Commentaries

Smartphones’ ecosystem dilemma

Why  is the Motorola Droid apparently gaining traction in the smartphone market, when Microsoft and Nokia are failing so miserably?

The Droid, built on Google’s Android mobile operating system, sold 250,000 in its first week on the market. That’s way behind the 1.6 million iPhone 3Gs sold in the first week after its launch, but it’s still enough for Motorola to see possible salvation after years of decline and for Google to feel self-congratulatory about its venture into mobile.

Some of the success of the Droid, and the increasing number of Android-based phones available, can be ascribed to its clean and versatile operating system. Reviewers and users agree that Android still lags the iPhone, but the gap is closing. In contrast, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile has stumbled through numerous iterations — it’s now on version 6.5 — and endless renamings. No one has ever liked it.

 Nokia once ruled the roost with its Symbian-based smartphones, but its market share has been declining steadily. Nokia still sells more mobile phones than anyone else in the world, but Apple — which sold 7 million phones versus 113 million for Nokia in Q3 — astoundingly makes more profit, $1.6 billion on handsets in Q3 this year against $1.1 billion for Nokia.

Apple defies gravity

Here’s how bullish Steve Jobs and his colleagues at Infinite Loop in Cupertino feel: After a blowout September quarter, the forward guidance they are offering for the December quarter is comically modest. In the tech world, people have long known that Jobs loves messing with the expectations of both competitors and his legions of Apple fanboys. He plays his games with the financial world as well.

In the middle of a global recession, Apple has reported its biggest ever quarterly net profit, $1.67 billion, on revenue of $9.87 billion, its second highest quarterly total ever. Gross margins of 36.6 percent were the highest ever.  Apple sold more than 3 million Mac computers, up 17 percent in a global market that grew just 2 percent. It also sold 7.4 million iPhones. Apple’s cash pile grew to $34 billion, which it still plans to use for preservation of capital.

Tech Links: Phones, more phones and communion wafers

Eric Auchard

Aug 3, 2009 11:03 UTC

Better luck next year for Android
Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC has warned of a revenue shortfall, saying it has too many new phone models chasing too little revenue. Revenue growth will turn negative in 2009, instead of growing 10 percent, as the company had previously forecast.

Chief Executive Peter Chou says: “Momentum on both the Windows Mobile and Android platforms are also turning out to be weaker than expected.”