>By profit share, on the other hand, according to Canaccord Genuity analyst T. Michael Walkley, last year Apple took 69 percent of the handset industry’s profits; Samsung took 34. For just the last quarter, the numbers were 72 percent for Apple, 29 for Samsung. You will note that both the annual and quarterly numbers total more than 100 percent; that is because all other handset makers, combined, are losing money
>That’s a statement of fact, in a Reuters news (not opinion) story, about a company with 70 percent (and judging by last quarter, growing) of the industry’s profits
I would love to see such a narrative written about Microsoft's server platform.
How much profit does Windows Server take in the server OS market? How much IIS take in the web server market? What about ASP.NET vs. Java, Ruby or whatever? Or Visual Studio vs. Eclipse and the rest in the IDE market? They're beating free(as in beer) tools and making a huge profits. Their revenue from the Server & Tools division is about 20 billion a year.
If iOS is beating Android, why can't Windows Server be considered beating Linux by the same metric?
Because both Samsung and Apple are hardware companies making a physical product with a price from which they aim to make profit for their shareholders. Essentially they have the similar aims therefore using that aim as a measure seems reasonable.
Linux and Windows and those involved in producing and marketing them on the other hand have different aims and different business models. The reason it's not right to say MS "wins" in the server market based on profit is that Linux isn't trying to compete on profit, it has other aims (which are as varied as those who develop and promote it).
If he'd said Apple and Google it might have been a fair comparison, but while their execution is different (and while in some ways they complete quite indirectly and it's not a zero sum game, even without the other competitors) Samsung and Apple do have broadly similar goals.
>If iOS is beating Android, why can't Windows Server be considered beating Linux by the same metric?
If you're going to talk about iOS vs Android, you should look at what Gruber says about iOS:
> The same company that runs the best and most popular app store (including the most successful handheld gaming platform), and whose media entertainment ecosystem has, by far, the best reach worldwide. The same company whose platform disproportionately dominates usage statistics.
He says iOS has the best and most popular source for third party software, an opinion supported by all of the iOS-first or iOS-only software that is out there (Vine is a recent example). The iTunes music, movie and TV stores reach many more people than any other store [1][2], giving iOS more of the market for these things by default. The disproportionate usage share suggests iOS is a more valuable target for apps, reinforcing the favorable position of Apple's App Store, and for advertising. Google makes more advertising money from iOS than Android [3].
As Gruber argues, it sure seems like iOS is winning in every metric except the number of devices being sold that use it.
The comparison is an interesting one. I guess the differences are that A) Apple and Samsung are both classic for-profit firms and B) they're shipping hardware.
Whether fair it or not, Microsoft has become an anachronism in people's minds. We heard about their greatness constantly for a decade and a half. It's enough. By comparison, IBM still had some very profitable and relevant products like AS/400 back in the early nineties, but the narrative was invariably about the dinosaur. That brand was tired then too.
>You will note that both the annual and quarterly numbers total more than 100 percent; that is because all other handset makers, combined, are losing money.
>By profit share, on the other hand, according to Canaccord Genuity analyst T. Michael Walkley, last year Apple took 69 percent of the handset industry’s profits; Samsung took 34. For just the last quarter, the numbers were 72 percent for Apple, 29 for Samsung. You will note that both the annual and quarterly numbers total more than 100 percent; that is because all other handset makers, combined, are losing money
>That’s a statement of fact, in a Reuters news (not opinion) story, about a company with 70 percent (and judging by last quarter, growing) of the industry’s profits
I would love to see such a narrative written about Microsoft's server platform.
How much profit does Windows Server take in the server OS market? How much IIS take in the web server market? What about ASP.NET vs. Java, Ruby or whatever? Or Visual Studio vs. Eclipse and the rest in the IDE market? They're beating free(as in beer) tools and making a huge profits. Their revenue from the Server & Tools division is about 20 billion a year.
If iOS is beating Android, why can't Windows Server be considered beating Linux by the same metric?