On Apple’s Insurmountable Platform Advantage
Since the iPhone 6s was released last month anyone who has used the device says it feels like magic. Apple – as a platform company – is so far above the competition it’s hard to fully grasp.
There are reasons why pushing down on 3D Touch feels better than any device people have ever touched, and it’s not entirely clear whether it’s the software or what’s inside that plays the larger part. The iPhone 6s presents itself in a way that lets you feel unconsciously in control yet expressive and free.
Last week we saw news from Apple teardowns that both Samsung and TSMC were commissioned to produce different variants of the A9 processor, basically two designs of the same chip, each optimized using a different process and library. Many people focused on their performance discrepancy, when the interesting part is actually Apple’s power and control over suppliers.
Just as there are many misunderstood reasons for Apple’s overall success, justification as to how Apple produces superior products isn’t superficially visible. This is always the case with the silicon inside of computers.1
It always surprises me how few people talk of or understand Apple’s silicon-making advantages. In early 2010 when the A4 saw the light of day I wrote why assembling an internal chip team would allow Apple to become a truly dominant platform company.
So the move to vertically integrate chip development helps Apple erect barriers and become a dominant platform company. This spells a larger trend – it is no longer adequate to simply be a device or software company to succeed.
In the past five years these barriers have become totally insurmountable. iOS is the ultimate platform. Developers make unprecedented money off of it, consumers the world over love it, and Apple owns an entire market’s profits in a non-monopolistic way—unlike platforms past.
Platform dominance has also played out as I mentioned. Device makers (Samsung et al) and OS makers (Google, Microsoft) are not making money off smartphones.2 This is simply staggering to fully comprehend, and foretells ramifications few can see.
One of Steve Jobs’ biggest legacies was his decision to stop relying on 3rd party semiconductor companies and create an internal silicon design team.3 I would go so far as to argue it’s one of the three most important strategic decisions he ever made.
In 2007, when Steve Ballmer famously declared “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance”, Jobs was off creating a chip design team. If you study unit economics of semiconductors, it doesn’t really make sense to design chips and compete with companies like Intel unless you can make it up in volume. Consider the audacity back in 2007 for Apple to believe it could pull this off. How would they ever make back the R&D to build out a team and pay for expensive silicon designs over the long run, never mind design comparative performing chips? Well today we know. Apple makes nearly 100% of the profit in the entire smartphone space.
It is – in fact – these chip making capabilities, which Jobs brought in-house shortly after the launch of the original iPhone, that have helped Apple create a massive moat between itself and an entire industry.
Ultimately this chip advantage is one of the little spoken, but critical elements in Apple’s vertically integrated approach. Android OEMs can copy the fingerprint sensor or the 3D Touch mechanism. They just go to the supplier that Apple buys it from. But they can’t copy the underlying software powering these ‘commodity’ chips.
One lens that helps assess the asset value of a buy vs build strategy is called buyer / supplier bargaining power. Because of Apple’s scale in smartphones, and re-use of chips in other device categories like the watch and TV, Apple has massive influence with suppliers. They can plan 3-5 years out and decide what to license, build, invest in, or buy.4 It also has allowed Apple to decouple control. e.g. in producing two ‘different’ A9 chips, Apple thwarts abilities of TSMC and Samsung to hike prices or walk away.
So… making chips serves as the moat around untold strategic advantages: development secrecy, hyper optimization, supplier negotiating power, etc. And all the while smartphone market volume serves as ‘R&D lead gen’ for new products in entirely new industries (tablet, watch, TV, car). By owning its own silicon design team, Apple is able to leap into other markets which will be eaten by software running on cheap silicon.
Building competent semiconductor design capabilities is an absolutely massive endeavor. Especially as there isn’t much VC investment going in to chip startups anymore. Almost none actually. Owning this was quintessential strategy on the part of Jobs. In the past 7 years since Apple got serious about designing silicon, they have effectively surpassed the performance of Intel. This has been well documented.5 The fact that Apple’s sexiest new products don’t even consider using Intel’s latest technology is a lagging indicator of how innovation in PCs got blown away by what happened in the mobile ecosystem.
The truth is the best people in chip design no longer want to work at Intel or Qualcomm. They want to work at Apple. I have plenty of friends in the Valley who affirm this. Sure Apple products are cooler. But Apple has also surpassed Intel in performance. This is insane. A device company – which makes CPUs for internal use – surpassing Intel, the world’s largest chip maker which practically invented the CPU and has thousands of customers.
This pedigree that Apple developed now has a secondary powerful force: portable devices serve as the reference platform whereby all chip design starts. Components from the smartphone market now power almost all other markets, giving Apple’s in-house team a comparative advantage as they enter new product categories, like wearables and electric cars.
All of this supplier / buyer power that Apple has secured will be extended to cars. And because cars are lower volume by many orders of magnitude than phones, no other car maker will be able to enter the chip making game. Both the costs and the risks of designing chips are way too high. Tesla sells around 100K cars a year. Apple sold that many iPhones every 30 minutes on opening day weekend.
If you believe the leaks, Apple wants to have a car ready in 2019. So how will this comparative advantage manifest in cars? The best reference is Tesla, whose sheer mastery of electric vehicles undoubtedly kick-started Apple into this market. Last week Elon Musk made some fascinating remarks about Apple in a public interview:
It’s good that Apple is moving and investing in this direction. But cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches. You can’t just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: Build me a car. But for Apple, the car is the next logical thing to finally offer a significant innovation. A new pencil or a bigger iPad alone were not relevant enough.
So is the Apple Car just an iPad on wheels? Of course not. The industrial design as well as everything associated with making a car as spectacular as Tesla is a massive undertaking. Apple may or may not be successful here.
But when you look through the lens of the car as a mobile device, the software and silicon look markedly similar. It’s clear electric cars will rely on 100% of the supply chain of the smartphone industry and will use the same operating systems that phones use. They will use the same CPUs, the same wireless chipsets, and run on the same advanced mobile networks.6
One posit you can derive from this is that no other car manufacturer in the world can support an internal chip team unless they also sell phones. The gravitational pull of the smartphone feels much more pronounced when you rationalize this.
How does this impact electric cars, and eventually autonomous cars? An Apple Car could be almost exclusively Apple under the hood—Apple software running on Apple silicon using Apple materials. Other car makers will be effectively running off the smartphone supply chain using a version of Android that Google promotes for cars or some variant of Linux (good luck running apps on that), or ironically, iOS.
All of this is why Apple exec Jeff Williams said in May at the Re/Code conference that “The car is the ultimate mobile device”. Provocative to think about. Everything smart in the car originates from a mobile device. It will run the same software and use the same chips as the iPhone and the Watch and the Apple TV. Apple will assemble metal and plastic around software and hardware and attempt to differentiate on an axis familiar to them – industrial design, user experience, marketing and brand.
Could Apple build a killer car by 2019? Yes. The real question is whether Apple could build a car with basically no design dependencies on any other suppliers.
One of the biggest missing components here is batteries. But all of Apple’s products also rely heavily on batteries (for a different reason of course – to power silicon and displays vs electric motors). One signal to watch will be CapEx investment (either R&D or outside investment) that Apple makes in battery tech. And of course any investments in battery tech will also serve them well in handheld devices and wearables.
It’s also known in inner circles that Apple has embarked on design of radio interface (RF) chips that traditionally were off limits to all but the most advanced chip makers like Qualcomm. These chips rival CPUs in complexity. Apple is now designing these to spec and will be putting its own radios into future mobile devices. This has physical layer impacts on bandwidth, connectivity, latency and user experience—all critical for autonomous vehicles.
Let’s go on a thought experiment and predict the future here. Actually let’s end on facts because we can’t. But one thing is very clear: we are entering an era where cars will become smart, navigate by themselves and autonomously courier people and goods. And just as computing spawns a different set of winners every decade, you can bet the next set of car makers will look much different than today’s. Google, Uber and Tesla will all be involved… And although we know almost nothing of Apple’s plans, they’ve built the platform foundation which gives them a chance to delight and inspire us, like only Apple can.
One of Intel’s smartest moves ever was marketing ‘Intel Inside’ because it gave them leverage with PC manufacturers and encouraged consumers to focus on what chip was inside. ↩
I am referring to direct money. It’s well documented that Google provides Android free in order to profit off complementary services and through advertising. It’s also telling to watch Microsoft try to go up channel and build devices, though they lack an internal chip team. ↩
Jobs started small yet strategic, brilliantly cherry picking PA Semi and Intrinsity, startups worth a tenth of a percent of Intel. ↩
Semiconductor design cycles are typically 2 years minimum so buying this amount of time is really valuable—other tech companies must react on much shorter scales. ↩
The iPad Pro, which runs the A9, compares to the most recent MacBooks running Intel. Undoubtedly within 1 to 2 cycles of Moore’s Law, Apple ARM chips will be superior in performance per watt to Intel x86. ↩
Maybe even dedicated ones that are more advanced. ↩
without Google and Facebook, iPhone is an overpriced overhyped paperweight. And more and more people prefer Android over iOS , even in the United States.
Great analysis
That’s like saying more Toyota sells more cars than Mercedes because more people prefer them – NOT! More people buy Android because they can afford Android not necessarily because they prefer it.
really?
got any proof of your allegation? The hardware ist still good, but in terms of OS and services all other mobile OS manufacturers are way ahead of iOS.
That’s a very convincing and compelling statement, you know, with those facts and all.
NO ONE would choose an Android phone if the iPhone was the excact same price. Face reality.
That’s why Samsung sold more galaxys than apple iPhones. Not even to mention LG or SONY etc.
Sold or shipped? We don’t know, although the buy-one-get-one-free promotions surely help Samsung move some of the product.
“That’s why Samsung sold more galaxys than apple iPhones.” ?????
Please remove that plastic bag and wipe the glue from under your nose – Apple sold more iPhones in its opening weekend than Samsung was able to sell Galaxies in their first month.
Except, they didn’t.
Sorry this is a ridiculous statement and you know it. Not sure if you are trolling
Exactly, if those services don’t exist nobody cares about an iPhone. People buy iPhone to use Google services, Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft apps, Flipboard and other non-Apple services mainly.
I wasn’t completely disagreeing with you until you ended that last sentence with the word “mainly.”
So what? Without all those companies that produce content, TVs would be worthless too. I mean it’s hard to know how to refute this argument because it’s so childish.
It’s like saying my Mercedes Benz is worthless if I don’t have anywhere to go. I mean yeah kinda but no. Just the dumbest argument I’ve ever heard against Apple being a quality product.
Here’s the clue that the poster doesn’t have a clue: his “anywhere to go” is Facebook. Extending your analogy, your Mercedez Benz is worthless without McDonalds, discotheques, and bowling alleys, because all other potential destinations don’t count.
Gee, I guess I shouldn’t ever take a photo, shoot video, listen to music, check my BP, reference star maps, play a game, check my mail, text message, view a map, and a 1000 other things. IDIOT.
The sort of ‘argument’ that would embarrass a six year old – go back to trolling the Verge comments pages.
That’s why iPhone sales are growing. More and more people steer away from Google now that privacy is a concern.
I just wanted to address this point which is absurd on its face if someone takes 10 seconds to think about it. Of course Internet based services and content are what a person enjoys on a high end smartphone like an iPhone 6S, in the same way that one enjoys Netflix, HBO, AMC, the NFL, the NBA, The Walking Dead, etc. on a high-end 4K TV. But that hardly makes an iPhone 6S or the high end TV a “paperweight.”
All of these devices are for accessing content and services. So your point is pretty much meaningless. Flip it around: all that content would be meaningless without devices to access it. So what? Content needs hardware and hardware needs content. By your same argument, Android too would be nothing more than a pretty paperweight without content.
That explains why Google pays billions between developing native apps for and paying to be the iPhone default search engine
Link please.
Who “prefers Android over iOS”? Most people don’t even know what Android is and just think they have a Samsung phone.
That’s not at all true. Maps alone make the device incredibly useful, and they are wholly Apple now. Same is true of mail support (Apple app) and music (all Apple). The camera ads a TON of value (Apple app), and because it does the iCloud backup/restore (all Apple) is fantastically useful.
There’s not question apps and other services add a lot of value too, but you are ignoring a huge base of value that ships out of the box with no other companies involved.
If you look at the latest comscore numbers, Android has 52% of the US market and iPhone has 44%, with Android falling and iPhone rising. That’s Apple compared to the total for all Android companies combined, and with Apple only selling at the high end of the market.
What’s more amazing, I think, is that at the end of 2008 iPhone had only a 1% share of all cellphones (not just smartphones) in the US, and now has 34% of the total—this is also from the comscore data. So someone must like them!
I don’t use Goofle apps or services at all and Facebook only on rare occasions. Do you know what a paperweight is?
Oh boy, this guy is living in 2010. I guess he didn’t see the Microsoft event this week.
except this is what you zealots said when SP came out and the SP2 and SP3 and every windows phone iteration. no one gives a s*** about microsoft products and windows phone and no one ever will
I’m actually selling my Macbook Pro for the Surface. Their presentation convinced me to go to the store to try the pen.
The pen with one note on the SP3 is outstanding. I can’t wait to try their next iteration in a few weeks.
So, you are selling your device for a device that’s not even out yet…
When it comes out and reality comes out…
I actually have used pen equipped tablet/laptop before. The Samsung XE700T and the Thinkpad Yoga if you must know.
I love pen input, it’s a game changer when you want to draw diagrams or do silly stuff to explore ideas. But the Thinkpad Yoga is far from perfect; it’s a lesser laptop than the MBP…
From what I see, the Surface Book might just be the device that suits my needs. We’ll see.
The iPad Pro “pencil” is supposed to be very good too. Maybe if you get a chance to compare it to the Surface Book that would be cool.
The iPad Pro implementation might well be excellent.
But I write code mostly on my machine, the iPad would be way too limiting… About the only way you can do any meaningful work on it is to connect to a “real” machine remotely.
The surface (pro or book) is actually computer that can do significant calculations/server role/running VM, etc. Granted that Windows is less refined than OS X, the flexibility of a touch + pen integrated more than make up for that.
No, you’re not. You’re just trolling…
I already traded in my MacBook for an iPad, and I’ll be getting an iPad Pro. I’m already too invested in the iOS eco system and I am quite happy.
If I wasn’t, I’d be a lot more interested in the Surface line up. I think it is fair to say that Microsoft is back in the game and the danger that they will become irrelevant is passing. I’m glad of this; a three way race is much healthier than a duopoly.
I hope your MS surface device is everything you hope and more.
“I’m actually selling my Macbook Pro for the Surface.”
Translation: “I’m actually doing no such thing.”
(I love these “I’m switching NOW!” commenters. My favorite comment from some other site, just after iOS 9 came out, was “We’re so mad about iOS 9, my family and my company switched to Android!” This was _two days_ after the OS was released. And on a weekend, too. Sure, guy, your company switches mobile platforms at the drop of a hat. Of course.)
Have you seen what Microsoft is actually doing to reach the same level of performance as Apple has reached? They throw lots and lots of hardware on the problem to close the gap.
It’s pretty much the same approach that Samsung has been trying for years on the mobile phone market: Solve performance issues by using more cores and more and more ram.
Arrows comment is to bias, Jims comment is to bias.
MS did a good job on the Pro lineup, problem is thermals. The Pro book is also extremely expensive (surpassing Macbook pricing) the top end Surface is not near equivalent to the 15in macbook Pro. Its $200 more than the macbook 13in excluding the keyboard. MS will unfortunately lose a lot of potential customers on the pricing. Fitting full core U processors in a 8mm actively cooled body just asks for throttling. One reason why the Book only has 1GB of GDDR5 VRAM which is nothing.
The premium for these products charged by Microsoft will not see much interest from enterprise, which are far more price-sensitive customers than MS would care to admit. Ultrabooks cost much less than the MS options featured, and I’m sure DELL is not worried in the least.
Microsoft doesn’t care if it loses money selling Surface hardware. All they’re interested in is beating Apple in overall market share. One thing for certain, Microsoft is really pissing off its hardware partners by putting them between a rock and a hard place. They’ve got to try to undercut Microsoft in hardware costs and still have to pay Microsoft for OEM Windows 10. Microsoft is now selling the razor and the razor blade and the partners have to suck it up.
Hahaha. Seriously?
Wow…
Really? That was a yawn to the rest of us who observe technology outside the walls of Microsoft HQ. These will sell to the MS faithful but mainstream? You’ve got to be kidding.
Holy hell man. 7-8 years ago that’s what Microsoft fans used to say about Apple stuff like the Macbook Air. They said “it’ll sell to the Mac faithful, but no on else will buy”. Well, everyone else ended up buying Macs too. Keep up the arrogance buddy.
Let’s wait to see and test the MS product … And the eventual response of Apple to it … Too soon to draw any hard conclusions, other that MS is trying desperately to gain some attention
Every single reference and footnote links back to this only-desgined-for-phone-screen blog.
This piece resonates with me. However, if as you say, Apple is designing their own RF chip, do you think that will give them the same strategic advantage as designing SOC? Isn’t the user experience rather more dependent on carrier network quality than silicon? Is Apple simply bringing more value in-house by designing an RF chip and might Qualcomm use IP (patents) to thwart this.
“…do you think [an Apple RF chip] will give them the same strategic advantage as designing SOC?”
Maybe, if it’s connected to patented or proprietary powerful stuff. Who knows? Maybe Apple will patent an advanced LTE protocol.
Standards like LTE don’t work like that exactly. You need all stake holders to approve, including other manufacturers and carriers. Excluding others from your patented technology defeats this.
That said, you might still be partially right. Apple could develop and patent technology related to power consumption or signal strength, etc. of the RF SOCs.
I know what RF chips will be good for, the smart home.
If light switches/power outlets and appliances were time/position aware and we cheap enough so that changing from old mechanical devices to smart devices was economically feasible for the average home owner, Apple is onto a BILLION device roll out.
Use the iPhone camera/GPS to map your house, use it to register smart devices, have your house plan come up on your new AppleTV and click on each device to program it (much like the Airport utility does).
Have it link into the Apple car, so you can power your house a peak times from the car when electricity is expensive and recharge the car when its cheaper.
Home automation needs all the benefits of portable technology too, if you have hundreds of smart devices in a home, keeping their power consumption down will be a deciding point too.
Right now the RF and GPS are what drain the iPhone’s battery life the most for apps, especially when you have weak cellular levels and the RF chip has to power up a ton to get signal.
I doubt iOS and Apple have any control over the algorithms that decide what the RF chip does but if they had that control you might see some quite significant gains in battery life.
For instance:
* When not using your device, Apple could more aggressively force the RF chip to completely power down, or better yet schedule background tasks and the RF chip more optimally.
* Apple could launch a proprietary RF connection to replace WiFi/Bluetooth. They could never drop the regular standards but at least if you’re using an Apple router in your home they could probably optimise it a lot better.
At the end of the day they’d probably end up with 5-10% battery savings for all network activity but also be saving a TON of money by being able to use their own chips instead.
Being able to combine what are separate chips into one package is a benefit of itself in terms of requiring less space and power within the device. Other benefits as explained on this thread are also possible (better power management, extensions to protocols where appropriate between Apple devices like with Apple Watch, etc).
I think we have a new Daniel Eran Dilger on our hands
“Android OEMs can copy the fingerprint sensor or the 3D Touch mechanism. They just go to the supplier that Apple buys it from.”
Apple bought the fingerprint sensor company before they launched the first product that included it. No luck there 🙂
So, I see this article somewhere and I click on it to read it on my iPad. But I can’t. Well, I could if I wanted go into my settings and activate my device’s assistive technology so I could zoom it to a point where I could actually read it.
What kind of mobile strategy is it to leave out a significant portion of the population? Why can’t I pinch and zoom this site? People with low and poor vision rely on pinch and zoom in mobile browsers. That’s why we don’t use apps.
Why would anyone remove something that every single person on the planet who’s touched a smart phone or tablet knows how to use? Why would anyone think they could disable a function on my device when on their site?
The W3C/Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2 Level AA 1.4.4 requires that sites be scalable without assistive technology up to 200%. This means that the mobile browser’s pinch zoom feature must allow for zooming up to 200% WITHOUT using the assistive technology zoom on the mobile device.
Surely a mobile strategy is going to include W3C and WCAG no? W3C is law in all but a few countries on the planet and when the ADA adopts it it will be law in the US as well.
Good questions. Also, ever notice that all websites will scroll to the top when you click above the title bar in iOS Safari… except one? That’s right… Google News refuses to do this, making you manually scroll all the way to the top. Some websites follow their own rules.
We need to tell every site we come across that has disabled pinch and zoom to stop it. It’s not “mobile first”. It’s people first. It’s always people first.
Open link in Safari. In the address bar box click on the 4 horizontal lines to the far left of the url. This enables reader view, stripping away all the ad junk and also allowing pinch to zoom and also often has an Ā to adjust text size up and down. It’s a great iOS feature that many people aren’t aware of.
Great tip and works for this site. However there isn’t any bars on a lot of the sites I used to visit before they made it so I can’t read it. latimes.com, theatlantic.com, cnet.com, news.google.com, techrepublic.com, smithsonianmag.com…
Wonder why those don’t have that function?
Still, these sites should be following W3C. Jumping through hoops to get back a function my device ships with is not a solution.
This Reader Mode that Genben told you about is actually an Apple feature. It detects text in paragraphs. As you noticed, it doesn’t always work. I use it all the time because I hate reading tiny text.
Thanks for clarifying. So they must be doing something that Apple’s feature can’t read then, no?
I checked latimes.com. I think Reader Mode isn’t working on the homepage because it’s a list of stories, each with a photo. No paragraphs.
Reader Mode does work on latimes.com on the articles that I checked after I tapped them from the homepage.
It all goes back to a site’s webmaster and whether want to try and support all 50 Gazillions of both proprietary and Open Web Standards available today! lol… But really, it’s amazing we can see anything at all, with so many companies out to control the online market place today!
They all seem to work to get these standards set up for universal access, then none of the people who write the codes seem to want to go by it. We keep hearing about W3C HTML5 Open Standards are coming. But in the meantime the web is a mess.
It seems the same people who destroyed first broadcast television, then cable with trying to stuff too many ads, commercials, unrelated data, almost dead flash, 3rd party site links, cookies, cookies, and more cookies, control way of stopping it all, except to run to another medium, that in 10yrs they’ll be inundating us with the same crap then too! xD
Actually this site is a pleasure to come to on a notebook or PC/Mac. It’s only a pain for those using mobile browsers! ……which are actually largely devoid of getting slammed with Giga…. Jiga…. Frigging way too much data overload we desktop users get slammed with today online!
Honestly…. I’m a multi-browser, multi-tab using freak and just two years ago I could have 200 to 300 tabs open on the same computer I’m using right now. But…. all I can comfortably have open today is maybe 20 at most with 4gigs of ram getting stuffed to the gills. While it now seems 8gigs of fake memory isn’t enough for either. Browser and OS makers are still clueless and they just keep letting websites shove ever more useless data at us. I’m really getting fed up with the whole online experience and I recently got an upgraded computer with 12gigs of ram. Now even it is getting stuffed with so much junk it gets overloaded!!!
https://goo.gl/hnMYgn&utanj
https://goo.gl/Ew2q5e&noqin
https://goo.gl/hh2JNY&nono
https://goo.gl/ozfhd6&gowa
https://goo.gl/wzMChs&dyki
https://goo.gl/dgD4Yw&igupa
It has nothing to do with this sites ads, etc…. since there are none. It’s a personal blog. But it does have something to do with the site webmaster’s coding of this site, making it accessible to various devices. In some ways, we are still in the dark ages or fringes of the internet’s existence. A webmaster today has to make sure he’s coded for Desktop access for monitors and larger screens. Proprietary standards, old HTML standards as well as new HTML5 standards, etc and on and on.
From touchscreens to keyboard interfaces they are all different and they are different on desktops to mobiles. So apparently this webmaster is more focused on W3C desktop access standards over W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative Standards used on iPads/tablets and mobile phones. But the reality is any good mobile browser is capable of doing what’s offered by Safari to make for this. But a better way would be for site owners to get with the right webmaster and web hosting service!!! 😀
https://goo.gl/HUq6UW&udjg
Whatever Apple does with their smartphones, Google’s Android will immediately copy it, so I’m surprised Apple isn’t able to patent anything well enough to keep it an Apple exclusive. 3D Touch will be quickly be copied and put on every future Android flagship smartphone in existence. Apple’s A9 will be soon matched by the Qualcomm 820. Android smartphone manufacturers will never have to worry about falling behind in hardware and they’ll keep up with Apple even if they have to lose money to do it. You have to figure that not many high-end Android smartphones will come with top-of-the-line Qualcomm processor whereas every Apple iPhone 6s comes with an A9. Apple should have a much larger economy of scale than Qualcomm’s high-end processors so Apple will likely have some cost savings.
We’ll see how soon 3D touch is included in other hardware… Don’t forget how long it took other chip makers to catch up to Apple with 64-bt support.
The A9 is no-where close to being matched by Qualcom, who has just been throwing more cores on a chip but not really improving performance. The A9 is now TWICE as fast as the fastest Android chip for single core performance, which impacts most applications to a pretty large degree, especially the UI.
Meanwhile Apple is improving speed with every new device iteration.
Yes, Android indeed copies a lot of iOS stuff (and vice versa).
The problem: Lots of the stuff copied is just half assed. It’s there – but it’s not really usable unless you spend a lot time tweaking it. And even then it’s uncertain if you will succeed.
If Apple includes a feature in iOS you can be somewhat sure that the stuff will work.
Increasingly the quality of the copy will fall far short of the original. Apple supposedly worked a couple years on 3D Touch to get the hardware and software working together just right. How can Google, which doesn’t have control over any hardware (except the Nexus line that nobody buys) copy this? Even Samsung – a great hardware company – will likely be putting a 3rd party pressure sensing element in its next phone in order to mimick 3D Touch – so they won’t be able to customize the hardware as much as Apple could – and, not being the Android maker, won’t be able to put the feature into as many applications as Apple could. Result? Another half-ass implementstion that will be nothing more than a gimmick and a check mark next to the words “3D Touch”.
Last time I checked Apple was using Samsung chips (amongst others) inside their iPhones.
Apple just uses Samsung and TSMC to build the processors he’s talking about. The design (which is the important part) is done by Apple in-house.
Not so. These are chips that carry out certain electronic functions that lots of devices use such as gyroscope, compass, NFC, etc… Not exclusive to Apple.
I think the gyroscopes are made by Invensense, the communications chips by a combination of Qualcomm and maybe Broadwell (for cellular, wifi, Bluetooth, and NFC). The only meaningful/complex Samsung designed components, as far as I know, is the non-volatile memory.
So which components are Samsung exactly?
Open your iphone and you’ll find out.
I don’t really care. You’re the one making the claim that Samsung makes some complex parts in the iPhone (at least your comment was in response to someone saying that Apple just uses Samsung as a simple manufacturer for the processor).
Apple designs the main SoC (System on Chip) inside the iPhone which is called the A9 for latest iteration. This is equivalent to the CPU, GPU and I/O chipset in a desktop PC. Yes, there are chips outside of the SoC that Apple does not design but the core SoC is designed by Apple in-house which some have opined (like this article’s author) is a major strategic advantage. The most obvious benefits seem to be performance per watt and overall battery life but I imagine there are many more.
According to asymco, Samsung will soon (if not already) be making more money selling chips to Apple than from selling their own smartphones! And of course the most valuable chips they make are designed by Apple.
Laughable
But true. That’s what makes it funny.
I meant your comment is laughable…
mwahahaha……. That got me rolling on the floor in hysterics. Samsung’s own Exynos chips are selling for more to themselves and at least two of their Chinese Top Selling Competitors, than Apple is paying Samsung for A series chips right now.
Apple may pay in advance, but these competitors pay more for Samsung’s chips on average. Plus they are the largest Memory Maker on the Planet and now lead Sony in fabricating CMOS Sensors for many industrial and commercial markets Sony is not in!
And that’s not just LPDDR4, etc ram memory either. It’s SSD and embedded memory as drive space. They are now leading ARM Server Market and Exynos Chips are going into the EU’s EXASCALE HPC Super Computer in the future. Right now they are supplying ARM Exynos for Mont Blanc ARM HPC Cluster Super Computer Project!!!! ……let’s see Apple get their chips in to anything close to that!!! haha…..
Lots of commodity parts. Yes. Apple uses lots of parts from lots of suppliers just like Samsung uses Aualcomm processors from time to time.
What’s your point or do you have one?
My point is: you Apple fanboys are drumming up Apple to be this big success story, the fact is it will fall on its face and bite the dust as it did against IBM in the PC wars of the 80s/90s due to its elitist attitude.
History is important but this is a totally different ball game. The consumer PC market was emerging and it was up for grabs to any contender (IBM, M$, Apple all had a play) ultimately M$ won because they got the price down to a point where the mass market could fathom the price tag.
The mobile market is matured, iOS and Android are the two players on the software side and on the hardware side you have Apple, Samsung, Xiomi and then a bunch of rounding errors.
There is nothing elitist about what Apple is doing, like any business they want to keep their competitive advantages and one of those is their ability to custom design their own CPUs. How is this any different than Google ensuring their search algorithm is the best, or Microsoft ensuring their Office Suite is the best?
Clearly you don’t understand what really happened in the PC era (perhaps before your time) but it wasn’t about price tag, more to do with openness and solid architecture (both software and hardware). History is repeating itself in the exact same manner where Google’s Android OS is an open platform and has been adopted by major hardware manufacturers when Apple is closing itself up from the real world.
Sure they are successful now but it’s a shortsighted attitude that’s going to end in relative failure and iProducts will be niche in the not so distant future.
You don’t have to like Apple but you can’t deny reality. The PC era is over Llies – this market is completely different for many reasons too long to write here. Your view is the typical simplistic bullshit narrative trying to explain away Apple’s success as some kind of fluke and that market forces will set things straight.
You can’t square your personal dislike of the company with the fact that they outsmarted and outworked the competition in this era. Get over it.
Actually, he quite clearly enjoys denying reality. Many do. In a few years when Apple is even more successful, he will be sticking to his guns that DOOM is right around the corner.
Oh, but it i/s right around the next corner, friend. Check Apple Maps’ turn-by-turn.
Problem with Apple is there’s just no money in it. If they can figure a way around that …
Tho I’ve been wrong before. (Microsoft Bob & Zune. & Windows Phone 7 Series)
Pff.
The PC era is over? Now that is the bullshit statement of the century. Actually I don’t dislike Apple I’m just disgusted at people who want to turn the world into a rotten Apple.
Wait, can you access Now? Google says it’s the future of Android. Can you write a program that integrates with it? You can of course, because their platform is open, right? LFMAO.
Pff..
Of course! This must be it.
Very short/sighted. The clock is ticking for Apple. Nails in the coffin. Writing on the wall. Signs in the tea leaves. The Milton Bradley Oija board’s suddenly jumped to life with dire predictions. A very short lifeline read on Apple’s palm.
Oh, yes. No, within just a few years there gone.
Fanboys. Piff!
Beautiful piece Steve. Much of it is lost on me though as I haven’t owned a car in over a decade. I would honestly be more excited for an Apple refrigerator 🙂
The picture seems to be painted such that Apple has everything in place to be a force in this space if they choose to go for it. If you had to speculate, what would their biggest challenge be? Smells like the supply chain to me (uneducated guess). Can they effect similar control over the myriad and varied suppliers required to control the manufacture of something markedly more complex than a phone or computer? No pun intended, but it seems like there are many more moving parts in car manufacturing. Or am I underestimating a) the complexity of the manufacturing that goes into building the iPhone / the length of the chasm that they already crossed in making the jump from traditional computer manufacturing into mobile device manufacturing, and b) the ability of Apple to hire the best / most connected in other industries?
I hear what you’re saying. I’ve been car less for four years now.
If you’re wondering what kind of impact self-driving cars might have for you personally, consider the Uber model and remove the driver from the equation. Now you have a fleet of autonomous vehicles, any one of which you can summon when you need it. Personal automobiles become a thing of the past*.
The other aspect of this is that Uber won’t have a monopoly (although it certainly will have major advantages). The entrance cost will be the cost of a vehicle (or monthly lease payment) for new autonomous taxi startups. People could form cooperatives, using some formula of cars to people.
Think about this last bit for a moment: let’s say the optimal ratio is 5 people per car. That means the monthly lease payment plus maintence/overhead is 1/5. In this hypothetical, your cooperative has a membership in the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands.
What you now have is basically a cooperatively owned utility. Cars are no longer personal possessions but a utility, like water, gas, electricity, and Internet.
I’m not saying this will happen, I’m saying it could happen. A little bit mind blowing, don’t you think?
*Some people will still want personal cars for a variety of reasons. I have no doubt of this. People like owning things. But the main point is they won’t need to own one if they don’t want to own one.
Everyone seems prepared to hand over this future to Uber without understanding Uber’s business model. Uber’s business model is that the driver supplies and maintains the car, including cleaning up after the passenger, while Uber spends money on just software and some servers, which both scale nicely.
But then folks leap to Uber investing billions in a fleet of self driving cars which they maintain. And some how the second business model which requires billions in upfront costs earned back over hopefully years of passenger pickups is supposed to be just as good as the first model, where Uber makes money as soon as the driver picks up its first passenger.
That’s a very good way to look at Uber’s model. You have a lot more insight into this than most people. That is exactly where Uber is finding its margin vs. traditional taxis and car service. That’s the “how” of their profitability.
The “what” and “why” is even more basic. It’s the actual need that they are fulfilling with their model, a need that people usually fulfill by owning an automobile or using a taxi or using public transportation. (A secondary use is courier service, which keeps vehicles busy during slow periods.)
Self-driving cars could also fulfill this need, and a fleet could be cheaper than paying subcontractor drivers. That’s why Uber is working on self-driving cars on their own. They’re big enough to support this R&D, but they wouldn’t be doing so if they didn’t foresee profit.
Now that’s a more complete business plan. I’m talking the courier service for off peak use of vehicles. But the problem I see for self driving cars has to do with the A.I. and I don’t see Siri or any other computerized artificial intelligence filling the gap a human driver fulfills.
For me….. at least…. I still miss the human side of calling making operator assisted phone calls. I miss calling up support for a whole of products and services, where I’m basically talking to a machine, on hold listening to elevator music or being asked irrelevant questions, that when I do finally get through to a human, get asked all over again. So don’t think any Siri or Google Now or even IBM Watson is going to fill the gap left by what we get from HUMAN INTERACTION!
Hal certainly wasn’t a great solution for those in A Space Odyssey 2001AD! 😀 Humans for all their flaws…. will be irreplaceable for the foreseeable future…. as it seems now!!!
I hear you, brother. I don’t read much science fiction anymore because the future is already here.
Thanks Dave! Deeply appreciate the kind words. There are 130 comments and counting on this post of all kinds of arguments about Apple and trolling so I’ve abstained, they are uninteresting to me, this is my first reply…
The car is something that affects nearly everyone – you’re a special case not having driven for 10 years. But that’s the magic – autonomous cars will change your life too, at least in the sense that you will ride in them. We are going to see a truly enormous affect when cars become smart. We have been driving around in metal cages for a century until recently with advanced software coming into cars e.g. Tesla.
I think Apple’s challenge will be the same as it’s always been – designing and building something people love. I don’t think supply chain will be an issue at all – Apple has sourced stuff globally for so long as to be experts in dealing, securing supply and making relationships. And their aluminum macbooks and machinery mean they get how to manufacture as well (on a micro scale). I don’t think it’s more or less complex, just markedly different. And I do think Apple is one of those rare companies where they can recruit people who are experts. Where would the foremost expert in car design want to work, GM or Apple?
Rumors say Apple is full-on with the car project, at least 100 full time ppl are on it. Facts say that car engineers are hired off Tesla and vice versa, all sorts of engineers from Apple flee to Tesla. For now Elon Musk seems to be winning this minibattle. He was joking (with some truth behind) that those who are fired at Tesla get a job at Apple.
I don’t think Elon Musk was joking at all. I think he was just irritated by all arrogant ignorant in your face….. intimidation style questioning the interviewer shoving at him. He got fed up and most likely did just shove the truth right back in the interviewer’s face.
The only people that leave a good job to go work for another company are ones who are dissatisfied in some way with the company they work for. In that way they are doing themselves and both former and future employers a favor by changing up where they work and are most productive and happy with what they are able to contribute!
With engineers especially it’s never about the money. You take a genius like Jim Kelly. Who was part of the original PA Semi Team who developed PWRficient 64bit Desktop SoC processors (btw this is now the basis of Apple’s A series chips). Apple got him to stay by paying right, but most of all by allowing him to do what he does best map out chip designs and manufacturing processes for the future. After that was done for Apple, he was attracted to work for AMD in designing, setup of their new heterogeneous chip architecture for the future.
Now that’s done and he’s left AMD with a solid chip design map for their future to pursue another job doing what the guy does best. No problems with PA… Apple or AMD… just gets to the end of what he feels he can do for a company and moves on!
If any employees left Tesla or Samsung or any other employer to work for Apple, it’s unlikely that they were top or key employees…. no matter what Apple was offering them. That works across the board, because the best employees are the most satisfied where they are working and don’t want to change that, just so they can go work a new job and leave a project unfinished.
Now I’m not saying Apple wouldn’t get any top employees. I’m just saying that they’ll only get the employees that are better off working for them, than the one they came from. Engineers are just not all that greedy and they much rather be happy in their job, than making more money.
Besides money can’t buy happiness, just like all the old wisdom saying claim and that more than anything it will be a time consuming process for Apple to build the right team for them. With the right talents blended together in the right way to get into automotive sector, the same as it’s taking to build iMaps as a competitor to Google Maps.
People need to stop expecting Miracles out of Apple overnight. In the end like another old saying and song, “Que Sera, Sera – Whatever Will Be, Will Be”! ……it’s over speculating the future that kills us all over time!!! 😀
btw…. In Automobiles….. just like Google is finding out…. it’s not exactly Rocket Science or Smartphone Software and you better be ready for the long hall, before you ever reach your destination and that is exactly what Elon Musk has over both of them. While the rest of the Auto Industry found that out ages ago!!!
I wonder if the cross-platform swift programming language they recently developed has something to do with a plan of using their A line chips in their laptops and being able to provide numerous apps from day 1.
Swift still compiles to regular ole instruction sets like Objective-C / C / C++ so it offers no advantage over the other languages.
I think Apple may be thinking long term and if Swift succeeds in the open source community ( many things are unknown about the release and how robust it will be etc… ) you could see Swift become the next C++ that works on all platforms and is the defacto standard for high performance compiled languages.
Swift is good. It’s pulling me back into programming as a hobby after years away.
“But Apple has also surpassed Intel in performance.” – Perhaps this should be qualified with performance in phones. Pretty much every Mac Book, iMac, or Mac Pro uses Intel processors.
Did you even read ? The iPad pro A9X is more powerful than most of Intel mid-range chip
Okay, so your point is that the fastest iPad Pro is equivalent to Intel’s mid-range. So if I adjusted my above suggestion to phones and tablets, then I feel my point is still holding up.
My point is basically that the best performance, period, is from Intel. The top-of-the-line Apple computer uses Intel Xeon. So until Apple chips are powering the world’s supercomputers, then no it really hasn’t beaten Intel in performance. Rather, it has beaten Intel in a very particular range of chips.
Omg, can’t you think a bit by yourself ? The iPhone 6S is as powerful as the retina MacBook and not even 1/10th of the size…. The iPad pro is as powerful as MacBook Air as 13″ MacBook Pro and more than 2x thinner… Apple can definitively use their current ARM chip as a basis for a laptop ARM chip that would be even more powerful! Sure Apple will probably never (or not soon at least) switch the Mac Pro to ARM but that’s not the point for now because they are desktop… and the big advantage of ARM is performance per watts which only make sense on mobile device !
To your first point. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2491838,00.asp
To your point about performance per watts. My whole point is that he didn’t qualify that statement. He said performance, not performance per watt.
Wow wash your eyes with soap or learn to read dude… The iPhone A9 is more powerful than the retina MacBook which your article claim, BUT the iPad Pro A9X is more powerful than the MacBook Air and even older and low-end MacBook Pro at a fraction of the size! And what you don’t seem to understand, if ARM chip are more energy efficient, that mean your can boost their performance if you make them use the same power as Intel chip… And since they are made so small (to fit slim device like iPhone/iPad) you can make them bigger with more CPU/GPU core and transistor to extend their power even more
Look at the multi-core performance. People who care about high performance computing take advantage of all the cores. The fact that the A9 is a good phone/tablet chip, sure. I’m not denying that. I never was. But it’s designed for something different. Nothing wrong with that.
What’s wrong with you ? The A9XXXXXXXXX probably has 4-core and is more powerful than 80% of laptop sold this year
You seem to really enjoy Apple’s marketing.
This is mostly speculation until there are confirmed independent
benchmarks. The only A9X benchmarks I could find came off as more speculation than
fact. iPad Pro isn’t even out until November.
The 80% figure seems to be listed as portable PCs. Who knows what that includes?
But regardless, who cares if it’s better than laptops. It could be better than laptops and you’re still just f’in quibbling with my point. I feel like I’ve re-iterated my point enough. The line clearly says Apple has the best performance when clearly the top performing chip’s are all designed by Intel. It does not currently say performance in phones/tablets or performance per watt. A simple edit would make it more clear. I don’t see how this is particularly controversial. You have repeatedly tried to blow my point out of all proportion.
Compare the first sentences in your exchange:
Mrleblanc101 [6300+ post]:
* Did you even read ?
* Omg, can’t you think a bit by yourself ?
* Wow wash your eyes with soap or learn to read dude…
* What’s wrong with you ?
vs
John Hall:
* Okay, so your point is that the fastest iPad Pro is equivalent to Intel’s mid-range
* To your first point
* Look at the multi-core performance
* You seem to really enjoy Apple’s marketing.
and breath.
Yeah… the Core M in the Macbook is a lower TDP part than the iPad Pro, that’s 18 months older in design. Apple have managed to catch up to Intel by copying all the techniques Intel used to do it. Bravo.
Given that the only benchmark we really have to compare is Geekbench, and despite the author’s best assurances, there are a number of uncontrolled factors that make it less than ideal as a comparison, it’s far too premature to say that Apple have even matched Intel’s performance.
And lets assume they have, for the sake of argument, matched the Core M. Big deal. What are the facts here?
– The Core M in the Macbook The Core M in the Macbook is the same age as the A8X, which it utterly smokes.
– The A8X has 3 billion transistors, vs 1.3 billion in the Core M
– The A9X die size is over twice as large as the Core M
– Geekbench, for example, won’t throttle the A9X as much as a sustained workload would – so the multi-threaded workloads won’t be representative of true performance vs the Core M
– Early benchmarks show the Broadwell Core M is faster, single threaded, than the A9X
– It’s highly likely that the Core M’s TDP is lower than the A9X’s, due to chassis thickness
– Let’s not forget the GPU – the HD5300 in the Core M is a better GPU, in raw performance terms, than the PowerVR in the A8X. The Skylake Core M will probably beat the A9X as well.
– Apple’s architecture, while optimised for lower TDPs, is unlikely to scale up – there are many intricacies to operating at higher TDPs, and physics plays a big part. Intel are many years ahead here with all their experience from >100W TDP parts. ARM designs have struggled here before, especially in PPW, and there’s nothing to indicate anyone, Apple included, have solved these issues yet.
So Intel’s first attempt at a really low power high performance CPU, the Broadwell Core M, at 82mm^2 and 1.3b transistors, keeps pace with, and in most respects exceeds Apple’s third attempt (A8X), at 128mm^2, 3b transistors. Not too shabby.
Then when you consider that a largely similar architecture, Core, scales to 18-core Xeons at 140W TDP (or 8W per core sustained), that will perform over four times better than the A9X on a burst basis, and over 10x better on a sustained basis? Well, Apple isn’t really as close as you think now are they?
There’s more though. Apple have benefitted greatly from technology developments *made by Intel*. Make no mistake – the A9X wouldn’t be anywhere near as fast if Intel hadn’t figured out a lot of this stuff in the first place.
Not only that, but Intel are running out of research they can implement to give good gains. There just aren’t that many ‘quick wins’ left to improve CPU performance. Apple will run into the same problem.
And where does that leave us? Well, Intel have a fabrication advantage for the forseeable future – they’re at least a year ahead of TSMC, probably more when you consider TSMC’s current 16nm node is closer to Intel’s 22nm than Intel’s 14nm node, and TSMC are the closest to Intel.
Per watt. Apple’s chips ARE more powerful, already, per watt.
Are you sure about that?
If it were true, then Apple would be working on selling data centers with them.
Sounds like you found Steve’s grave.
Seems to me the MS Surface Pro 4 is so far superior to the iPad Pro they’re not really even in the same category http://www.diyphotography.net/apple-ipad-pro-versus-microsoft-surface-pro/
Except of course in the one measure that matters most: apps written for a tablet form factor and a touch screen.
NO, old Windows applications that can run on a Surface Pro are not the same as applications specifically written for the Surface or Tablet form factors.
It’ll be interesting to see if Windows devs bother making apps work “especially” well for the Surface Pro’s hardware. I doubt it because the economics just are not in their favour.
In saying that the iPad also lacks economics to make pro apps worthwhile for us developers.
Good point. I read somewhere that the developer of a very popular Mac design software (Sketch) has already said that they had no plans to port their app to iPad Pro – too small a market AND in the App Store there’s an expectation for much lower prices too: the company simply can’t afford to sell their software for $10 or less.
IPad has so much tablet specific software not because PC developers converted their apps – it’s because the existing iPhone apps worked out of the box and it was minima work to optimize them for the larger screen. The Surface doesn’t have that benefit – it’ll always just run PC 3rd-party software (or a few important titles where MS picked up the tab of conversion).
I totally agree ( though I am a bit biased, I’m an iOS developer ).
The windows ecosystem just has literally no appeal at all. I’d rather learn Android or go back to web dev ever before I touch .NET for PC just because I strongly believe in the long term they are better skills to have.
First sentence: “Since the iPhone 6s was released last month anyone who has used the device says it feels like magic.”
Magic? Anyone? Seriously?
Worked for me. I stopped reading right there. The article is either a paid add for Apple of just an iPhone fanboy’s public masturbation fantasy.
iPhones are cool but they are still just gizmos. Gizmos!
Hint 1: If a gizmo can change your life, you do not have a life.
Hint 2: Before laying out hundreds of dollars for your next iPhone, review the history of tulip bulb prices.(Seriously! Review the history)
Translation of comment: “The word ‘magic’ confuses me. (As does the spelling of ‘ad’.)”
“Before laying out hundreds of dollars for your next iPhone, review the history of tulip bulb prices.(Seriously! Review the history)”
Reviewed. (Seriously!) And?
The infamous tulip bulb bubble centered on speculative buying for the purpose of resale at hoped-for higher prices.
Mobile device purchases center on non-speculative buying for the purpose of personal use, not resale.
What’s the purpose of this seemingly random and irrelevant comparison?
You don’t know anything about the speculative buying of tulip bulbs and futures do you? Seriously. You should actually read about it before doing a silly comparison with 0.0000% relevence to whatever point you’re trying to make.
I myself are fascinated by tulip futures. Such lovely flowers atop propulsively energetic economics.
Splendid! Simply splendid. And oft delightfully unexpected! What/s your favorite color? Mine: lilac.
Cheers!
Anytime anyone says, “stopped reading right there” means that they are emotionally attached to their view and do not want to hear anything else.
Someone pulled your trigger, and you fired. We get it.
Public masturbation? Just fantastic.
The one part of agreement – yes – an iPhone is just a gizmo. For us more seasoned users, the reason we like Apple is simple. For years (more than we want to admit) we used Microsoft products and suffered through crashes, blue screens of death, bloatware, etc. Then one day, we bought an iProduct (in my case, an iPad 2). It hibernated and turned on instantly! It never crashed! I did a restart maybe once every 2 weeks! I would do a full, free(!) operating system update, and when I opened my browser, the same web page was there that I had been looking at prior to the operating system update. We then liked the product because more than anything else, it simply worked.
I will agree that those waiting in line for a phone are a bit nutty. That reactions from Android users or iOS users that their system is better and others are insane are nuts – are over the top. But wasn’t your post over the top?
Gizmos, he says!
How much of a life leads to manbaby braying Apple hate online? And the tulip comparison is so far off the rails they found the train cars in low earth orbit.
Samsung does most of Apple’s design, Samsung even helps Apple port their chip designs to TSMC. Apple doesn’t design anything in house. All iPhones are designed by Chinese engineers in Shenzhen China.
Android industry makes hundreds of Billions on Android. Android phones are better than iPhonea and iPada since 2010 (proven by usability studies).
You sound like you genuinely believe this nonsense! First of all the subsidies were never actually subsidies, just payment plans, and the new more transparent payment plans have only helped iPhone sales. Apple itself is offering a better monthly payment plan for the cost of the phone than any of the carriers used to offer.
Comparable Android phones are actually more expensive than iPhones, which is inevitable as this article points out, since Apple owns the high-end of the market with all the profits that support good parts and R&D. According to the WSJ in July, Apple makes 92% of all the profits in the smartphone industry, up from 65% a year ago. In fact, according to asymco, Samsung probably makes more money selling chips to Apple than they do making their own smartphones!
As for “All iPhones are designed by Chinese engineers in Shenzhen China”, at least you spelled Shenzhen right! I’ll let someone else here deal with that piece of crazy.
Dumb cell carriers have been subsidizing the Apple money making fiesta. And they are sick and tired of it. The biggest US telco is stopping this stupid practice. Apple’s leasing story is a desperate response to that. Consumers will not pay $400 per year to just rent and iPhone, no way. The scam has gone on long enough. Apple has no income after the iPhone income will die.
WSJ, asymco and co all have absolutely no clue. For sure that Android phones sell at smaller profit margins, but from that to say that Android companies make no money is completely dumb and stupid. Sony, LG, Huawei, Samsung, Sharp, Acer, Asus, all these companies would be completely dead if it wasn’t thanks to Android basically funding them and keeping their doors still opened. Sure enough those companies don’t store as much cash on foreign tax free bank accounts as Apple does, sure those companies re-invest all their Android money in infrastructure, in salaries, in growth, all these companies invest in their future, so they still have stuff to sell after Apple and the iPhone will be completely dead. It’s just dumb to suggest that the 10 million people living on Android income in the Android industry are not getting any money out of Android. Just because Android phones are much less of a scam than the iPhone, does not mean Android generates no profit.
Apple’s “Designed in California” is a complete lie. Nobody can design any piece of electronics outside of Shenzhen, it would make the end result completely impossible. You cannot replace actual contact with the supply chain by video-conferencing, phone calls and emails, no way. Apple’s only design skill, is to choose the design among 50 suggestions that Shenzhen designers each time present to them. Many other are contracted to supply designs for Apple and to just remain completely secret about it. Apple headquarters in Cupertino only has Indian software engineers making all the software work for Apple, and the rest are a bunch of lawyers, marketing kids and creative bookkeeping accountants managing the cash and making sure they pay no tax.
And yet iPhone sales are up on the US telcos. Do you even think before you write?
Actually you are wrong for 3 quarters of the year! 😀 …..Actually Samsung as always is the overall market share leader and Android totally destroys iOS as a mobile platform even in their own backyard of United States!
Samsung doesn’t just lead Apple by a few million either. They year after year after year have sold as much as 3 to 1 Apple devices. In just in case you think profits are everything…. do realize this…. statement; Market Equals Mind Share and Android totally obliterates iOS in that respect.
Add to that the fact that Samsung with Android will again blow right past Apple iPhone sales by over 100 Million Sales and those telcos you’re talking about, are actually selling over 2 to 1 Android phones with Apple only hanging onto 30% of the versus Android’s near 70% Monopoly!!!
YoY, I phone sales are up almost every single quarter. Simple fact.
Sorry you don’t understand math and business.
Did you know Android’s back yard is the US as well? Guess you don’t know technology either.
Sorry… but you are the one who doesn’t read anything other than the delusional RDF FUD and Misinformation you get fed by Apple backdoor funded media!!! xD
Sorry but you are WRONG!!!! The last two quarters in a row iPhone sales on American carriers are down. This is a yearly cycle for Apple, but I’m talking since Verizon and others stopped subsidizing iPhones so much, they are also down YoY here in their own backyard. Search it out and you’ll see I’m right.
Apple is only up in China for the 3rd quarter and that’s largely because new model iPhones didn’t go on sale in China till end of October 2014. Right now Apple has just 13.4% Global Market Share. Which is down from last year because they aren’t selling well in the US market.
Samsung sold less market share than last year in the same quarter. But their Profits are up 80% over last year and they still are #1 smartphone maker with just under 25% market share. Which means they are selling almost twice as many smartphones as Apple is on the quarter Globally!!!
You better be prepared to see the stock take a hit when they announce the numbers and extra profits aren’t going to stop that from happening either.
If…. as Apple has warned investors themselves, EU forces Ireland to collect up to $19 Billion in back taxes here soon…. the stock will take a major dive!!!
“Apple’s leasing story is a desperate response to that.”
Desperate! This is Apple’s last chance to make a dime!!
“Apple has no income after the iPhone income will die.”
Toyota has no income after that whole [air quotes with fingers] “automobile” fad dies off. Got it.
“WSJ, asymco and co all have absolutely no clue.”
All your clue is belong to Charbax.
“For sure that Android phones sell at smaller profit margins, but from that to say that Android companies make no money is completely dumb and stupid.”
The claim isn’t that they make no money. The claim is that they make no *profit*. Do you understand the difference?
“Sony, LG, Huawei, Samsung, Sharp, Acer, Asus, all these companies would be completely dead if it wasn’t thanks to Android basically funding them”
Well, that sure is a ringing endorsement of those companies. Dead if not for life support! Apple should totally join that circle of winners! “Hey, we’d like to get in on this Android ICU thing, too! Is there a catheter open?”
“It’s just dumb to suggest that the 10 million people living on Android income in the Android industry are not getting any money out of Android.”
Profit. Not money. They’re not making *profit*.
“Just because Android phones are much less of a scam than the iPhone, does not mean Android generates no profit.”
Other than Samsung, the companies you name *don’t* generate profit on Android. That’s according to their own reports.
“Apple’s only design skill, is to choose the design among 50 suggestions that Shenzhen designers each time present to them.”
Hmm, that’s a very simple design skill. Anyone could do it! Yet it seems insanely profitable!
So: Why aren’t the Android manufacturers doing the same thing?
“In the same way Apple did not design the iPad.”
Right. Apple let someone else do the work, and it just takes all the profit. Such a simple thing to do.
So: Why don’t Android manufacturers do the same thing?
“Apple headquarters in Cupertino only has software engineers from India making all the software work for Apple, and the rest are a bunch of lawyers, marketing kids (spreading lies and FUD about competitors) and creative bookkeeping accountants managing the cash and making sure they pay no tax.”
No design, no hard work, no unique abilities. Just a simple, lazy scheme. Got it.
So: Why don’t other companies do the same thing?
Any answers for us?
Go look up Sony, LG, Huawei, Samsung, ZTE, Acer, Asus, etc. you get a clue of their size, their number of employees, their activities, all is funded by Android. They don’t amass ridiculous amounts of Android profits because they don’t have just that, they invest in their company which in turn makes it look like they perhaps don’t profit much. LG for example buys a whole bunch of their own components to make an LG Android phone. Same does Sony. Same does Samsung and same does Huawei. Android funds the Consumer Electronics world. Saying Android doesn’t make a profit is just plain stupid. Without Android, Chinese, Japanese, Korean brands would have nothing to do, all their hundreds of thousands of workers would be out of a job.
Translation: “I don’t understand what ‘profit’ means.”
(“Android” cannot make a profit, or break even, or generate a loss. “Android” is not a business entity. Companies that sell products incorporating Android *can* make a profit, or break even, or generate a loss on that particular Android-related business. As it turns out, at present only Samsung makes a profit in an Android-related business; the rest all lose money.)
Complete bollocks. Samsung, Sony, LG, Huawei and other make components for their own and other’s Android products, for example Qualcomm alone, supplier of hundreds of millions of yearly Android devices makes $8 Billion profit per year, you try to guess how much of it comes from their Android related business, probably most of it. MediaTek, another chipset supplier of Android, makes $1 Billion per year in profits. Allwinner, one of the suppliers of the cheapest Android tablets (selling tens of millions per year) just went IPO and raised $2 Billion, you think they do that because they make no profit? Rockchip is probably also worth a ton of money. There I only talk about some of the ARM chipset suppliers of Android. LG supplies IPS LCD present in a lot of Android devices, including their own, Sony also supplies displays, cameras in tens of millions of Android devices per year. Samsung supplies components shipping in hundreds of millions of Android devices per year. ALL THESE ANDROID POWERED COMPANIES MAKE A TON OF MONEY ON ANDROID.
“This… ‘profit’ you speak of… It… confuses me.”
Carry on, Spanky.
The crazy is off the charts with this fella.
Here’s a pro tip for you. Don’t drink the bong water!
It’s the fact that other phone maker have gotten subsidies too. It a matter of the amount Apple has been getting subsidized for. Here’s a break down of Apple’s iPhone subsidies and did you know that Apple has always had the highest percentage of phones subsidized in the entire industry?
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/09/14/iphone-5-subsidies/
iPhone cost carriers $10 Billion in subsidies. You have to understand what a subsidy is; it’s the carriers cost in being allowed to carry iPhones in the first place. Apple not only gets more than typical suggested wholesale price. They also get a premium above standard wholesale, plus a percentage of the carrier’s month service fees.
That’s the part no other phone maker gets and they get guaranteed not carrier bloatware just for carrying iPhones. So who pays for these subsidies for Apple? Surprisingly it’s spread out among all their service contracts. So everybody whether they are an iPhone user or not is paying Apple’s greatest Profit Share in the entire industry!
And…. along with that….. the majority of subsidies offered are given to iPhone buyers. This is exactly why they are the most profitable. It’s why no other phone makers make as great a profit as Apple, just because their phones don’t have an Apple logo on them!!!
I was wondering if you still existed on the internet making stuff up. Samsung does most of Apple’s designs. Apple makes no iOS platform. Android making billions. Billions of Won but not USD.
Wow. Just wow. You live in a sad little world but you do bring comedy to discussions.
(neo)Whoa!(/neo) A post leaked in from a parallel universe!
You won’t get any of these totally obsessed and possessed mental midgets to even come close grasping….. let alone fully understanding how much Apple has been pulling their own sheep’s wool over their eyes. But…. they don’t quite get that Apple new iPhone Rental plan is a bigger scam than carrier payment plans.
Because not only are they being hooked into using a closed proprietary system, but they are actually going to end up paying more. A rental is just that; they pay for the use of the phone only. At the end of the term, it’s returned to Apple and they just resell it to some other poor chump or rent it out again!
At least with Carrier phone plans like T-Mobile’s you pay payments on the purchase of the phone, you end up owning. Then you can sell the phone on ebay to make at least part of what you paid back.
I see these deluded Apple fans who don’t understand that it was Apple that got AT&T into subsidizing their expensive phones in the first place. A subsidy is just that…. the carriers pay Apple directly for the phone at full price plus a fee all at once. The carriers were taking originally 3 yrs to regain what they paid out to Apple with fees the carriers tacked on to people’s accounts.
Then it moved to 2yr subsidized plans where carriers were still guaranteed to own the phone till contract’s end. With FCC’s order that phones can no longer be locked to carriers, it’s forced them to reevaluate the Subsidized Phone Business model…. that Apple created!!!
It’s Apple that has always had far greater percentages of Subsidized phones and that exactly why they make so much in Profits over other phone makers. Their phones are always over priced and they always pay less to make them with less hardware features than their competitors!
But…. try to tell that to a confirmed Applewellian Prole and you’ll immediately get blasted by denial and claims that it’s because Apple products just work! lol… Yeah right…. like iOS is PERFECT! haha…. If it is so perfect…. then why do they have to pump out massive amounts of updates to fix perfectly good bugs? xD
Again, you did know phone subsidies existed long before Apple came out with the iPhone? Or is this just another example of you making stuff up and understanding neither business nor technology?
No, yeah. I totally agree with this. It is a scam. First off, all consumers should go with Android because it’s completely open-source whereas Apple’s “O/S” (if you can call it that) is a horrible, kludgy proprietary mess.
It just shows the difference in philosophy between Apple and Google/ZTE/Sony. Google et al. have succeeded in gifting Android to the world gratis. They don’t need or want the ridiculous TEMPORARY profits Apple steals from the iSheep (who deserve it, though). Theyr’e (Google) almost like non-profit due to there philanthropic /philosophy.
Apple is un/sustainable. Mark my words: trouble making payroll by 2021 when Apple will start getting competition. Everyone knows that Apple chokes when faced with actual competition. I could go on and on but out of respect for my dear readers, I’ll wrap this up. Remember how Apple went out of business because Microsoft cleaned there clock/s in the 80s? It. will. happen. again. soon.
Give up your apples now or it will be too slate.
iOS is virtually a forked Android, and sources say (though Apple will publicly deny it) that Samsung developed a lot of the custom parts of iOS for Apple.
I’ve said it time and again for the last three decades: Apple will soon be squashed by the bigger players as they ramp up there competition to Apple’s underwhelming iSheep devices.
And Samsung, LG, Nokia (and to a certain extent Microsoft) will be the big winners.
Did you forget the /s tag or do you not understand software and technology?
I was messing with charbax. Trying to outdo his tall tales. It’s all truth, I swear! /s
C’mon, man—put in the /sarc tags!
But it’s so much fun when I “forget” them!
Given price per watt isn’t nearly as important when lugging around 85kw worth of batteries, do you really think making chips is what will separate apple from its competition? Surely, the software and battery tech is far, far more important.
Yes, because they can specialise both the hardware (silicon) and software for a given set of tasks.
For example, how the U/X is smoother on iOS than on a top-end Galaxy with more cores, faster clock-speed and more RAM. It’s because the GPU takes pressure off the CPU, etc.
Similarly, Apple can target resources to specialised tasks and sub-chips like the motion sensor, health sensors, etc.
To really differentiate at this low level on Android, OEMs have to do a lot of work (if it can be done at all) — they basically have the same access to all the same components, APIs and other elements.
All this helps Apple to differentiate its products. And its Watch can be a watch (well, more than a watch), instead of something like a mini phone gerry-rigged to run some form of a generic Android Wear API.
I completely agree on power constrained devices they have an advantage. I’d argue though if they ported iOS to an Intel chipset w/o any of their IP, it would run just as buttery smooth because their software is excellent (but use more power). They’ve been working on this operating system and pushing the boundaries of CPU’s and GPU’s for 20 years, so they are good at this stuff.
Good??? lol….. Only good at pulling the wool over their deluded iDiot’s eyes. iOS is built on a stripped down hybrid Mach kernel running FreeBSD source code. They’re using a derivative of C coding language, that now has so many bugs they can’t seem to keep the bug fixes and code vulnerabilities even up to date with iOS being the most bug infested mobile OS on the Planet!
Their compute is archaic and chained to NeXTStep engineer’s “Preemptive Task Management”. Which is a scary way of saying it can only suspend one task in a stack of tasks and Apps piled one on top of the others. It’s still locked into sychronous rather than both asychronous and sychronous computing like Samsung’s Exynos Chips can do. That on Linux based Tizen and Android. Both of which are now capable of running on Samsung’s HSA HMP core processors!!!
The very same processor going into EU’s Exascale HPC Cluster SoC Super Computer Project. Which will be running on fastest 10nm memory only Samsung is capable of producing today!!!
Intel and TSMC have just been blown off the Exascale Map with US Gov…. also about to choose Samsung Austin Texas Semi to make their Exascale HPC Super Computer ARM chips too!!! ……where’s Apple is the race to Exascale Race? ……they aren’t even in the running and without HMP core processors won’t ever be!!!
Like I’ve said….. Apple’s chips are based on PA Semi’s IBM licensed PowerPC core designs in PWRficient desktop SoCs. Which were simply ported to ARMv8 instruction sets before any of their competition doing ground up designed SOC processors. But….. in this case being 1st isn’t near the BEST and since their chip designs came before ARM’s instruction sets….. no way can they have the feature sets ARM designed for their own Big/Little HSA Heterogeneous Computing Architecture!!!
That’s where Samsung got the lead back…. with their semi process technology and advanced HMP core designs. That can fully utilize their own memory and core designs for themselves, as well as the Greatest Race to Exascale Computing in the World today!!!!
Well are you ever delusional. There are major architectural design differences between simple symmetrical Apple A series compute model and ARM Samsung’s work to get to HSA (heterogeneous System Architecture) that combines both Symmetrical computing for fastest single core, single task, computing with Asymmetrical Multi-core Heterogeneous compute architecture!
This is a whole new ball game with ARM HMP (heterogeneous multiple processor) multiple core processing now headed for HPC Cluster Super Computer status. You won’t see any Apple ARM chips powering Servers or Super Computers any time soon if ever. But Samsung Exynos already is!!!
One of which is the EU’s Mont Blanc HPC Cluster Super Computer Project….. and just search that with Exynos in your search terms. Better yet here’s just one link: https://www.montblanc-project.eu/press-corner/news/europe-plans-use-smartphone-arm-chips-and-gpus-make-exaflop-supercomputer-30-50
This single quote, if you have the brains to comprehend what “Exascale” is, should blow your mind; “This three year extension will enable further development of the OmpSs parallel programming model to automatically exploit multiple cluster nodes, transparent application check pointing for fault tolerance, support for ARMv8 64-bit processors, and the initial design of the Mont-Blanc Exascale architecture.”
And this is being done with Samsung’s latest Exynos 64bit SoC chips. If you have any mental capacity and education at all, you should realize this some close to earth MOONSHOT!!! lol…. This is way out of our present Galaxy into SAMSUNG’s Eyxnos Galaxy!!! ………….and not only Apple… but not even Intel or IBM can touch this. Unless they built themselves the largest single power plant ever built by man to power it!!! lol….
Note: Exascale computing refers to computing systems capable of at least one exaFLOPS, or a billion billion calculations per second. Such capacity represents a thousandfold increase over the first petascale computer that came into operation in 2008. (which was IBM’s BlueGene/L, then it was surpassed by IBM Roadrunner, Los Alamos Labs project, which was first to exceed 1 Petflop in 2008)
People like me hate Apple’s expensive, walled-garden approach—and yes, their incredible arrogance.
You’ve obviously drunk the Kool-Aid. They’re just a company and it’s just technology, not a religious experience.
There’s no kool-aid to be drunk in this article. Facts are facts – and his extrapolations from those facts are pretty straight-forward.
Just because you hate the company doesn’t mean you should put on blinders. Apple is currently the richest company on Earth – so your statement “They’re just a company” is a bit silly. Yes, strictly speaking it’s “just a company” – but one with more resources at its disposal than any other company on the planet.
It’s not about hating the company…. it’s about you fools who consume massive amounts of RDF FUD and Misinformation, as if it wasn’t ever going to effect your delusions of Apple Grandeur. You people aren’t just looking at this through Alice’s shrunken view in the Looking Glass, but your Appleholism is affecting your perceptions of REALITY and TRUTH!!!
So let’s take a look at your Cult of the Apple RDF belief system; 1. You apparently aren’t aware of the qualifiers to that “Richest Company” statement. 2. Which includes misconstruing a Publicly Held company (only ones that can even have Market Cap Value) with the gazillions of Privately Held companies Worldwide. Where there can be no Market Cap value even calculated. Like Chinese Government owned Utilities!
So we are really talking about the difference between say Saudi Royals, Royal Dutch Shell, Rothschild’s Banking Family, SAMSUNG Lee Family Chaebol (just one of over 70 companies. Like Samsung Electronics, etc in Samsung Group) and Apple Inc. A Single Publicly Traded Totally Outsourced Design House Only Company!
Now revenues alone just for the main companies within Samsung Group (not including the myriad Joint Ventures… some as large as the $55 Billion for Prelude FLNG Project as the largest floating structure ever built by man). In all reality then, you simply can’t say Apple is the richest company, when we don’t know or can’t even guesstimate any kind of Market Cap for Samsung Group… even minus their Joint Ventures (all of which are independently held outside of Samsung Group even)!
And then one other thing you people forget; Apple now carries less spendable cash on hand, w/o needing reserves for Real Property they are not buying and don’t own. Since majority of Apple assets are in Soft asset value like Patents and software. The rest is in spendable cash for leases and salaries, etc, along with cash held in short and long term securities.
Well around 2009 the ratio of cash, short and long term held securities changed dramatically. They now keep something like 60% of that supposed cash assets in Long Term Securities and a lot of it won’t mature for up to 25yrs.
On top of that…. is the fact that 1. they now are accruing dept in the form of bonds. 2. Over 80% is still held with deferred tax rates of up to 35% here in the USA if it’s repatriated and spent here. Plus 3. …..just like us common folks, they’ll be forced to sell it at a discount or pay additional early withdrawal penalty fees! So reality is that they aren’t as rich as you all seem think and I’ll say this again so you understand Market Cap really means diddly squat to anyone except those who are invested in the Publicly Traded Stock!!!
But….. the real REALITY DISTORTION FIELD…. correction is going to be coming in the form of 1. Smartphones are seeing a drop from the coming over saturation we’re already seeing here in America. 2. It’s Apple’s only real money maker. 3. EU is killing both Double Dutch Irish Tax Shelters and Apple’s unique to only them…. ZERO as in 0 non-resident of any state Tax Loopholes in Ireland.
These will in fact end whether Ireland gets fined or not and whether they are forced to collect up to $19 Billion in back non-state of residency tax breaks they’ve got over the years.
Meaning in no uncertain terms Apple has seen the end of both Irish Tax Shelters where all those excessive Profits have been made. Which have resulted in Apple paying an effective tax rate of around 3 to 4% Globally!!! ……and with nothing really there now to replace their one Cash Cow in iPhones!!!
You criticize the use of market cap as a measure if value – but give no alternative other than some blitherings about floating platforms worth billions and ventures worth untold billions. If you can’t quantify your statements, your methodology is even weaker than the use of market value – at least that’s quantifiable.
The rest of your accusations are just as vacuous – yes, Apple gets 60% of its profits and revenue from iPhone, but 40% of a $200b/year company is still more revenue than most Fortune 500 companies can muster. And the iPhonr, contrary to your assertion, is nowhere near approaching a saturation point – to wit, phone sales are growing at more than 20% – and have actually accelerated. You can’t just say US cell market is saturated – therefore iPhone is near saturation – you actually have to show some evidence to support your theory. Otherwise you’re just making noises.
Buddy there is a huge difference between privately held and publicly held single companies. If Apple was just one of many companies like Samsung in a conglomeration of publicly held companies…. even that would be different. But they are not and it’s only because they have you fools convinced that you own a piece of a Fairy Tale Disney like iTrinket Design House only, that has you all arrogantly puffing out your chest and bragging about how you are part of the most valuable single company, without a single factory or anything valuable in the REAL sense. While they simply continue to sit on their CASH COW….. like iScrooge’d U McDuck!
If you don’t get that all of Samsung put together, like the Rothschilds Banking Family, Saudi Royals, Royal Dutch Shell, Privately Controlled Conglomerates and family of companies are more valuable than that Offshore Untouchable CASH COW for up to 25yrs, still carrying 35% deferred taxes, then I really feel sorry for you!!! ……because you’ve thoroughly iConned into believing a fantasy, that just isn’t true and most likely never will be. Which will be proofed once Apple gets it’s Zero Non-Declared State of Tax Residency Scam in Ireland Killed!!!!
Then….. how great will their profits be and maybe then you fools will finally realize you’ve been had!!! ahahaha…. duh…. doesn’t take a genius to see the future and it won’t be just about having to pay back a measly $19 Billion in back taxes either. Their TAX SCAM and ridiculous PROFIT Margins will be GONE!
Then how important will their non-existent Market Cap be??? haha…. Market Caps come and go up and down like a YoYo….. Apple’s Market Cap then won’t ever go up again, once you fools find out that it’s all only because you never saw the truth coming to smack you right in the face!!!
Keep living in your nonsensical world. Apple owns datacenters, IP, and services. Yes, Apple will eventually have to pay more taxes on its offshore money – but it won’t be anywhere near what your juvenile mind thinks (nor did it pay ZERO to Ireland). If the US wants its fair share of the taxes, it’ll have to declare a tax “holiday” – as it did before around 2004, when companies were allowed to bring their money into the US for 5% – or they’ll finally rewrite the tax code and make ironlike the rest of the world’s. Either way your fortune telling does not describe any future that is likely to occur.
I won’t bother arguing Apple’s “non-existent” market cap. People can already tell when they’re reading the rantings of a lunatic.
Oh….. nonsensical…. ‘eh? haha….. Here’s the link to a page that explains how their Zero Tax Scam works. Ireland basically gave them the ability to declare no state of residency on profits coming in from International sales. That they then count as software and patent licensing fees, instead of hardware sales.
Quote from Business insider and these documents are part of US Senate Investigation in Apple’s Tax Avoidance scams; “Apple has found the secret to not paying taxes. You just avoid taxes by not declaring a tax residency for the company that oversees the entirety of your international income.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-apple-reduces-what-it-pays-in-taxes-2013-5
Ireland for Apple, Switzerland for Fiat and Netherlands for Starbucks Coffee are the only countries in EU that have allowed these Zero Rate Tax Scams to just these companies. EU is basically bringing an end to these as will other countries in the World. They work like money laundering operations. Whereby there are no legitimate business taking place and all transactions are only on paper. Which isn’t even conducted in Ireland, Netherlands or Switzerland. It’s all handled in from Apple’s Nevada business addresses, where even they don’t actually take place in Nevada!
Nevada having absolutely no corporate taxes. Yet they have Zero employees working in these offices and is how they get out of paying a huge sum of taxes in Cupertino, California! ……no wonder they’re going bankrupt!!!
Never said Apple paid Zero taxes on products sold in Ireland. They have paid Ireland’s 12.5% tax rate according to Irish law. But…. the tax deal has already been exposed being on what’s said to be 70% of their income from the International Marketplace. Ireland and Singapore are just two jurisdictions that basically close their eyes to Apple’s shifting profits through subsidiaries w/o a physical presence in those countries!
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-corporate-tax-scam-20140708-column.html
http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1027385.shtml
But…… there are many more states than Nevada…. Ireland, Bermuda or Singapore that allow Apple to do this!
Not what exactly do you think Market Cap is? Do you somehow erroneously believe, though they only have somewhere around $225 Billion in Net Assets, that their Market Cap Value is Real? Do you even know the formula for how Market Cap is calculated? Do realize that it also involves estimates of not only revenue they are earning, but revenue they’ll earn in the future? No!!! Absolutely no clue do you? haha…. You think that all they would have to do is cash in or buy out all their outstanding shares and suddenly they’d have sum $650 Billion in their hot little hands!
That’s exactly why so many Apple fans are seen as totally deluded while ranting like lunatics like you, against me!!!
Here’s 3 methods and Apple uses the first. When actually the 2nd is far more appropriate for these reasons:
“Market capitalization may be deemed unrealistic if a company’s value is mostly held in intangible assets and investor overconfidence or speculation drives the price up way beyond reasonable limits.[9]” Found here: http://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-the-Market-Value-of-a-Company
Obviously no way is Apple worth $450 Billion more than their Total offshore Long Term Securities, operating cash and software asset totals. Since they now have around $80 billion in debt, own very little REAL PROPERTY and their software is extremely overvalued. Coming largely from Open Source Community, that they rarely contribute back into!!!
They lease near all office space and stores. Making them some of the Biggest Scam Artists on the Planet today!!! 😀 ……right there with GE!
Blah, blah, blah. What Apple is doing quite legal. And is no different from what all businesses do to minimize taxes – exploit every loophole possible. Why do you think GE basically hasn’t paid federal income taxes in decades?
Whatever rule changes the EU imposes doesn’t affect the existing overseas cash and as I said before, Apple sill never have to pay the 35% deferred income tax you claim – they simply keep it off shore until the US comes to its senses vis a vis its tax laws. Meanwhile it is building out its Irish facilities and can, if needed, generate more of its revenue there (they just recently hired another 1500 people at said facilities).
Mr. IChronologist, I just wanted to say that im impressed with your astuite observations re: samsung there a truley brilliance company and I think its amazing what theyv’e accomplished even tho the fact there ceo is a convicted felon
youd never see that in the us because its’ illegal for convicted Felon’s too be ceo’s which is why us is falling behind…
ps.apple really is a poor excuse for a co they copy everything from samsung
BUt I really think windows phone will take apples tiny share by 2019 and then go on to take over bbry
That s were my money is bbry
Ron
You’re totally off your rocker. What kind of drugs you taking? lol….. And wake up….. Lee Kun-hee is locked up in a hospital bed. The sins of the father do not count and actually it’s the Korean Government that’s the Junta like run Chinese PRC like….. Military style rulership. If one person could really run a company the size of Samsung, that would be one thing. But Samsung is a whole family of companies, that don’t have a single hand on the Joy Stick…… like Apple does.
Besides the main difference is that Samsung is publically involved with the rest of the World. They lead it in Open Source Contributions. Whereas Apple only has ever ripped us off. Meaning we own Open Source and Apple is the company that had Steve Jobs declare, when asked about him spending up Apple’s R&D budget, “Apple doesn’t have to spend a single dime on R&D here on out. If we just take better advantage of Open Source to do our most expensive work for us”!
They ripped off KDE for Konqueror browser used in Safari haven’t contributed back a single thing to us the Open Source Community, except to claim they invented it!!! ….their OS kernel is built on Steve’s NeXT computer OS thievery of FreeBSD and MACH kernel. What have they ever contributed back? Not a dam thing!
Their entire UX came from the Open Source Community and yet they claim they invented that too. Apple has never given back and all they ever do is take Proprietary Ownership and Brag about being like GOD!
Tell one time Samsung has done that? They do far more good, give away far more to charity, build hospitals and continually are involved in philanthropic contributions. What has Apple ever given away for FREE???? Nothing!!! …..they are the iScrooge’d U McDuck of our day!!!
No totally agree with U. Apple is a leach on the backside of this overweight, out of shape world. Why would I use Apple. Apples rot! I’d rather night into a nice, juicy Sansung. That’s a fruit to aint it?
Exc ept samsung actually does good out in the world such as helping ladies across the street. I don’t but they look at me strange when I try
but its all good man except apple of course, that boss cook is shifty for one thing probably kicks old ladys
Tim Crook….. you mean? Naw….. kicks old guys in the nuts, who don’t buy AAPL to sock away for their retirement. I’m talking for Apple’s retirement…. because Tim is set for life with what he picks out of yours and the rest of the severely demented brainwashed Applewellian Proles and Shills….. pockets and merely salts away for an Eternity earning pennies on the dollar!!! 😀
Yeah…. Tim is looking more and more like iScrooge’d U McDuck every day…. than a CEO, who is actually not building a better future for Apple, than Saint Steve Jobs did! Rest his Greedy Soul!!! xD
greedy is the word my man, er kronk or whatever. i no juke have Atually seen Tim kick puppies so im with you 87% on this samsung gives all profits to charity and cures cancer…
that explans why do they got no prophets!!
(rims hot)
ps look how poolar i am…im ben upvoted already
sorry bout spling tonite stoned best way msg
There’s no koolaid but well laid out facts and reasoned forsight. Sorry to bust your hate bubble based on … On… Well my guess is you have simply always hated Apple yet know little about their products. There is a reason only Apple is making substantially all profit in the mobile industry. There is a reason Google makes 2/3 of their mobile revenue on iOS. It’s not koolaid.
There is a reason indeed……. but it never gets exposed for what it is. Which is the fact they are simply an iTrinket Design House only. Which means they are just a Cheap Skate Tax Avoidance Scheme designed on a totally outsourced business model, that pays no taxes, spends no money on their own R&D or Real CAPEX spending on their own factories that they don’t own!
But that’s only part of the story. The fact is that Apple success depends on how long they can keep their delusional fans convinced they invented EVERYTHING……. Eons and Millennia Before the DAWN of TIME! ……as if that was even possible. Yet….. it doesn’t take more than an iDiot….. to understand, that they modeled everything on how ISIS is able to convince naive 15yr old girls in to get raped and die for Allah!
All Apple fans and customers are convinced like in a religious conviction that Apple is somehow the only company with great products. Yet if that were true….. then Samsung wouldn’t still be #1 EVERYTHING…… including smartphones. But somehow Apple has you all convinced that making them richer, without ever spending a dime of it on actually making better products, they don’t make themselves, is more important than life itself!
It seems that they don’t quite grasp the fact that this makes them poorer if they give Apple all their money for Products made with the same parts that are in every other phone maker’s devices. Running the same OS, that’s still running archaic old code from the 90’s in Objective C in Mach Kernel with it still running an outdated FreeBSD Source Code. Which is totally useless for Multitasking Multicore processors in the Future! …….because Apple is locked into a past that only uses a synchronous single threaded compute model not meant for running parallel simultaneous tasks and Apps concurrently. Which is faster only on the surface!
But…. in reality like it’s compute model is bound to die in the future with it’s absolutely not able to do more than now two things at once. The only thing Apple has in OS X based iOS to counteract this synchronous archaic old, tasks/apps stacked one on top of each other in a single stream running through all cores in a single line….. NeXT engineer’s designed “Preemptive Task Management”.
Which does nothing more than suspend one task/app for one that is more important at the time. While Asynchronously compute modeled chips and OS’s can run many many more different tasks all concurrently in Parallel. So it may look fast…. but what if it makes a mistake? It can’t go back and double check it, since it can’t do Double Precision Error Correction! ……this method was fine for single core chips only available in the 80’s using floppy disks, but with parallel multitasking like IBM’s system wide simultaneously computed REAL TIME Multitasking…… you have what is called “Pervasive Multitasking and Parallelism”!
Unlike and Nvidia’s synchronous only compute model w/o error correction and there is absolutely no Super Computer today that runs synchronously only anymore. Even Nvidia’s GPU powered chips only serve one half of the equation in super computers with their chips locked into the past of synchronous computing.
Even IBM’s super computer champion in chess and Jeopardy is based on Asynchronous Compute model with superior “Pervasive Multitasking”. But….. ARM and AMD’s new computing model is based on utilizing them both concurrently with dissimilar chip cores in Big/Little Heterogeneous Computing as HMP core processing!
The fact is that all the Exascale HPC Cluster Super Computer projects today have completely abandoned x86 only and are set to use both ARM and x86 or abandon x86 all together and simply use far more efficient ARM Synchronous and Asynchronous cores working in tandem!
That’s what Heterogeneous (HSA HMP core processors) is all about. It move away from the completely untenable notion that bigger or more powerful single streamed faster computing is the best way to reach Exascale.
Which if only x86 or only synchronous cores in a synchronous OS are used to reach exascale, would require more cores, a dedicated power plant, monstrous cooling solution and maintenance would cost more than the US mint could print!!!
You see… when Apple bought PA Semi…. (PowerPC PWRficient 64bit Dual to 16 core SoC designs) they did it because they knew IBM’s old desktop model RISC PowerPC instruction sets and chips alone (even being Asynchronous) were too power hungry for the future. But ARM had already announced they were designing ARMv8 64bit instruction sets and had Jim Keller to remap them to ARM for A9 series chips. But they could not foresee ARM moving to Heterogeneous Computing with Big/Little cores. Because it hadn’t even been invented yet.
AMD with both former Apple employees in Mark Papermaster (remember the technology engineer Steve Jobs fired, because he told Steve an External Antenna alone wouldn’t work and Steve ordered it anyway) and Jim Keller. Jim helped AMD utilize ARM chips with x86 by harnessing both Big (asynchronous cores) and Little (synchronous cores) working together concurrently running simultaneous different architectures to go with x86. We’ve yet to see what exactly this will mean for AMD, but SAMSUNG Exynos HMP core SoC processors have already been chosen by US and EU to power their Exascale HPC CLUSTER SUPER COMPUTER PROJECTS…. and NOT…. Apple’s!!! 😀
What you don’t seem to understand, FredO, is that Apple is just a company. Insanely successful, yes, but still just a company. They’re not the Anti-Christ or some such. Their products are just technology. Not war or bubonic plague or a nest of Biebers.
So, if, in a sober discussion of CPU strategies, the mention of Apple causes you to suddenly go all Tourette’s with an explosion of “Kool-Aid!” and “arrogance!” and “walled garden!” and “religious experience!” and “argle blarggle gahhhh!”, perhaps you need to check your level of obsession. Let the fear go. Breathe deeply and repeat: “Apple is just a company. iPhones are just technology. They won’t hurt me. I’m in my safe space.”
There. It’s okay now. See? Now hush. Hush and sleep tight, little one. There.
You forgot to use “Crapple” or “iCrap”, and refer to anyone using Apple products as “sheeple” or something similar. You got the religious reference in, though. Try using “Saint Jobs” next time.
And this is why these things are not discussed much, as FredO demonstrates. Too much of online talk is still dominated by tech geeks with a vast arsenal of weaponized personality disorders. They cannot accept use cases other than their own. Even a technical discussion of Apple’s chip design as we have here is degradged as some sort of glassy eyed religious epiphany.
They’re rabid, and, for whatever real reasons, incapable of just accepting that Apple does not target them as a market. They faithfully show up on just about every Apple article or blog post, braying their irrational hate and chanting the same mantras over and over.
And then they call everyone else a cult. You’re the one acting like a cult member, Freddy, or maybe a Scientologist. Dutifully showing up and spreading the hate.
The somewhat ironic thing is that this “hatred of Apple” that FredO exhibits is not just limited to his bottom-feeding basement dweller comrades, but shared by many in the industry. And it is this inability to critically look at what Apple has done, and is doing, that prevents those businesses from adequately responding, and why Apple’s lead is likely to increase.
How many people that work at Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung, GM, etc, have exactly the same thinking as Ballmer, or that head of marketing from Qualcomm? Apple is just a marketing company with mediocre tech, supported by their sheeple! As long as many in the industry think that, they are setting themselves up for failure. I guess they prefer failure, than to critically think of what Apple has succeeded at & perhaps have to acknowledge that Apple did succeed.
Just happened back upon your Applewellian Doublethink Propaganda and RDF infused lyrical crock of iDoo the Doo Doo Elitist response! haha… really pathetic and honestly funny how much you brainwashed Proles and Shills like to scratch each other’s back, like monkey picking fleas off each other! lol….
No point in saying any more than that with your Double Dose of Applewellian Doublethink delivered here! xD
Moron
lol…. and you’ve just demonstrated just how much you fools are disconnected from REALITY! 😀 …..and out of touch with just how Apple works. It’s a completely outsourced single product company without any factories of it’s own and all their profits plowed into offshore securities earning them a pittance on the dollar. Besides being down at #46 on R&D Spending.
Something the late Steve Jobs celebrated… back in the late 90’s after he had spent up all Apple’s reserve cash buying his way back into Apple, by selling them his failed (even Ross Perot was out of investing in it and schools could get PDF, so they had abandoned it too)….. NeXT Computer for over twice the amount they could have bought BeOS for. A much more advance OS with it’s own ground up developed port of Unix.
When questioned by fellow share holders about his promise to bring NeXTStep OS to Macs and enterprise, after spending up all their R&D funds on Rhapsody…. he said, “Apple doesn’t have to spent another stinking dime on R&D, if they just take better advantage of Open Source Community. Which they did in more ways than one. First there was OS X’s UX and then came Safari from KDE’s Konqueror Browser Engine and Open Standards based protocols! …..and that’s how they are still spending less that any other major player in smartphones today. Less on CAPEX and that #46 in R&D spending is really embarrassing….. if not totally beyond absurd.
Since it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that along with eBooks scandal and Irish Tax Scams, along with their proclivity to simply BUY Technology Innovations… instead of developing themselves (or stealing them out from under their competition) that Apple hasn’t and isn’t going to change unless they are forced to by things like EU and US courts pushing them into it!!!
What do you think of the possibility that Apple is designing a “cockpit” that would incorporated in the design of vehicles of car manufacturers? Apple making the drivetrain, chassis, etc. just seems so unlikely.
Other phone makers can’t go and buy the fingerprint sensor that Apple uses because Apple bought Authentec.
To the author of this article, I know the check may still be in the post but how much did Apple pay you for this?
No kiddo, they don’t pay any more, nowadays to write about Apple you now have to agree to have the cranial implant, and join the iZombie program.
OTOH it’s just possible that Apple may be doing something substantive to earn their success. Maybe, just maybe, their customers aren’t all pretentious hipster fools dazzled by canny marketing and shiny objects. It may even be in the realms of possibility that they do not belong to a cultish religion, but just like the products and the way they work
And you consider yourself one of those I presume. You’re more retarded that your comment
You sure told him! Although I do believe the current term i/s “intellectually impaired” to be completely correct
I must say I like the cut of your jib! May I ask what brand of sunglasses those are, by the way if that’s not to nosy? Very classy. Like the song.
Too true! In apple bucks, too! I want to know not only the dollar amount but whether there checks have there drivers license writen right on the check. Also, how many cents! Otherwise, it makes no cents!
You, Sir or Madam seem/s to have your finger on the pulse of the tech journalism scene!
I would love to actually see the RF chip. We have HiSilicon, Mediatek, Qualcomm, ViaSilicon, Speedtrum, all be able to make their own 3G/4G Baseband Chip. Why not Apple? ( I think most of them uses IP from CEVA ) , I do wish Apple could make a LTE only phone, or LTE only Tablet / Laptop.
And I think it is more then LTE, there is so much crap within 802.11ac and Bluetooth sometimes i wonder if it was actually a spec problem or implementation problem. I wish Apple could innovate on these Area as well.
Nice piece. Apple doesn’t share end-product with anyone and I think the auto business is so large and capital intensive with so much manufacturing infrastructure already in place, it may make most sense for Apple to create the ‘brains’ of a vehicle and sell the end product via collaboration with a manufacturer, like say a BMW for egs. Ultimately create this auto operating system as a system option for any/all manufacturers. Let existing auto manufacturers compete on price/design/brand and worry about welding frames while engaging Apple to compete with all of their in-house operating system in-house engineers.
A quality end product and Apple’s reputation for innovation would be highly sought after.
Auto’s don’t lend themselves to outsourced manufacturing and the industry has plenty of capacity.
Who anywhere wouldn’t be intrigued by an Apple dashboard and Apple’s intuitive contribution to the mobile experience?
One of the key realizations of Jobs after leaving Apple-don’t let a third party control strategic parts of your product. During Jobs first tenure at Apple, they were completely at mercy of Microsoft, Moto, Adobe AND the likes of Sears, CompUSA and BestBuy.
Originally this started with Quicktime. Apple gave developers Quicktime but no one was taking advantage of it, and Adobe threatened to nix Premiere and started recommending PCs–thus Final Cut was born. From there Apple moved on to iWorks, iLife, Safari, Logic, Apple retail, Maps, etc.
Wall Street certainly doesn’t see Apple having insurmountable advantage, at all. Apple appears to be an extremely vulnerable company to every upstart company in Wall Street’s eyes. I don’t know how the author believes what he is saying when it’s obvious no one else does. Investors pay good money for stock in companies that have a wide moat and little competition. Apple appears to have a moat no wider than a shoelace based on the stock’s P/E and overall value.
Every little thing that comes about negatively impacts Apple’s share value. I had once thought Apple would have a huge scale of economy due to the high amount of similar processors they have produced for them. Maybe it’s only returned in Apple’s profits because the customers aren’t seeing it. Apple still seems to be cutting features while the customer pays the same amount or more for Apple products. At least that’s the way it seems in the way of pure specs. I think what Apple provides can’t really be measured in normal industry terms. Everyone says Apple’s iPhones will be easily replaced by cheaper Android smartphones, so everyone believes Apple has no moat.
Anyway, I’m glad Apple designs its own silicon for mobile devices as they can always design features into their chips that other companies can’t easily follow right away. Eventually Qualcomm or Intel will duplicate and possibly surpass whatever Apple has to offer but it takes time for them to do so. Relatively soon, every Android flagship smartphone will offer 3D Touch.
Although you say some truths…. you missed the boat on 3D Touch. It’s a technology some guy discovered in the mid 2000’s and didn’t get it any further developed than a video on YouTube showed. Which was simply a doctored phone with with an air gap already between the screen and glass with some Frankenstein like hardware demonstrating he could get variable force responses on it!
Synaptic has been pioneering the tech since at least 2010 and their ClearPad Screen Digitizer and Controller are several generations ahead of what Apple can offer today. Remember this is all developed around capacitive screens utilizing the screen glass and air space layer separating them or like with Samsung’s Air View, Air Space above the screen glass. Here’s a link from Synaptic on this very subject put up in 2013 talking about how they and Samsung worked to incorporate their 3D Force ClearPad Digitizer and Controller to enable Air View features:
http://www.synaptics.com/en/press-releases/synaptics-clearpad-touch-technology-powers-samsung-galaxy-note-3.php
Now Galaxy S7 won’t just have Air View…. like nobody else has…. they’ll be utilizing Synaptic rebranded 3D Force… ClearForce Technology for even greater enhanced advanced Air View 3D Force!!!
Apple’s main competition in phones is Samsung Galaxy. Apple does not have a significant CPU edge against Samsung.
What Apple has achieved, by licensing ARM, building their in-house chip design, and dual-sourcing fabrication, is strategic independence from a chip supplier. A chip supplier like Samsung can’t slow them down or hold them hostage.
Historically, Intel has been a couple of years ahead of the competition in fabrication, and has charged a premium price (almost an Apple strategy).
Unfortunately for them, Intel stumbled in the move to 10nm and others like Samsung have (more or less) caught up. It remains to be seen whether it’s a temporary stumble and Intel regains the lead or the others match them stride for stride from here on out.
To the extent Apple has an insuperable platform advantage in mobile or eventually cars, it’s not going to come from a modest cost or performance advantage in the chips. The chip design just helps them move faster and not be dependent on someone else’s platform.
Apple’s scale and potential integration into their software ecosystem does potentially give it advantages over e.g. Tesla, but they will have to beat incumbents across a lot of dimensions.
Tesla? Come on… they’re already years ahead in development. It’s like pitting Apple Maps against a seasoned veteran like Google Maps. There will always be some differentials involved. If Google works to stay ahead. Which they do!!!
As far as with cars… nothing from Apple will be even in the same class…. let alone as advanced as what Tesla has released and are certainly headed for release in the future.
Tesla was extremely smart by going with Open Source Open Standards, where all they needed to do was follow the rules instead of making their own along the way. All Apple managed to get from Samsung, Tesla and other EV makers were reject engineers. Who were already out the door or on their way out anyway!!!
And above all Apple is still a totally outsourced company that always will have to depend on Intel, Samsung for fabrication expertise as the #1 and #2 Full Service Chip Fabrication Masters.
TSMC is not a full service fabricator. They don’t even design any chips them selves and depend on Intel to license their Fabrication Process from them. The problem then still remains…. if you do not have a chip or even fabrication Process design departments, how can you ever hope to compete against such deep pocketed companies like Samsung?
That’s also includes Intel as well….. if consider the fact that Samsung Electronics is just one company and in fact it’s one of the largest Global Conglomerates in the World. They buy and sell companies within Samsung Group like playing Monopoly. Even all of Samsung Group (poised to break well over $500 Billion in Revenue this year) isn’t everything the Lee Family Chaebol has an interest in.
They split off companies all the time and their multitude of Joint Ventures are so huge and diversified they are their own best customers! lol… We’re talking about the same company that build the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (Joint Venture) and are now just finishing up the Royal Dutch Shell $55 Billion Prelude FLNG Project (Joint Venture). Which are the Tallest Skyscrapper and Largest Floating Structure Ever built by man!
Their SDI into Petro Chemicals, Plastics and Batteries has deals to supply not only their own batteries, but the batteries going into Apple’s products, BMW and Volkswagen’s EV Projects. Their Tizen OS will be what both of them will be using in their EV cars too. AND…. did I say Plastics? Yes…. practically the entire Auto industry including the Bugatti Veyron’s Removable clear Polycarbonate roof are made with Samsung’s Cheil Chemical Plastics!
Their memory chips are in more products than you can count or are aware of. They range from their own products to rebranded chips in competitors devices…. like Apple’s. They make cars, ships, military jet engines, tanks, mobile howitzers, construction equipment, mine their own mines for Gold, Silver in Sierra Leone, Rare earths in China and Korea as well as here in the United States.
Their KNOX security is the only NSA approved Security System for use on DoD’s Private Network for personal devices! Even FBI and US Navy have contracts with them over Apple. Boeing uses their battery packs, entertainment modules on Dreamliners, etc.
So to say that Apple as just the iTrinket Design sudo outsourced iPhone maker in Foxconn’s factory is actually an understatement by comparison! 😀
Yeah, I totally agree. Problem with Apple is it’s just gonna be squashed by the bigger players eventually. And eventually they’re going to even have trouble making payroll. Let’s be honest here. itrinket for sure.
I think reality is that both Google and Apple should stick to what they do best or at least pick something that closely relates to what they are already doing.
Efficient electric cars…. like GM, VW/Audi, BMW, Tesla are working on is one thing. But also working on making them driverless??? Hey… that’s not just a Moonshot… it’s somewhere out there in some other Galaxy!
This will only ever happen, if all these companies combined their efforts in concert, like America and it’s enterprises businesses did to put a man on the moon!
Man didn’t get there off the backs of just any one company and they certainly weren’t competing against each other to get there first. It was only when humanity as a whole teams up like in the World Wars, that we can all work together for greater good!!!
Well kinda. American companies weren’t competing with each other… But only because they were competing with Russian companies!
There is no American company that can compete with the World’s largest Chinese and Russian owned companies. Because America kills monopolies and always has. Conglomerates like Mitsubishi in Japan and Samsung in Korea would be killed like US Gov did to IBM!!!
Just state owned Russian Oil alone dwarfs Apple!!!
What do these Apple fanatics think a whole collection of conglomerates like Samsung, that includes Oil and Gas, ship building, banking and insurance, Jet Aircraft for Military along with tanks and mobile howitzers is worth? What about their Hospitals and Top 10 Cancer Research Center. Maybe all these Apple fans don’t realize they make robots, besides building the tallest skyscrapers in the World.
How about the fact they are #1 in memory, #1 in Television Screens, #1 in Smartphones, #1 in Home Appliances, #1 over all semiconductor maker if you put all their myriad of chip making together. #1 CMOS maker, #1 OEM Battery Supplier, #1 in so many things it’d make this comment longer than it already is!!! 😀
There is only two Global Conglomerates that could ever compete directly with Samsung, as the most diverse array of holdings on the planet. China PRC and Russia!!!! Samsung? …..has their tentacles in about every field you can think of from Luxury Hotels, to food to museums and Amusement Parks, etc!!! …..so actually Samsung is more diverse than them too!!!
Mine their own Gold even in their own mines!!!
I assume you’re mocking, ex2bot…
(It’s hard to “squash” the biggest thing in sight.)
Biggest to their own share holders…. sure…. hahaha… but Apple is just a peon in the grand scheme of technology. They are at most…. the Gypsy Barker Selling iSnake U Oil made by someone else. Saint Steve Jobs was the iCon Artist of them all Extradinaire and that’s about all Apple is today!
Look at the list of privately held conglomerates like Samsung, Rothschild Banking, Saudi Royals, Royal Dutch Shell, etc and they dwarf Apple and could each of them squash Apple under their thumbs into rotten apple cider not fit to drink. Let alone to be considered their equal!
But I bet you….. like so many deluded iDiots in this world, think Apple invented everything Eons and Millenium before the DAWN of TIME IMMORTAL!!! ……as if that was even possible too. But hey keep drinking the iKoolaide Fantasy and some day you’ll have to face the truth of them not even being close to God…. let alone nearly as big as Samsung and all their myriad of diverse holdings in this World Globally!!! ……and so what if Apple all together is only slightly richer than just one of their sum 70 companies. They still can’t even come close to just their Joint Ventures all put together that Samsung doesn’t even claim for taxes as privately held!!! lol……
Example? Just one Joint Venture not claimed is the one with Royal Dutch Shell in building the largest floating structure ever built by man. That’s the Prelude FLNG project on a single $55 Billion contract and it’s just one of dozens!!!! ……can Apple boast even one that size???? lol…. Not ever in your life and in all their history! xD
Are you drunk?
All Appleholics are drunk on RDF Spiked iKoolaide! …..so obviously YOU are one of the Drunks here!!! ;-P
I believe from the latest benchmarks is that Apple’s “single core” performance is significantly better (~double) that of Samsung, but that multi-core is about even (Apple’s 2 cores against Samsung’s 8). Some argue that it doesn’t matter – that in modern devices of course multiple cores are used – but that is just trying to change the argument.
Single core performance is what shows how well one’s chip architecture is performing for a given clock speed. Multiple cores are useful, but depends on the use case. Are 8 cores really used in a phone or tablet? On a server running multiple heavy applications & VM’s, yes – but on a table or smartphone, it is less (maybe 4 cores is maximum for real world use).
Not true!!! …..more cores will always end up better today, than fewer core processors. It’s only logical and Apple will eventually go to more cores as soon as they change their compute model.
Looks good on paper…. if you manipulate enough and are only performing one task at a time. But reality is fast setting in for both Apple and Nvidia on it’s Symmetrical compute architecture, that multitasking performs best on Asymmetrical chips than on largely single threaded hardware and file systems.
You can get the Single Core Win…. but multiple asymmetrical cores will always blow away lesser symmetrical cores in true system wide end to end on the fly multitasking!
Yet no benchmark out today even bothers to test running many simultaneous tasks, applications etc all at once. They only test for probable scoring….. if you are running multiple tasks or are even capable of it.
This is just so preposterous and only designed to keep from showing off flaws within the symmetrical computing platforms, so prevalent today!
Desktops were forced to move to Asymmetrical compute architecture ages ago. Now they are moving to Heterogeneous architecture. That includes Intel and not just game consoles and super computers.
Now that ARM is moving to Asymmetrical with also running Symmetrical cores simultaneously, with HSA (heterogeneous computing with HSA API’s) in what is called HMP cores, instead of just MP (multiple processor) cores. Which is what Samsung is doing with Exynos right now!
Which means to get a proper perspective on what it’s capable of, we need to get beyond trying to compare Apples single A series to cases of Eyxnos HMP SoC processors!
Like EU’s Mont Blanc HPC Super Computer project is doing using Samsung Exynos HMP core SoC Processors to do it with. Something Apple or Nvidia’s symmetrical computing architecture weren’t and aren’t right for. Which is what they already found out at the Mont Blanc Super Computer Project already. When they dropped Nvidia’s chips to use Samsung’s Exynos HMP core chips instead!!!
Apple already has more cores than two, if you consider dedicated space in A9 SOC to its M9 motion coprocessor, image processor and encryption processing. Those are three additional small cores on top of two very powerful main cores.
The difference between Android and Apple – Apple already figured out what tasks need additional small cores. Android world thinks it has flexibility but is actually confused.
Oh…. so you also think Apple designs those co-processors and the M9 Motion co-processor based on Samsung’s own Pranav Mistry’s work on SixthSense Technology. By the way since you don’t realize this fact, Pranav was the guy who ignited the whole motion sensing phenomena with his TED talk back in 2008. And you think that motion co-processor was designed and made by Apple for Apple exclusively??? lol….
You forget that Apple is nothing more than an overly glorified iTrinket Design House. Who’d rather sit on their duff….. on top of their pile of Cash…. like iScrooge’d U McDuck forever, instead of actually spend it on their own future with their own factories, etc.
Apple has you all convinced they are the most valuable company on the planet. Just because they are the most valuable to their own Publicly Held Shareholders….. doesn’t mean they are even remotely the most valuable corporate conglomerate with dozens of Privately held value like all of Samsung Group….. Rothschild Banking, Royal Dutch Shell, Saudi Royals…. not to forget China’s PRC owned Oil, Gas and Utilities ownership!!!
And dude you are honestly Mentally iDeranged!!!
First off…. Samsung was Authentec’s first Touch ID sensor customer back in 2004. When they first announced Touch sensor technology to go with their swipe tech. Samsung put Touch ID sensors in Secure Access Battery Powered Door Locks.
Then in 2011 after Moto used Authentec FP sensors in their smartphone, Samsung patented the Touch ID for use in Galaxy S3. But Apple got freaked out and rushed in to buy Authentec out before those sensors could go into GS 3 phones, as well as going into HTC’s phones later that year too. The proof was found in Authentec firmware inside GS3. Before Apple launched an iPhone with it with patents barely granted with it out the door!!! Apple is the King of iCopyists and Thieves in the World of Technology….. with no factories and spending only a pittance of profits on actual R&D!!! xD
First Pranav Mistry developed Sixth sense way before he joined Samesung when he was at MIT. Samesung saw his talent and hired him.
Google likewise also purchased Android when it was an independent company. Andy Rubin who cofounded Android joined Google that way. (He no longer is at Google)
Samesung like Apple and Google routinely hires and purchases top talent all around the world. You can actually say Samesung shamelessly copied this strategy from Apple. Just like how Apple hired many people from XEROX Palo Alto who invented GUI to develop its own GUI interface many many years back.
Samesung continues to Ape Apple in every single way. It now wants to build its own OS just like Apple. So it is pushing Tizen. It dreams of a day when it truly is like Apple creating a handset where both the hardware and software is designed by Saamesung so that it becomes as profitable as Apple.
Are aware of how Google, Microsoft and Samsung have all gotten a license to Pranav’s SixthSense Technology? Well they sponsored his work at MIT in the first place. In Pranav was working for Samsung prior to even gratiating and assuming the position of CEO of Think Tank Team for Samsung’s Skunkworks projects.
Reality is that Pranav Mistry is responsible for not only Gear S2 Patented Round Ring Face control but his name is on over a 2 dozen Samsung patents already. You are about as ignorant of history as you are lamely trying to make fun of Samsung! lol….
You’re embarrassing Apple actually…… since they have gone on to rip off and buy out projects…. like Siri…. which was an Open Source Based Project and meant to be used by the entire World. Not just locked into only Apple.
Actually they did finally learn something from Apple. That is to never ever trust them. But it seems IBM forgot that lesson from their own history with Apple’s thieving monopolitic closed proprietary ways!
Because although they had been working with Stanford Research Institute since a decade before Apple on Siri Project, they too have now shut down allowing IoM (Iris on Move) Project from SRI and are keeping all to themselves! :DDD
Meanwhile Apple is having a conniption fit and is throwing a tantrum over them not being able to get a piece of that SRI Pie!!! xD …….but hey Samsung SAIT Research has been working on IoM with SRI for over 7yrs and thankfully aren’t going to let that get away from them this time! haha….
Tizen? lol…. buddy you need to do some research on this totally Open Source Open Standards Project endorsed by the Linux Foundation with Linus Torvalds wearing a BIG FAT GRIN….. at Apple and Google over this one. Since Tizen began development as Samsung SLP back in 2008 project.
Since then Nokia contributed MeeGo, and Intel also contributed their Linux project into the Tizen Foundation Project. Tizen board also has numerous other contributors including LG. Tizen the name was bought and paid for by Samsung. But they don’t own it….. and just contributed it back into the Open Source Project as now being #1 Open Source and Open Standards Contributor even over IBM now!!!
Cr…. Apple? Well they set up a bunch of Open Source Projects, but have never ever contributed back in to them near what they’ve taken for for FREE. Cheap as in CHEAP iScrooge’d U McDuck Cheap is Apple’s mentor!!!
Get real….. haha…. Apple is just a publicly held iTrinket Design House. Who’s fans all think they invented EVERYTHING….. Eons…. Before the DAWN of TIME!!!!! ……REALITY? ……unless you’ve got your ideas nailed down and written up agreements like Samsung did with SRI on IoM…. Apple will be the first to come in and try to rip you off. They iCon Artists and you all are their Applewellian Brainwashed Shills and Proles!!! 😀
TLDR your BS.
Knew you couldn’t read…. because you can’t even spell SAMSUNG! lol…. Who cares what you have to say anyway! haha…. With rotten apple cores for brains…. it’d all be drunken slobbering mush mouthed iDiocy anyway!!! xD
Lol you are the one who couldn’t answer my post on why A9 is superior to anything that SamEsung has come up with – once you consider the additional small cores on A9.
Then you went on a massive tangent cheerleading with your skirt lifted up for Pranav Mistry.
Are you this unfocused in life too?
Dual Sourcing chips was a lame move on their part. Especially since they should have know there’d be deluge of Samsung haters returning phone just because they had Samsun’g chips and for no other reason.
But hey…… what they going to say when it comes out that they had intended to have Samsung fabricate them all. Yet the reason they can’t….. is actually tied to Samsung having taken Qualcomm and it looks like Nvidia and possibly AMD away from TSMC too. The Samsung A9 had already been tested and was in ramp up stage, when Samsung got some new customer no one knows who they are for Austin Texas Semi plant.
I think it has to do with Obama’s Executive Ordered new Exascale ARM HPC Cluster Super Computer Project. Samsung has already been providing ARM Exynos HMP core SoC processors to EU’s Exascale HPC Cluster Super Computer Project. So a million or more at 10nm process won’t be hard for them to fabricate. To go with Qualcomm’s 10nm and 14nm SoC’s already ordered. If the Nvidia deal goes through…. then most likely Samsung would also get the nod for AMD’s ARM chip production too. Since they are already partnered on HSA’s Heterogeneous Compute API’s with AMD as it is!!!
As it is…. both Nvidia and Apple are relying on synchronous computing CPU cores running OpenCL for use of GPU Synchronous cores for only some tasks and operations. Difference only being in CPU vs GPU’s general purpose re-programmable cores. Still running everything in synchronous rather than parallel computing….. like asynchronous combined with synchronous cores in ARM Samsung’s HMP core Big/Little architecture!!!
Which is why Exynos will always blow both Apple and Nvidia away on Multicore/multitasking Benchmarks!!!! …….plus the fact that Exynos can also harness it’s GPU for CPU Tasks as well as any general purpose chip can do using just OpenCL API’s with HMP Heterogeneous Computing Architecture across the board!!!
Contradictory statement here makes me question the premise of the whole piece. Is it the chip design advantage or the ‘commodity chip’ with custom software? I’m confused about which is the ‘little spoken, but critical element’ here.
“Ultimately this chip advantage is one of the little spoken, but critical elements in Apple’s vertically integrated approach. Android OEMs can copy the fingerprint sensor or the 3D Touch mechanism. They just go to the supplier that Apple buys it from. But they can’t copy the underlying software powering these ‘commodity’ chips.”
Exactly! …..how in the world can a totally outsourced iTrinket Design House Only Company ever be, “ALL THINGS JUST FOR APPLE ONLY, WHEN THEY DON’T EVEN MAKE THE PACKAGING THEMSELVES OR EVEN OWN ONE SINGLE FACTORY”???
They didn’t even own that Sapphire Glass company, or they’d been taking them bankrupt instead of themselves going out of business. Who got the write offs? Apple as an investor only. What did they do for that leased property and did they put those people out of a job in Arizona back to work? No!!! ….they are turning it into an automated self sufficient Server Barn!!! haha…..
Meanwhile Apple’s Tim Crook thinks he’s so cute and smart, while still burning customers for products not made in their factories, with parts not made in their factories built with CAPEX funding not coming out of their pockets and still only ranked at #46 highest in R&D Spending!
Saint Steve Jobs may be dead, but the Con Jobs are still picking everybody’s pockets, whether they realize it or not. Including tax payers around the World…. subsidizing their outrageous profits by paying their taxes for ’em.
What’s really mind boggling about their customers is that seem to love getting soaked for more out of their pockets just to fill theirs and their shareholders. They are almost as Cultist as Muslim Jihadists. Before long…. they won’t just be known Sheep at a Clip Joint. We’ll be calling them all iJihadists Fanatics instead!
Yes, no, too true. I’ve started to become concerned about the iJihadists as a secret front. Think about it: Apple has its outsourced chinese “designers” (actually sweat shop children) develop scores of “smart” (in air quotes) phone designs.
Then Apple selects one at random via intercontinental tele-conference. The insidious part is the 3D Touch gap actually leaves room for future surprises-explosives!
The clueless apple “faith”ful pray toward/s “Mecca” (Cupertino). Sadly there prayers aren’t answered b/c they get devices that don’t do much.
Here it is 2013 and Apple still hasn’t been able to offer Microsoft for the iPad. How do you type anything without Microsoft. To have a chance at surviving, Apple must make there devices run Windows (preferrably 10, though AT LEAST 9). Also open up ther APp store to anyone who wants to develop (VisualBASIC at a minimum).
Finally, iPads simply must have real full travel keyboards since selecting one letter at a time using the “magical” clickwheel is woefully inadequate. Hello, apple it’s not 2012 anymore.!
This guy is so brainwashed or maybe just a backdoor funded Applewellian Controlled Prole. I mean if he’d just do a modicum of research, he’d understand that Apple’s 3D touch is absolutely nothing to write home about and it’s already been done to perfection by Synaptic with 3D Force ClearPad technology, now at version 5 or 6.
HP has been putting ForcePad trackpads in their Pro Notebooks forever. Samsung worked with Synaptic way back in 2012/2013 for 3D Force Touch in Air View for Galaxy S4 and Note 3. Now they are on the brink of revolutionizing the 3D Force Technology with both Force and Air View in an enhanced digitizer and Synaptic controller for Galaxy S7!
Which will leave Apple again back in the pack groping for more, until they finally copy Air View Too!!! ahahaha….
http://www.synaptics.com/en/press-releases/synaptics-clearpad-touch-technology-powers-samsung-galaxy-note-3.php
Yeah…. that’s proof Samsung was using 3D Force ClearPad Technology only renamed to ClearForce in it’s 5 iteration!!! 😀
Yes! This is what kills me about isheep and igoats! Apple had to license ClearForce technology that’s been on the market for over a decade. They then rebrand it and PRETEND it’s there idea. Yet another “innovation” (in air quotes) from Android.
I know this is a bit controversial, but it shouldn’t be: Apple basically takes the core of Android and reskins it. And it/s not even a good job!
Soon there market share will be in the negative numbers (not a typo: see my website below for more info)
Get a clue, people!
Ex2bot.de@getthefactsabouthowtruleyfonyappleactuallyis.htm/noisheeporgirls
If you live in an Apple bubble, this all sounds wonderful. Outside where I am, though, it just doesn’t seem very convincing.
I don’t really see any advantage for Apple over Android in the phone space, and as a guy who prefers to control his devices, I feel more in control outside the Apple ecosystem. iOS is a negative; it’s Big Brother OS. The Apple hardware, from what I see of it, is nice enough, but not nice enough to live with the OS. The whole package just isn’t compelling.
Comparisons of iPad chips with low-end laptop chips are a bit eyebrow-raising, frankly. An iPad essentially is a low-end laptop – iPad Pro certainly costs as much as a midrange PC laptop – but laptop chips are generally older designs underclocked and tweaked for lower power, and specifically variable power. But in performance per watt, hot chips are still generally better than cool chips. I don’t think ARM has any real advantage. Historically, they’ve been able to run cooler, but also slower. But what works on a slow low-power chip doesn’t necessarily scale up to a bigger faster chip – things like cache end up occupying most of the chip, and most of the power.
Well written – the chip advantage is probably smaller in cars than in phones, but then Apple still has software. And that is huge.
Traditional carmakers are both clueless and ignorant about software – to them it’s part of the tubing and gearing, they don’t really understand it other than that they need it to drive new features. But self driving cars require a whole new level of intelligent software.
It’s clear that the electric car revolution represents the biggest opportunity for new car startups in 100 years. All the complicated knowledge related to ICE tech is useless. A whole new set of skills is required (batteries, chips, software). Both Tesla and Apple are going to take advantage of this. I believe Elon Musks recent unusually aggressive comments on Apple are a sign here – a sign that he sees Apple as his biggest competitor even though Apple hasn’t even started making cars yet.
Very enlightening article, thanks. Though I think the terminology you are thinking of when you say “comparative advantage” (which is a precisely defined term in the theory of international trade) is “competitive advantage”.
There’s no way I’d go back to an IPS display like the iPhone uses. Samsung’s OLED screens are vastly superior to those used by the iPhone. True blacks, very low brightness for twilight environments, blazing brightness for full sun, the ability to light only selected parts of the screen to save power, and generally lower power usage. Yes, the very first generation had overdone colours.
Apple has also dogmatically resisted touch screens on their computers. While it’s generally unnecessary, in some cases, like using maps, reading, and increasingly interacting with content, it’s much more pleasant, particularly while sharing a computer. And the “flip” type of design makes convertibles practical with no compromises. Of course, Apple wants its consumers to buy a device for every use, Batman.
Granted, Windows and Android OEMs have lacked true design skills, but they’re learning. Computing devices are very close to commodities now. And to think that responsive behemoths like Intel are just going to do nothing while Apple becomes the only player?
Apple makes some great stuff, but to think they’re comprehensively the best is ultimate hubris. Never mind your childish jab at Linux, which is in actuality the basis of Android and countless critical systems including y’know the international space station.
Good luck with your share values though.
I can see how Apple’s experience and methodologies could be carried over to success in cars, perhaps including and in particular the in-house silicon team, but I don’t see how the in-house silicon itself is going to make a difference.
They have an edge with performance/power, but this doesn’t matter in a car.
Being able to control prices is highly valuable when a huge percentage of the price of the product is from the silicon, but the ratio is much different for a car.
Thank you a lot. I saw exactly the same – Apple advantage is chip technologies which enable them to make design and product decision whatever they want rather than “round corners” and I was always surprised why tech media does not notice that
Maybe indie filmmakers will try a similar strategy to stick it to the studios. That’d be fun.
I believe this though I shudder to think what an autonomous car using Apple Maps would do. Or actually any device relying on Apple web services for its core functionality.
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