Apple have done very well in the last couple of years - they have come from nothing in the phone sector to substantial profitability in a very small space of time. However if you are trying to look at the Apple phones dept in isolation then the profit figures are a bit misleading - the basic design procedure of the iPhone was to take an iPod Touch and shoehorn some old phone tech in (which, depending on who you believe they may not have properly paid for :D ). This would have been very cheap to do and with the handset being retailed at the high-end of the market it would have been very profitable on a per-handset basis. Later revisions of the hardware haven't hugely strayed from this tactic, the phone hardware is all being introduced that little bit behind the rest and its therefore coming to Apple when its already established and probably cheaper to implement.
Oh and before the fanboys start screaming I'm not knocking Apple here - I might not be an iPhone fan but the way they have approached it has been very successfully making them money so i tip my hat to them! The mobile phone business isn't about making the best handsets - its about making the most profit and on that score Apple win 2009
Nokia have done ok considering the financial disaster that was the Full Fat N97, to have a flagship phone that has by their standards flopped completely is surely going to have been a big blow to profitability. R&D for it must have been substantially expensive (even if QC wasn't :D ), and they have ended up costing themselves a lot both in lost sales and all the remedial work carried out to the phone.
Looking to the future however the Mini appears to be a very good bit of kit and anecdotal evidence suggests its selling OK, alot of the development cost for the Mini has been and gone with the N97 debacle and the phone still retails for a healthy amount. Couple this with the N900 being due any minute as well and I think 2010 may well be a better year for them.
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Not as straightforward as it looks
Apple have done very well in the last couple of years - they have come from nothing in the phone sector to substantial profitability in a very small space of time. However if you are trying to look at the Apple phones dept in isolation then the profit figures are a bit misleading - the basic design procedure of the iPhone was to take an iPod Touch and shoehorn some old phone tech in (which, depending on who you believe they may not have properly paid for :D ). This would have been very cheap to do and with the handset being retailed at the high-end of the market it would have been very profitable on a per-handset basis. Later revisions of the hardware haven't hugely strayed from this tactic, the phone hardware is all being introduced that little bit behind the rest and its therefore coming to Apple when its already established and probably cheaper to implement.
Oh and before the fanboys start screaming I'm not knocking Apple here - I might not be an iPhone fan but the way they have approached it has been very successfully making them money so i tip my hat to them! The mobile phone business isn't about making the best handsets - its about making the most profit and on that score Apple win 2009
Nokia have done ok considering the financial disaster that was the Full Fat N97, to have a flagship phone that has by their standards flopped completely is surely going to have been a big blow to profitability. R&D for it must have been substantially expensive (even if QC wasn't :D ), and they have ended up costing themselves a lot both in lost sales and all the remedial work carried out to the phone.
Looking to the future however the Mini appears to be a very good bit of kit and anecdotal evidence suggests its selling OK, alot of the development cost for the Mini has been and gone with the N97 debacle and the phone still retails for a healthy amount. Couple this with the N900 being due any minute as well and I think 2010 may well be a better year for them.