On the iPhone and Apple's Meteoric Rise To the Top 317
zacharye writes "Friday marks five years since the world first got its hands on a smartphone that would turn the industry on its head. In five short years, Apple went from the ground floor to being the most profitable company in the smartphone business by a staggering margin. Apple and Samsung — two companies that weren't even on the smartphone industry's map a few years ago — are now the only two major global vendors making money, and the split was estimated at 80/20 in Apple's favor last quarter. That's 80% of smartphone industry profits in less than five years with just five different smartphone models under its belt during that span."
Stop Saying "Meteoric"!! (Score:5, Interesting)
"Meteoric" brings to mind "meteor" which is something that falls down very fast and tends to burn up in the sky. (Yeah, I get that "meteor" as in "meteorology" and the notion that meteors are "fast"... it's the other properties of the word that I find horribly misplaced.)
Sorry, but it seems "meteoric rise" has been used a lot lately and it's almost as if people are being tested to see how stupid they are.
Re:Sports Announcer Voice. (Score:4, Interesting)
RIM is in MUCH better shape than Apple was at their low. They have a brilliant new OS, solid top-of-the-line hardware, and are still the only viable option where mobile security is important.
Sony has posted how many quarterly losses lately?
The last quarter was their first loss since the idiotic "RIM is dead" meme started (oddly enough, when they were still the #1 smartphone vendor). Their user-base is still growing rapidly. RIM is about as far from dead as you can get.
Re:five models (Score:5, Interesting)
They do have far too many models, and there's a new flagship every 4-6 months at most manufacturers. Those flagships are completely different on each carrier, too.
On one hand, it promotes competition - Android phone specs are improving at a far better rate than the iPhone line. On the other, it makes the marketplace a total clusterfuck, so consumers have no idea what they're getting.
One is an extreme singular focus, the other is an extremely competitive marketplace. If anything, this is a good case study of those extremes that can likely be applied to other industries as well. Too much high profile competition clouds the market, while too little ends up removing freedom in the name of centralization.
didnt even have devkit the first 9 months (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Your side is obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you're selling him short. The guy had the courage to enforce his own very strong opinions, that luckily were very user-centric, but also knew to back down from time to time. I don't agree with most of his choices, but they did work and push the envelope. On the other side, MS seems a prime case of community design and political choices, probably knowing what the market wanted (Metro !), but failing to push courageous solutions in favor of preserving their markets and counting on their strength to force bad-ish solutions down our throats. Smartphones and tablets are a prime example: MS was there first by a wide margin, but marred the experience by trying to use their desktop interface, failing to spot the allure of a fully locked-in, proprietary ecosystem, and relying on OEMs for hardware, apps, cloud.