Apple Tops Nokia in Wireless Wars
April 21st, 2011 - 11:37 am
It took less than four years, but Apple has overtaken Nokia as the number-one handset maker by revenue — and it wasn’t even a squeaker:
The significant achievement was noted on Thursday by research firm Strategy Analytics. According to Reuters, Apple’s iPhone revenue of $11.9 billion surpassed Nokia, which saw its revenue shrink to $9.4 billion.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — Google makes Android, but Apple makes money.
Also, Nokia appears to be doomed. They’ve bet the farm on Windows Phone 7, which is on almost nobody’s radar. At best, WP7 might slip in below Android, giving Google somebody to beat them in the race-to-the-bottom.
Windows Phone 7 is expected to be the number 2 smartphone OS, after Android over the next few years. Google and Microsoft will do just fine on the licensing fees. The Apple SpyPhone brouhaha will probably help on that account.
I know what Gartner says, and Microsoft will make a bundle in licensing fees. But Nokia is not going to get back into the top end of the market — that space is owned by Android and Apple. As I said, WP7 will be HTC’s & Samsung’s cushion to avoid the absolute bottom.
Going just on what I’ve heard and read, this does appear to be the case. Almost no one with complaints about the iPhone are thinking about a Windows phone.
As for the “spy phone” business, it’s so easy to encrypt the backed up copies of that data that the only people who are really at risk are those who use “password” as their password for everything.
And they’ve got bigger problems ahead of them than people raiding their home PCs to track where there were at various times a month ago.
I’m of the opinion that Apple is falling farther and farther behind Android. You can find data that indicates this in various forms, but one that I found interesting was that just one model of HTC smartphone that runs Android was beating out the iPhone on Verizon alone.
But put that to one side, I can’t see what kind of odd tobacco it takes to think that Windows Phone is going to be the “number 2″ smartphone OS. Their marketshare hasn’t been above 5 percent yet.
Here is Eric Raymond talking about some recent numbers.
Unfortunately Google seems to be in no hurry to open up Android — the rumored merger with MeeGo was just that, a rumor. Looks like I should take really good care of my N900 as no viable replacement is in sight
Oh, and in this particular holy war I’m on the same side with Steve: Nokia goes down, and richly deserves it for being too timid to pursue a path of its own.
The diversity that was Nokia is being assimilated. Resistance is futile.