have been asleep at the switch for YEARS and what has been the response? our next phone will be better - they are what now, 3? 4? generations behind the iPhone - the Instinct the collective brainpower of Samsung or Nokia stll touting features and claiming they have the best camera? Remember they claimed the iphone would never gain any traction because people didn't want to use a touchscreen (or browse the mobile web?) - yea, THEIR mobile web or their touchscreen. That's why Nokia is ignored, for ALL their supposed prowess, as you yourself noted, phone portion & camera is fine but the rest - not much of a smartphone. The facts are the other comapnies are too laden where the project manager cannot override engineering or marketing to say this feature is crap - do it again - that's the bottom line. It's not that they don't have the brainpower, they cannot bring it to market ... nor the attention to detail (just look at the Instinct's icons - some are 2D, some are 1D and some are 3D in appearance - if you cannot even create cohesive icons, how else can you take on the iPhone) ... and NOW the app store - suddenly Nokia is all about an app store ... much like the music store? No ... basically, Apple will take about 70% of the HIGH MARGIN smartphone market, RIM will hold onto to about 15% and the other 3 /4 will fight over the remaining 15%. They are all fine on creating/adding features but as a cohesive gadget, they'd had 15 years and all have failed REPEATEDLY ... because they cannot get their act together on the UI, on creating an app store and of course, creating the Apple mystic.

Apple's AT&T Deal Is Costly

For a guy who claims to be a numbers guy, you don't do much calculating yourself.

Apple is selling an EXTRA 400,000 or 1+ million phones where other cell phone manufacturers might sell a few thousand more ... that's right - not on the network but still buying ...

This would be a problem if Apple was subsidizing each phone sale but it's NOT- every one at FULL PRICE 100% of the time.

As for people who can't/won't switch to AT&T ... how much does AT&T make for this customer? That's right - ZERO.

How much does Apple make? That's right $400 to $500 DOLLARS!

Versus ZERO.

It's ALL found money. Even better, Apple has to provider ZERO tech support - how much savings is that?

And with everyone that goes overseas that's not "legal," that just adds to the cachet of the product. How many products are considered FREE ADVERTISING & MARKETING for a company yet they made $450 TODAY?! Not to mention every Iphone sale is potential iTunes sales (even overseas ones either have stores or if they have a US credit card can buy tracks & movies) ...

By your math, since everyone on this planet doesn't have an iPhone, that's a trillion loss?

So you prefer possible future monthly revenue versus a $450 sale today? The future monthly stream is never guaranteed even if you sign up a carrier - people drop out, people don't pay ... but you don;'t factor that in because it's too hard?

The real world is more complex than just A+B-C ... or perhaps you should stick to analysing industries that aren't so complex.