Comment by jorvi

Comment by jorvi 3 months ago

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> The iphone was solidly in charge by then

Nit: the iPhone was only "in charge" for a brief year or two, and then Android ate its lunch in terms of marketshare.

What is very interesting is that Apple has displayed twice over ( MacBooks and iPhones) that a minority marketshare can capture the vast majority of profits in that market. OEMs like HTC and LG made a few bucks profit off of any phone, sometimes even losing money on the cheaper models. And that's with Google footing almost all the cost of developing the OS.

naming_the_user 3 months ago

This is pretty much just describing the bimodal nature of most markets.

Extracting $100 in surplus profit from someone who's not on the poverty line is easier than extracting $10 from someone who is.

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mrtranscendence 3 months ago

> the iPhone was only "in charge" for a brief year or two, and then Android ate its lunch in terms of marketshare.

This is true worldwide, but there are significant regions where iOS quite handily beats Android (such as the US, Japan, and even some parts of Europe).

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Terretta 3 months ago

> Nit: the iPhone was only "in charge" for a brief year or two, and then Android ate its lunch in terms of marketshare.

Marketshare is less interesting than wallet share for many products.

> a minority marketshare can capture the vast majority of profits

Ah, yes, exactly, there it is.

iPhone offers wallet share, and continues to eat Android's lunch in both total spend and ARPU.

There are two cohorts to be in charge of, for two business models: selling something, or giving it away to show ads.

This looks like Android dominates until you get to the section "iPhone vs Android App Spending" and start doing the math that it's winning on total dollars never mind the number of devices.

https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics

Even then, advertisers tend to advertise because they want to sell something. Advertisers marketing something everyone buys, Android audience is best to advertise to. Advertisers with something that depends on extra cash in the wallet before the buyer considers it, iOS audience makes sense. Ad rates reflect this.

Astonishingly, even on the handset makers themselves, there were years Apple captured over 100% of the revenue. That sounds nuts till you dig and see it's as simple as Apple made money, while so many other handset makers lost so much money.

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rdsubhas 3 months ago

~Thrice. Airpods.~

Edit: Airpods also has a majority market share, so probably it's not the third in this list.

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hilux 3 months ago

This is such an important lesson!

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afavour 3 months ago

I was a day one Android fan (got the Nexus One) but I'd actually debate what "in charge" means... to me it doesn't necessarily mean dominating market share. I think the iPhone defined the touch-based smartphone when it came out and continues to do so. These days Android has a much more cohesive concept (in the form of Material UI and so on) but in the early days it was just a hodgepodge mess of ideas, even if it dominated the market.

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  • sangnoir 3 months ago

    > ...in the early days it was just a hodgepodge mess of ideas, even if it dominated the market.

    and it was glorious; the intent-system and Notifications drawers were Androids calling card. Intents were a blessing and a curse: being able to replace apps was great, but the variety in design language, not so much.

    Being able to reach into apps' storage was insecure, but freeing one's data from SQLite files was fantastic.

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  • sleepybrett 3 months ago

    it dominated the market because they seized the 'budget' smartphone market. Back in they hayday everyone dreaded a new android app coming into the shop because of all the absolute shit phones (slow cpus, tiny screens) the client wanted us to support because there were so many in the market (overseas).

    iPhone did and still does run the market, everyone else is a follower.

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