Android’s Pursuit of the Biggest Losers

Aug 17, ’10 8:36 AM

Author Horace Dediu Categories Financial, Industry, Theory

The mobile phone market is intertwined with the telecommunications industry which is vast and there are numerous competitors which are much more dynamic and better capitalized than the moribund PC or music player vendors. It’s also a regulated and fragmented global market with 1.2 billion units and 5 billion consumers—far greater than any of the markets Apple played in for its first 30 years.

Nevertheless, the iPhone has had a huge impact on the industry. To show just how much of an impact, I dove in and pulled over 500 data points on three years’ financial performance of seven competitors responsible for 80 percent of units being shipped today. The time frame covers the iPhone’s participation in the market so it allows for “before-and-after” comparisons.

I divided the findings into five articles:

Unit Volumes. The evolution of market share.
Revenues. The shift in where dollars are spent.
Selling prices. The tale of ASP erosion.
Operating margin. Profitability ratios over time.

Now I turn my attention to draw a bottom line from all the data above, namely the operating earnings (EBIT or Earnings before Interest and Taxation).

The first chart shows the EBIT from the top seven vendors of mobile phones since the quarter when the iPhone launched. I annotated Nokia and Apple’s bars to give perspective.

The total available profits in the industry dipped to a bit under $4 billion at the trough of the recession, and have recovered to nearly $6 billion in the holiday quarter last year. However, not all vendors are profitable. As you might expect from looking at the operating margins, Motorola and Sony Ericsson have been generating losses for most of this time period. They have both reached profitability in the last quarter, though at very low levels and after having lost a large part of their sales. LG has turned negative this past quarter after being a modest earner for some time. Samsung has maintained a fairly even consistency in its profit capture, though with its expanding market share, it seems to have come at the cost of pricing.

Finally, looking at the pure smartphone vendors RIM and Apple, the picture is nothing short of astonishing. This before-and-after share-of-available-profit chart shows that the two entrants went from about 7% profit share to 65% in three years.

Apple in particular is capturing about half of the available profits with three percent of the units. It dwarfs all the other vendors, more than double the nearest (Nokia). All that in three years and with the added burdens of only three models, a recession and limited distribution.

What does it all mean?

Here are my conclusions, enumerated:

The lack of a real response. The recurring theme in this series of articles has been that giant multinational incumbents in a vast and rapidly growing industry, enjoying all the advantages that size and incumbency, have had their profits taken from them. And they don’t seem to have put up much of a fight.
It’s all wealth transfer. Note the total amount of profit available has not increased markedly; this is not about incumbents growing the pie. Two thirds of what should have rightly been theirs moved from the incumbent shareholders to the entrant shareholders.
Speed. This shift of profit occurred over an unprecedentedly short period of time. Three years is no more than two product cycles in the industry and it’s an order of magnitude faster than what happened historically to other industries.
Disruption is the diagnosis here. The incumbents were caught in the headlights. Disruptive innovation leads to asymmetric competition and this is what we just witnessed. History has shown that the shift of profits is usually the last stage of disruption and is usually irreversible because the change in business models cannot happen at the rate of change of profit transfer.

Which leads me to one final point.

When analyzing the potential for challengers to the new winners, the most cited is Android. Can Android affect this redistribution of profit once again? And to whom?

If Android is to become the dominant platform, does it depend on the success of its licensees? Who are these licensees and what are the chances that they will be able to align their businesses to what Android offers (a new revenue model based on services and advertising).

One problem I see is that Google is making a bet on those same vendors who are now squeezed in the middle of that last pie chart: Samsung, LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson. Nokia, Apple and RIM will certainly not take the OS over what they already have as it dilutes their differentiation and margins. That means Android is aligned with the biggest losers in the industry.

So how likely are these disrupted ex-giants to recover and take Android forward? My bet: slim to none. Android does not offer more than a lifeline. It is not a foundation for long-term profitability as it presumes the profits accrue to the network and possibly to Google. Profit evaporation out of devices to Google may be a possibility at some time in the future, but only if the devices don’t need too much attention to remain competitive. But because they’re still not good enough (and they won’t be for years to come), it’s certain that attention to detail is what will be most important to stay abreast of Apple.[1]

So here we have the real challenge to Android: partnership with defeated incumbents whose ability to build profitable and differentiated products is hamstrung by the licensing model and whose incentives to move up the steep trajectory of necessary improvements are limited.

In other words, Android’s licensees won’t have the profits or the motivation to spend on R&D so as to make exceptionally competitive products at a time when being competitive is what matters most.

[1]: I would argue the same lack of symmetry with licensed software vendor Microsoft is what led the the failure of the same incumbents to make a dent in the industry with Windows Mobile [2003 to 2010].

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Iphoned

@Tim Ross

"Apple said so for the past."

Yes. That's why everyone is so busy copying them.
http://www.relentlessfocus.tumblr.com relentlessfocus

I’ve said this many times but the future doesn’t have to resemble the past. There are several reasons for the explosive growth of Android, some are:
1) As pointed out here, the handset makers how were being devastated by the iPhone were keen to get a full featured smartphone out and Android fit the bill wonderfully at the time. So as Asymco points out, all the handset losers turned to Android and as more and more join the fray around the world, Android sales have skyrocketed. Good for the whole Android ecosystem for the moment but…
2) Microsoft had no creditable smartphone OS available for these same phone vendors making their turn to Android even more of a no-brainer. It’s my understanding that a software licence for a smartphone OS is about $10. In the overall price, $10 matters but is not an insurmountable issue if the OS is competitive on all other fronts or superiour. As things develop however (see points below) there may be reasons for the hardware vendors to turn to more differentiated options than Android which is after all a commodity.
3) Mobile operators were keen to get competitive phones to stave off losing their customers to the iPhone sanctioned companies (this issue is changing everywhere and will soon change in the USA too I believe). This helped lead to the rapid rise of Android phones.

But all is not set in stone. Handset vendors have been able to differentiate their offerings of Android by using custom OSs (motoblur, Sense, etc). Google is trying to create a universal Android UI which is too good to turn down because of the fragmentation issue and has hired a well respected OS specialist for the Android release 3 (Gingerbread). However this will be problematic for the handset vendors if they can’t differentiate on Android 3 or if Google pressures them not to or if customers demand they don’t.

If Google is successful in their new UI endeavour it will mean that Android based handsets can only compete with each other on price, John Louis Gassé calls this the race to the bottom. The Android handset makers don’t want to be in competition with each other over price because it will kill their margins and kill their profits.

As Android commoditises further handset makers will have to look for other alternatives or at least a mix of other alternatives, say MeeGo or OS’s not yet developed. This may well begin to negatively impact Android sales over the next 3-5 years as the market shifts from its rapid expansion stage into a more steady state phase with many players. Which players wind up successful in this are unknowable at present. Smartphone prices will probably start to decrease and Apple will always stay away from markets where they can’t add value. Adding value has always been Apple’s key selling point.

Apple’s added value in this melee includes
a) as hardware and OS vendor all in one they can focus their development money to produce exactly the phone they want. They have 2 world class fabless chip designers in house to design custom chips to suit exactly their own needs and a world class OS which they own, which is very popular and which they can inexpensively redeploy rapidly as the market changes. With only 2 models (last years and the current model) they have economies of scale which no other single handset maker has in terms of smartphones.
b) Apple products form an interleaved eco system from iTunes, the App store and mobileme and the new cloud services coming on line through to computers to smartphones and music players and software (iWork, iLife, etc) and soon a tellie box. Each of these products boost the appeal of their partner products and couple that with the Genius bar and Apple stores and Apple’s world wide distro system and you have a powerful competitive advantage that nobody else matches
c) Apple customers tend to be satisfied with their products. Not everyone to be sure but repurchase rates are high and Apple support is consistently highly rated. Apple works hard to create this customer relationship which outsiders misinterpret as fanboyism.

For Google to be successful in the wireless market I think they’ll have to hit at least the 60-65% domination level which brings them dangerously close to monopoly oversight. But without that dominent player role, Android may do well but Google may not benefit. Google is not in the smartphone OS business to be nice, they’re in it to make money through advertising. To the extent that they don’t get 60% of the world traffic going through their net they’re going to be in trouble.

Another issue for Google is the rise of non-Google related Android phones like the oPhone. The oPhone is a branch of Android which is totally devoid of Google hooks designed specifically for cheap phones for far east customers. Will similar cheap non-Google customisations appear for Latin America and Africa? If so then when Android numbers are bandied about they will be totally meaningless. This cohort of phone users will not likely yield the kind of advertising revenue that Google expects from more developed countries.

It’s my feeling that long term analysis of the smartphone market based on today’s unusual conditions is not valid. Android is not crushing Apple despite its rapid growth. The future may not look like the past.
- Scott
  
  I don't agree with your analysis…but this was by far the most cogent response I've seen on this board. The problem is that Apple's strategy of "value-add" with smaller marketshare already failed twice with PCs (once before Job's returned, and once again after the 2000 slowdown); they really only got back to major growth because they dominated a new growth market (mp3 players and digital media) and then parlayed that into another growth market (smartphones). Now, I'm not saying Apple won't go find another market (obviously they are hoping tablets will work out that way…although I expect that to be shorter lived for them); Apple has lots of good design teams and they may well find another "next big thing". Frankly, I hope they do. But they aren't going to be able to stay competitive in the smartphone market with their current strategy, and by all looks of market trends there's little they can do to change it now. iOS devices have already lost their shine in the eyes of many, and we still have over a dozen highend handset launches left in this year alone for Android. Moreover, the combined ecosystem of Gmusic, Playstation mobile gaming, GoogleTV, Adobe AIR/Flash, and what is quickly becoming a more developer-friendly OS isn't going to change, and there's little Apple can do about it.
  
  Also, while Google is (and will for some time be) primarily an advertising company, they will also be getting slices of the pie from media sales, probably from game and app sales, etc. They don't need to make very big slices of those pies, which is why Android is so much more attractive to powerful collaborators than iOS or WinMo7 is, but those will help pad Google's bottom line even if they only end up with 40-50% of the smartphone market (although I suspect that it will be in the 60-70% range in 5 years). Those types of deals are also why we won't see handset manufacturers run headlong to other OSes. The pie gets so big that Motorola, HTC, or whoever can offer access to services (Playstation mobile- compatible!) that offer additional revenue streams for them.
  
  I won't say Apple can't get back into the game, but I don't think they can without radically changing their strategy, and I don't believe they are willing to do that.
  - boo
    
    Why will they end up with 60-70% market share? That is a prediction based on?
    
    "Value add"?? with small market share? More like value creation for not-insignficant portions of the market.
    
    I don't believe anyone has to die for someone else to succeed, the steady state OS market share is not going to be lopsided in anyone's favor. Apple knows exactly what happened with the Mac in the 90s. If you could figure out that they shouldn't repeat that mistake, you think they haven't played that scenario out in strategy meetings over and over and over again? C'mon. Just because it is a significant change in strategy, doesn't mean it is not a viable option. Introducing a touch screen iPad was a HUGE bet, big change in strategy. Introducing a touch screen phone was a HUGE bet, big change to strategy. What makes you think changes in strategy to ensure relevance won't occur with these devices going forward as well?
anonymous

To Scott:

>>It’s too late. Had Apple decided to actually put the iPhone on all the carriers two years ago this might be a very different story.

Right. I think you maybe confusing Android market noise with reality. Foxcon is hiring half a million people just to keep up with production. Korean' telco's ordering system just crashed on the first intro day, overwhelmed with iPhone orders. Apple can barely keep up with demand which continues to outpace their production plans. And I won't even go into the details of Android questionable business model, user experience, quality of apps, IP issues, and Google's motives which does not bode well for the device maker. Oh, yes the phone specs. Android phones do have great specs, like more pixels on the camera.

If you are predicting Apples' demise, based on your analysis, good luck with that.
- Scott
  
  I didn't predict Apple's demise, I predicted their defeat when it comes to dominating the mobile computing market. You can site all the numbers you want about how many iPhone4s are being sold, but it's still far less than the number of Android phones being sold. You may think the UI or business model is questionable, but less people are agreeing with you when they vote with their dollars. Your entire attitude is the same one Apple has, and the one that is losing them the market. "Oh look, we're making money hand over fist right now, and all we had to do was sacrifice marketshare and partnerships to get more profits from exclusivity contracts". And now that they realize that marketshare will be the final arbiter (and they have realized, just go back and rewatch all the non-marketing parts of Job's announcement this summer of the iPhon4) they think the answer is to control everything, which means they aren't just competing against Google, they will be competing against HTC, Motorola, Samsung, Sony (and its gaming division), LG, Dell, and Adobe and its entire development ecosystem, when the others are fighting for the same side. Sorry, but it's a battle of attrition, and in just a couple short quarters Apple has already fallen behind quarterly sales to Android by a large margin.
  - http://www.asymco.com asymco
    
    Market share does not get you squat in this market. Symbian had market share coming out its nose. Windows Mobile ruled in the US for a while and even Palm's Treo was king for a day. It's a HUGE market with enormous regional, regulatory, technology and distribution barriers. At 5 billion consumers, it's actually the biggest market there is.
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Keith

You are mixing up a lot of stats about mobile phone sales and smartphone sales. Separate the two and the trends will appear a lot different. It would seem to me that the initial clobbering that Apple doled out on other OEMs is starting to pass and several of them are starting to rebound quite strongly with the help of Android.

Hopefully you'll revisit this article a year from now and re-examine your conclusions then.
anonymous

Obviously, it too late for the iPhone as some on this thread have argued – here is the evidence.

"Site crashes as iPhone fans make 130,000 pre-orders". And that's in the home-country of some of the best Droids (with bad GPS).

http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?ne…

Go figure. Just clueless fanboys drinking coolaid.
- Scott
  
  http://www.t3.com/news/android-sales-to-top-55-mi… (Android sales to top 55 million in 2010)
  
  http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/android-sales-…
  (Android sales surge past iPhone).
  
  Might want to check your own drink there. It's nice to quote acontextual data, but no one here is arguing that iPhone don't sell well and made a lot of money. Nor am I (at least) claiming that the iPhone is a PoS. The point is that despite the good things about iPhones (and whatever bad things you perceive about Android phones) Apple has already fallen behind in sales in the first half of the year, and no one expects them to recover any time soon (Android is expected to beat Apples 2010 marketshare by 10%!).
  
  The reality is that many of the very decisions that Apple has made to let them control iOS, to pad their margin while defraying development costs, etc., are not sustainable over the long haul, and in many cases explicitly frittered away marketshare when they could have really jumped ahead. They realized too late that marketshare is where the long term money will be made, and their current business model is too diametrically opposed to react in time to correct their course.
  - http://www.relentlessfocus.tumblr.com relentlessfocus
    
    Scott,
    
    The problem in your analysis from my point of view is that Android is an OS which can't be sold separate from a phone but the iPhone is a phone which shares an OS with other products. So saying that Android phones outsell the iPhone rings hollow to me. It's cattle and oranges.
    
    If you compare phone sales by handset maker (HTC, Motorola, Nokia, etc) rather than the overly simplistic Android (OS) v iPhone (a phone) and even more importantly if you look at revenue from sales of smartphones you'll see that Apple is hardly defeated.
rob4rl

Great article! Living in Europe, Nokia is much more relevant than on the US. I think your article lays out perfectly why Nokia will rather go bancrupt than adopt Android. Something that a huge number of media people just dont seem to get into their head.

My question to you would be how you see Nokia competing. They obviously have suffered in the last year, but what sets them apart from the "losers" it their huge market share in dumb and smart phones (although admitedly the lower end of smart phones). With that market position and consumer reach, you would assume they will not go away or stop making any profit.
- Scott
  
  The problem is that Nokia (or at least their mobile division) is going to get that wish; they are going to go out of business (or more precisely, they will be broken into constituent parts and sold off to more profitable companies). I'd guess this will probably begin when they get a new CEO (which most likely will happen 2-3 quarters after the launch of the N8). It will be portrayed as a "realigning" of their business strategy. In short, making the mobile division go away will be more valuable to stock holders than retaining it. Probably in the next 2 months.
- http://www.asymco.com asymco
  
  Note that I did not count Nokia among the "losers". My definition of "loser" here is a company that has faced a long series of operating losses and has no viable software assets of its own. Motorola first, Sony Ericsson second and LG coming into the picture. Nokia has remained profitable so they have not yet had to face the abyss the others did. Same with RIM and Samsung. When/if they do have the near death experience, they might opt for the Android lifeline (flimsy as it is).
  
  However, the abyss is not necessarily imminent for Nokia. They have made significant investments in software (poorly performing, sure, but better than nothing). They still have a chance to maintain software independence.
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Bob

All this analysis is leaving out one important point, you are leaving out dumphones. Dumbphone owners of today are smartphone owners of tomorrow. The OEM's who successfully transition their share from dumbphone to smartphone are the ones who will win.
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Lucian Armasu

Could you have made a more biased analysis than this one? You not only not mention HTC who's been growing like 60% every year, mostly because of Android, but you also mention Sony Ericsson, LG and Samsung when they've barely introduced any Android phones into the market.

SE had Xperia X10 but they were doing much worse before that BECAUSE they didn't adopt Android earlier. Their stubbornness to stick with their own in-house OS or windows mobile led to that fall. You don't expect one model alone to turn that alone do you?

And LG is one of the manufacturers that adopted Android and pushed it the least. Only recently after seeing the high demand for HTC Android phones and Samsung's Galaxy S, that they are considering to push Android harder.

Samsung has the big push with Galaxy S and they are doing very well with it, expecting 10 million phones by end of the year.

HTC CEO has said himself that he sells his high-end phones for $400 to manufacturers like Verizon, while Apple sells iphone for $500 or $600 to AT&T, depending on the model. In other countries the iphone is sold at $1000 or more. So is there any wonder why Apple has profit 3x or more than any other manufacturer?

All this doesn't matter anyway. It's going to be a platform game, and Android as a platform will win because everyone else is adopting it. Yes the mobile world is different than the PC world, but that doesn't change some fundamental principles in the market. Android will become the Windows of mobiles.
- http://www.asymco.com asymco
  
  See: http://www.asymco.com/2010/08/19/htc-how-they-com…
Tounao Mei

Your comments on Android is right on target. however, I don't think the data you have supported your conclusion… If you look at market momentum of Android, it really started Q42009. Moto, LG and Sony E were not a significant player until this year. Therefore it is a bit a jump to claim that their problems are a result of Android adoption. As a matter of fact, HTC adopted Android back in 2008, they are doing ok. I think your assessment of Android is still valid, but I question the causal relationship here from the data alone…

thanks
- http://www.asymco.com asymco
  
  Tounao,
  
  Thanks. My claim is not quite what you suggest. I am stating that Moto et. al. adopted Android because they were in a difficult position financially and strategically. The difficulty was not caused by Android.
  - Tounao Mei
    
    Great. thanks for the clarification.
  - anonymous
    
    To Scott:
    
    >> It’s nice to quote acontextual data, but no one here is arguing that iPhone don’t sell well and made a lot of money.
    
    I think you are reading way too much in to Android latest sales numbers achieved before iPhone has spread to other carriers and is under severe production constraints. Once carrier channel parity is reached and production contraints lifted (which they will), you will see iPhone and its successors settle into the leading smartphone market position on for a long time to come.
    
    This is a good summary, of some of the reasons, although may be a bit technical.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg&fe…
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mark

Surely we have to look at timeings here. As we are talking about profits per handset we may as well just talk about smartphones. The non Apple smart revoultion has only just begun so you can't expect the numbers to be competing with the iPhone that blew every one away a few years back.

But what I will say is now (in the UK) you walk down the high street and pass mobile phone retailers windows and you don't see 'I…something' you see a little green robot. You open a catalogue or read the paper and he is there again. And these are on premium priced smartphones not budget phones.

6 months ago the average man in the street would not of heard of Android but know there is a far greater chance..ok not on a 'I' level but it won't be long.

There is momentem there..I just think its too early to see it in the figures.
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http://davidjbradshaw.com David J. Bradshaw

I think the interesting question on Apple's iPhone revenue, is how much do they charge the networks to licence the visual voice mail server software? Even a couple of dollars per user per month is going to give Apple an extra 50 dollars profit per two year phone contract.

If you look at sim only iPhone plans in the UK, you can see this more clearly. For example on a sim only tariff O2 charges 7.50 per month for the stand smartphone data package and 10 pounds for the iPhone one which adds Visual Voice mail.

Likewise o2 has a special Blackberry plan, so I expect RIM is also getting ongoing monthly revenue from the networks for every device in use.

The other question is should App store revenue be counted towards iPhone profits? The networks used to think it was there place to sell phone apps, ring tones and music to their users, yet Apple has taken all of this from the networks who now struggle to build the bandwidth for users to download all these extra Apple purchases.
http://davidjbradshaw.com David J. Bradshaw

I think the interesting question on Apple's iPhone revenue, is how much do they charge the networks to licence the visual voice mail server software? Even a couple of dollars per user per month is going to give Apple an extra 50 dollars profit per two year phone contract.

If you look at sim only iPhone plans in the UK, you can see this more clearly. For example on a sim only tariff O2 charges 7.50 per month for the stand smartphone data package and 10 pounds for the iPhone one which adds Visual Voice mail.

Likewise o2 has a special Blackberry plan, so I expect RIM is also getting ongoing monthly revenue from the networks for every device in use.

The other question is should App store revenue be counted towards iPhone profits? The networks used to think it was there place to sell phone apps, ring tones and music to their users, yet Apple has taken all of this from the networks who now struggle to build the bandwidth for users to download all these extra Apple purchases.
Leonard Bix

The maths are porbably correct. Before drawing a conclusion, just one point to clarify:

Units of WHAT?

Of touchscreen handsets with roudd edges, or what? What definition makes the Apple 'units' comparable with all the oranges and pears in the basket?

Just a thought, before everyone takes your numbers as unshakeable as the Bible…
- http://www.asymco.com asymco
  
  Units are mobile phones. This is data is reported by all the vendors in their quarterly earnings briefings. The common attribute between all these devices is that they have cellular radios and can be used to make voice calls over cellular.
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horsewhisperer

@Horse,

"…Thanks to being propped up by Microsoft in the 1990s and on even to the present day, given that for “professional” use, Mac purchasers are all buying Office for Mac while they show off and badmouth Microsoft."

Are you still trotting out that old irrelevant myth. I thought that lame old talking point was taken out back and shot dead years ago. Where ya been?

That infamous "prop" was a mere 150 Million dollars worth of NON-VOTING stock. Even in the lowest, darkest duldrums, 150 Million was hardly a life-line. Apple had a Billion in the bank at the time. Of course today it has 40 Billion in the bank.

No, far from being a "prop" (in MS fanboys' wildest dreams), this was actually an unofficial SETTLEMENT that MS paid for infringements (sound familiar?). Of course, the court went with MS (basically due to Apple's naive goodwill and failure to write a clear contract) when dealing with an unscrupulous and unethical shark like MS, but what's new? Nevertheless, MS settled to sweep it all under the carpet. Really, is this news to anyone — isn't that what their huge "R&D" budget is really for???

Part of the agreement was that MS would continue to develop Office for Mac for a further five years. At the time this was important to Apple. Not so much today (understatement). Of course, Office for Mac came before Office for Windows. It was a good example of the pro third-party you could get on a Mac with the graphical UI. Of course, Apple showed them how to develop for a graphical UI. Of course, MS took advantage of the open access to the Mac OS (which is what led to Apple suing them, but failing).

Office for Mac was always profitable to MS, which is why threats to withdraw it have always been empty. This is largely because Mac users actually do tend to pay for their software — so don't criticize! Of course, now most of us are more than happy with iWork. But it looks like MS Office for Mac is finally back after some hiatus somewhere along the line. I suppose many "switchers" will still be willing to fork over and payout for the outrageous margins MS makes on their CashCow, no matter how bloated and screwed up it is. Every story I hear shows that Office for Mac users find they can give up their nasty habits easily enough, and wonder why they worried so much.

Anyway, the measly 150 Million (IN NON-VOTING STOCK) is long behind Apple and MS, probably ten years behind us at least. MS has NO stock in Apple, voting or otherwise. And what they had, when they had it, was hardly a prop for Apple — it was a slap on the hand for MS.
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dontmatter

Very good article Horace. Keep up the great work.

@Scott: your posts were the most annoying to read and full of logic holes. AKA: you're not convincing. You're a shill for someone else. Especially your "although I must admit Apple has done a good job with XYZ". Yeah, we can see through that.
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http://twitter.com/tnleeuw @tnleeuw

Great analysis, however, I do have some objections. I see both Moto & SE coming out with some really daring, high-end innovative hardware designs (Moto Atrix, SE Xperia Play) for Android.

At least in the short-term, this negates your claims regarding Android licensees.

How the Android market will play out in the long term, I don't dare to predict. I do share your fears that differentation in the hardware might become too costly to maintain, on the Android platform. However, I do still see the hopeful signs that there will be high-end, innovative Android hardware.

asymco

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