Comments on: iPhone vs. Android vs. Microsoft Mobile vs. RIM

By: Rob Enderle

Rob Enderle — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:30:54 +0000

Right now, I agree, Apple from a pure financial perspecitive, is the one to beat. Symbian/Nokia just doesn't have the back end that I think the market is looking for. I left out LiMo for the same reason. Where I think the money will be is the back end (things like the application store) not the OS or the phones.

For Apple to win, long term, they have to address their scale issues. This is potentially a multi-billion unit market and Apple sells in the millions. Both Microsoft and Google can scale because they aren't limited by hardware. Apple could but they would need to vastly increase their line and available capacity and that would likely hit margins which they have been unwilling to do in the past. They could, and effectively did, with the Shuffle and Nano, address the line depth problem with the iPod.

It is interesting to note that both Apple and Microsoft, for the moment, are self limiting. Microsoft on execution, and Apple line depth, channel and scale. Apple's limitations are by choice. They may simply choose not to lead here in favor of having the higher hardware margins. Google and Microsoft are more interested in dominance.

By the way, what I mean by line depth, is that they lack the selection of phones others have or they have with the iPod line. If everyone wanted an iPhone their numbers would be far higher.

By: Anders

Anders — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 05:49:13 +0000

By: Jon T

Jon T — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 05:17:17 +0000

Rob Enderle has been so unbelievably wrong in everything he has ever said in the past 10 years about Apple that I am amazed that he has the temerity to write anything about Apple.

Even here, talking about "line depth" and "limited carriers" and "controlling" anpd the kill switch are all ridiculous. Haven't you read about AT&T's latest results Rob? Haven't you read about mobile phone virus attacks and threats to the network? Or how Apple has solved the much shouted up issues it's had? And how 200m apps have been downloaded - making "line-depth" a nonsense.

You aren't getting any better at it Mr Enderle, that much is crystal clear.

By: KenC

KenC — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:28:30 +0000

Wow, MS and Google win, and nary a mention of Symbian. MS shipped 18M licenses for WinMo last year. What do they get for a license? $15? That's maybe $270M in a year, though I think the license fee is less. Google, wants to make mobile search big, so it can dominate there just like on the desktop, because Android doesn't make them any money. It's free. Hard to predict any incremental revenue from Android, seeing as many mobile browsers would probably use Google search, anyway. For example, the iPhone uses Google search, unless you change the prefs to Yahoo!.

Now let's look at one of your also-rans, Apple. They just sold $6.9M iPhones, at a unsubsidized price of $660. That's what? $4.6B? I think $4.6B trumps MS's $270M, and that was one quarter vs a whole year of MS licenses.

Remember, you defined winning by generating the most revenue and profit. So far, the iPhone in its nascency is already far ahead of WinMo, which has been around for what, 10 years? As for Blackberry, I think I saw they sold $2.6B last quarter. That's also behind Apple's $4.6B for the iPhone.

The fact is, there's not alot of actual data behind your analysis. And, what little there is, seems to point that WinMo, using your criteria, is going to be a laggard, and Google, while it may be a winner, probably would have been a winner, anyway. What's shocking, is that Apple is already the tacit leader in smartphones, using your criteria for success.