Android is an open platform. We saw at IFA 2010 all sorts of devices running Android, so it already running on tablets. But the way Android Market works is it’s not going to be available on devices that don’t allow applications to run correctly. Which devices do, and which don’t will be unit specific, but Froyo is not optimised for use on tablets. If you want Android market on that platform, the apps just wouldn’t run, [Froyo] is just not designed for that form factor.

via Google’s Hugo Barra: Android 2.2 ‘not optimized for tablets’ – Google 24/7 – Fortune Tech.

How appealing are tablets that don’t run any apps? Or content?

It still amazes me that a Google exec would say that it’s acceptable that consumers are led to make purchasing mistakes with his product.  Apparently any malfeasance is excusable because in the name of openness.

Just noticed that the Apple online store now says it takes 1-2 weeks to ship an iPhone 3GS. I think this just changed from 5-7 days shipping.

Is Apple having supply problems again with the 3GS model?  Or perhaps Apple is saving supply for a China launch? Or using production capacity to make iPod touches?

via tight supply of iPhone 3GS? | The Mac Observer Forums.

The news today that Foxconn can only produce iPhones at the rate of about 4 million per month shows how constrained Apple’s production is. Demand is far, far higher.

The discussion about iPhone vs. Android share is usually framed around questions of demand or distribution, but may really be a question of production capacity right now.

The shift was not into mobile software which began in 2001 under his predecessor. It was not into enterprise solutions which also preceded his tenure. OPK’s main contribution was the move into mobile services.

The concept of mobile services may be an unfamiliar one for casual observers because it has not become a visible business for operators and certainly not for handset vendors. It’s also a complicated business model that requires some deeper understanding of the way the telecom industry is structured.

What Nokia had in mind was to offer various value-added, billable services to operators which would be enabled by Nokia handsets. The types of services included music subscriptions (Comes With Music), email (several acquisitions), photo sharing, and navigation.

The idea was that since many operators would not be capable of rolling out own brand services and could not do the heavy back-end lifting or the integration with handsets, someone could step in and roll out white labeled solutions world-wide. Third parties would also find it impossible to integrate and would lack the relationships Nokia had with operators world-wide.

For example, Nokia could enable a South American operator to offer email services to all their customers (with or without smartphones) and that service could be offered at a certain incremental price over the basic voice plan. The client implementation could be device independent but Nokia devices would probably work better. This would lead to higher ARPU which could be shared with Nokia.

Anyone can see that this is a complicated business plan and is therefore unlikely to be successful. But what makes it a complete failure is the realization that most buyers will resist the idea of paying for individual services separately. $1/mo for email, $2/mo for music, $3/mo for maps, etc. is repulsive. Users stampeded instead to unlimited data plans and smartphones which offered all these services and hundreds more for free or at prices negotiated with third party providers, rather than the untrusted network operators.

And therein lies the entire cause of Nokia’s strategic failure: an operator centric point of view. It led to poisoned devices and irrational business plans.

Which leads to the question in the headline. Is this mistake recognized and is it big enough to cause such a disruptive CEO dismissal?

I argue yes. Strategic errors are forgivable, but the they become a capital offense when they turn into a derailment of the core business. Instead of being enhanced with value-added services, the core business collapsed under the disruptive attack of unlimited data.

But it gets worse. Like the capital offense that Robbie Bach was guilty of at Microsoft, there has to be some direct accountability. To add insult to injury, OPK single-handedly pushed through the biggest and stupidest acquisition in Nokia’s history. To support this flawed vision of mobile services OPK bought Navteq for $8.1 billion in October 2007.

Intended as a service that could be rolled out on all phones and monetized through operator billing, Nokia maps is a free service that will never return anything to shareholders.

Missing where the puck was going is one thing but burning precious capital is another. This, in my humble opinion, is why OPK was fired.

Speaking of pucks, here’s hoping fresh Canadian eyes will see where it’s going.

via (1) Twitter / Home.

Clears up why they rely on “activations” to find out what’s going on in the market.

That means no seamless integration with Gmail. No Google Latitude. No multitouch in the map app, either. And in place of the free and fantastic turn-by-turn Google Navigator app, Verizon installed its VZ Navigator service — a feature which costs $10 a month to use.

It would be one thing for Verizon to set the default search and map app to Bing with the option to switch back to Google. But it’s utterly inexcusable for Verizon to destroy the possibility of a switch without the user having to root the device and, under Verizon’s company policies, void their warranty. And on top of that, repeatedly charge you for a sub-par service instead of keeping the gold standard of navigation apps for free.

And as bad as that is, there’s now a rumor that Verizon will be doing this again. On every single one of its Android devices.

After speaking with a Verizon representative about the Bing debacle on the Fascinate — who also lied about the existence of a search alternative — The Droid Guy contacted two Verizon tipsters who told him that the carrier “is dropping the Google Search from all future Android Devices and offering Bing in it’s [sic] place.”

via Verizon Rumored To Replace Google With Bing On All Android Devices | Markets | Minyanville.com.

Lots more in the linked article.

This story just keeps getting better and better.

Regardless of motivations, the restriction if broadly applied would have Verizon reneging on its pledge to support the openness of Android and reflects a wider trend of the OS being artificially restricted by carriers. Most US providers are disabling Android 2.2′s tethering support in favor of their own, and AT&T has banned non-Market Android apps under the pretext of security. The moves paradoxically leave Apple’s iPhone more open in some areas, as its users can choose Google, Bing or Yahoo for search and don’t have first-party apps deliberately hidden or broken.

Read more: Electronista

We now turn our attention now to constructing the iTunes income statement: namely total sales, gross margins and deduce its operating budget.

Gross Sales

To obtain the top line (income) for iTunes we need to know the average selling price (ASP) for songs and for apps. Apps are easy, we received that info in June: $0.29 per app. For songs, it was easy before early last year: $0.99/song. After the selective price increase, the blended price needs to be estimated. I chose $1.10 for 2009 and $1.2 for 2010. These are just assumptions and can be adjusted but should give us a rough estimate:

I followed the convention of using income rate or $/month to show the history of sales. It shows that even with a price less than a third of the music product, apps are generating over half of the sales of music. In other words, apps are adding 50% to iTunes sales today. If the decline in music units continues and the app sales increase with the current trajectory then app sales value will overtake music sales next year, consistent with the cross-over of cumulative units sold.

Gross Margin

If we know how much Apple pays music licensors and developers (i.e. cost of goods sold) we can calculate how much it keeps for operations (gross margin). Apple’s app margin is 30 percent. The music margin was never official but the consensus has been 10 percent for a while.

Using these figures, we get the following chart:

This shows that what is left after paying the content license, Apple “keeps” about $50 million every month to run the App store (iTAS) and another $30 million to run the Music store (iTMS).

The Operating Budget

Apple has made a point of saying that both iTAS and iTMS are run at “break even” implying that the gross margin is used up in operating costs (CAPEX, R&D, SG&A). To be sure, the cost of bandwidth and the data center(s) needed must be considerable.

But the operating budget for the store is beginning to reach a level that may be beyond what can be spent reasonably. The amount left over for operations has increased from ~$30 million a month in 2009 to $75 million/month today.

In fact, if this burn rate is maintained (even though it’s increasing) the operating budget for iTunes is nearing $1 billion/yr.

I’m not an expert on the cost of operating data centers but $ 1billion a year seems like a lot. I would love to see an analysis of how this could be allocated.

Implications

I would also add that because of the increasing mix of apps, the overall gross margin percent is increasing. I estimate that to be a blended 17%–a healthy margin for a content store–and an increase from 10% before the app store came online.

Finally, one implication of the economics involved is that a budget like this may provide a significant barrier to entry for any competitors looking to take on the iTunes juggernaut. iTunes has reached content critical mass (12 million songs), user base (160 million users) and wide distribution (23 countries for songs and 80+ countries for apps).

These are non-trivial operational issues that even the best in the “cloud” business models will find challenging.

Footnote:

This discussion excludes video sales, rentals, book sales as we don’t have solid histories for these product lines. However, we can do a spot check on the cumulative totals:

• 450 million TV episodes downloaded implies $1 billion in sales.
• 100 million movies downloaded probably adds at least another $1 billion
• 35 million books adds another 500 million.
• Compare with 11.7 billion songs at ASP of $1 for about $12 billion in song sales and 6.5 billion apps at ASP of $0.29 or about $1.9 billion.

iTMS content downloads have generated $16.4 billion in sales to date.

Based on the recent updates to iTMS and iTAS on Sept. 1, the following graph shows the cumulative units of songs and apps downloaded indexed to the same starting date.

As can be seen, the App store has reached the same total downloads in 2.2 years as the iTMS reached after five years. The two curves are likely to be the same height (around 13 billion each) before the year is over.

Verizon, unfortunately, is also what ruins the phone. Or, rather, what it’s forced Samsung to do to the phone, which you could sum up in a word: Bing. Bing is the default—and only—search engine on the Fascinate. A Google Android phone. In the search widget, in the browser, when you press the search button. Bing. No, you can’t change it. There’s no setting for it, and the Google Search widget that you can snag from the Market is blocked (or at least very carefully hidden). Being unwittingly forced into Verizon and Bing’s conjugal relationship is infuriating on its own, but the implementation also feels like the sloppy hack that it is.

via Daring Fireball Linked List: Matt Buchanan on Verizon’s Samsung Fascinate Lightning.

John Gruber astutely adds:

Android is “open”, but who it’s open for, primarily, are the carriers. (Somehow I doubt we’ll see any Windows Phone 7 devices where Google is the one and only search option.)

The primary defense of Google’s Android strategy is that it’s beneficial in driving traffic to Google’s services/properties. This is by no means a certainty. To the contrary, it seems likely that the Android experience will be defined by operator back-room deals.

See also: asymco | Android vs. Google Part II

Coupling a lack of control over the platform, the revenue streams, the user experience, the potential banishment of AdMob from iOS and an attack on Google’s brand, Android is currently winning the war with Google.

However, my money long term remains with Google. They can and will eventually beat Android. Perhaps with Chrome.

[Footnote: if anyone wonders why Verizon, Google's best friend in mobile, is gutting Android, you need to remember an exclusive five-year deal Microsoft struck with the carrier to provide search and advertising services on the phone. Microsoft was rumored to pay $500 million for the opportunity.]

IDC raised its 2010 smartphone sales growth forecast to 55 percent from 44 percent earlier. Citing booming smartphone demand it also lifted its forecast for overall cellphone market growth to 14.1 percent from 12.6 percent.

via Cellphone market growing faster than expected -IDC | Reuters.

Keep in mind the 55% growth figure when reviewing analyst forecasts for iPhone growth. If their forecast is less than that then it implies market share loss. When I suggested 50% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) for iPhone going forward 3 years, there was a lot of skepticism but this market is growing faster than most people expected.

I still believe that Apple can grow the iPhone at least as fast as the market.

Here are the quarterly y/y growth rates for iPhone units since sales began:

159% 516% 88% 90% 644% 7% 100% 131% 61%

On a yearly basis:

2007: 3.7 million

2008: 13.7

2009: 25.1

2010 first half: 17.15

2010 (my estimate): 44.4

1. The iPhone begins to reach into more markets or points of distribution without exclusivity.
2. The Android surge will apply competitive pressure forcing Apple’s pricing and hence margins.

The first claim can be countered by observing that Apple has not cut margins when switching from exclusive to non-exclusive distribution in several markets. In fact, Apple made this information public: When Tim Cook was asked in October 2009 earnings concall “So when you go from exclusive to multiple, you don’t change the charge to the carrier?” Cook answered, “Correct.”

The second claim can be countered by observing that innovation trumps pricing every time. When looking back at the three years’ history of the industry there is a clear but counter-intuitive demonstration of the power of innovation in the market.

Whereas one would expect that in a highly competitive market torrid growth would only be possible with lower pricing and hence margins, the opposite is observed in the phone market during the last three years:

[HTC data is over a two year period]

The graph shows that companies that grew the fastest had the highest margins, and the companies that grew the slowest had the lowest margins. The trend line in the graph above is precisely orthogonal to what would be expected in a commodity market.

The orthogonality of growth vs. margin points to the effect of innovation in this market. In a non-commoditized market (i.e. one where usable improvements in a product are quickly absorbed and highly valued) high growth and high margins are correlated.

In a commodity market (i.e. one where improvements in a product are neither absorbed nor valued) growth can only come at the expense of margins.

Being able to spot when a market tips from innovation-driven disruption to price-driven commodity sales is an essential skill for both investors and managers. It requires a comprehensive and integrated analysis of technology, finance, consumer behavior, competitive forces and a lot of faith in theory to make the right call.

As a keen observer I think the market still has a long way to go before it reaches this tipping point. I don’t see it happening in the next three years (which is just 2 product cycles–the most an outside observer can hope to roadmap).

The cellphone maker will unveil its new flagship model E7, which comes with a large touchscreen and full keyboard, at the show in London, two sources with direct knowledge of Nokia’s plans told Reuters.

via PREVIEW-Nokia bets on new smartphones for recovery | Reuters.

Analysts have been saying that Nokia has one last chance to fix (software, UI, strategy, etc.) for some time now.

Nokia sold 24 million smartphone units sold in Q2 which represented significant growth. Sales and Profits however were both down but to say that Nokia is facing imminent demise is misguided.

How is Nokia able to sell so many units when its portfolio elicits so much pathos?

The reason Nokia can still coast with poor products is that they have a vast distribution network. I don’t know the exact distribution but let’s assume that half their phones go through carriers and half through distributors who resell unlocked phones world-wide. Carriers will continue to carry the phones because they slot into well-established portfolio slots and distributors will continue to distribute because the product is competitive in markets where there are no other unlocked smartphones at the same price.

So predicting imminent failure without taking into account distribution inertia is showing a lack of understanding of the market. The same insensitivity to distribution is why so many predictions of Microsoft’s “death” or RIM’s “death” fail.

The less sensational but more accurate description of Nokia’s predicament is that their strength in distribution prevents them from reforming their business model in order to benefit from the disruption that mobile broadband is bringing to mobile telecommunications.

That’s a mouthful.

Mr. Jobs was being modest.

To see how modest we have the following data:

If the current download rate is maintained (17 million apps/day) and if the pricing of $0.29/app is preserved, then $1.8 billion will have been spent on iOS apps this year.

With the rate of downloads increasing as steeply as it is, $2 billion in sales is not unlikely in the third year of the store. Twice what Jobs was predicting for “some point in time”.

The other line in the graph is the iTunes music download rate. I’ve written about it before and pointed out that the point of inflection in the download rate coincided with the increase in price for songs from $0.99 to $1.29. Not much more to say here except that the trend continues and music downloads continue to slow.

As far as Apple is concerned, the slowdown in iTMS is more than offset by the increase in iTAS. As far as the music industry is concerned, I don’t think CD sales are increasing. Does anyone know?

This works out to 54 apps per iOS device.

On June 7 Apple reported 5 billion apps over 100 million iOS devices or an average of 50 apps for iOS device.

On April 8th, I computed that the app attach rate was 47.

Is this rate noteworthy?

Let’s rewind to two years ago.  August 27th, 2008, soon after the App store launched.

Nokia had just declared that its users had downloaded over 90 million applications over the past 2 years. An analyst estimated that over 100 million users globally use Nokia smartphones/converged devices, implying an attach rate of less than 1 app/smartphone.

My, how expectations have changed.

Note the spelling in some of these top downloads:

Wàlt Dìsney

S0uth Pàrk

Famìly Gūy

Sp0ngeb0b

the Sìmpsons

Hellò Kìtty

via Android.com – Market.

It’s Android so it’s open (to copyright violations).

I should note that if these free apps are monetized through Google’s ad network there seems, to my untrained eye, a clear legal liability.

Every result from a calculator can be dragged to another with just press-and-hold touch. No more need for “memory” functions. This is the sort of improvement in a basic, everyday tool that only a large screen and touch interface can enable.

$1.99 on the App store.

Buy it and help support Asymco.

According to Gartner, mini notebooks constituted less than 18.0% of the total mobile PC market in the second quarter of 2010, down from 20.0% of the total market at 2009-end. Gartner expects mini notebooks market share to drop to approximately 10.0% by 2014.

However, worldwide PC shipments are projected to total 367.8 million units for the full year 2010,

via Near-Term PC Growth Not Visible – Yahoo! Finance.

Speculation about the iPad production ramp indicates that the iPad will ship about 14 million units this year and 36 million next year. Projecting a forward growth rate of 50% and adding the Gartner forecast above gives us the graph on the left.

The iPad (plus competitors) will likely overtake the sales of mini notebooks as soon as 2012. The collapse in netbook sales is likely to be much more rapid than Gartner suggests.

“In our view, investors are missing the way BlackBerries are eating into Nokia’s messaging phone share in Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia now that the E-series demand is slowing,” he writes. “We believe the Torch is on pace for 500K units in August,

via Research In Motion: MKM Still Bullish; Cites Growth Outside U.S. – Tech Trader Daily – Barrons.com.

Torch selling 500k units a month may be good news to RIM but it’s hardly a barnburner.

The news about Nokia losing share to RIM is another curious data point. First, because it identifies two competing smartphone classes (E-series and Blackberries) as “messaging phones”. That’s like saying that HP is losing share to Dell in the “email PC” business. Though the classification of general purpose devices by single uses is probably fair here since these devices are not much good for anything else.

It won’t be long before we’ll see smart mobile devices selling at the rate of 1 million per day (I’d bet by the holidays this year.)

Gartner is estimating the global PC market to total of 367 million units this year (though it may need downward revision based on recent data).

If the 1 million/day benchmark holds, and all indications are that it will, then the total smartphone/iPad/touch market will be greater than the total PC market next year.

Sony is “not convinced there is a large enough market to justify bringing out a tablet,”

Sony would say No to Walkman today
Sony in September:

Sony Corp., said yesterday it hasn’t decided yet whether to offer its own tablet computer. It needs to be a “very appealing product that is going to be widely accepted, as opposed to a me-too product,” said Kazuo Hirai, president of Tokyo-based Sony’s Networked Products & Services Group.

Hirai said 23 companies are planning to bring tablet computers to market, making a price war inevitable.

via Samsung, Toshiba `Me-Too’ Tablets Use Price to Fight IPad – Bloomberg

I’d bet that Sony will soon join the stampede to make iPad knockoffs. They probably did not read today’s Appleinsider piece on Apple’s plans to increase iPad production to 3 million units per month.

We know that there were 59.6 million iPhones sold through June (from SEC filings)

We also know that 3.2 million iPads were sold.

If we assume about 8 million iPhones and 4 million iPads were sold during August and July, the total number of iPod touch sold is 45.2 million.

That is 37.7% of total units.

In April I wrote that 41% of all iOS units sold were iPod touch to date.

The expansion of iPhone distribution plus the addition of iPad as reduced the platform footprint for the iPod, but it’s still a sizable chunk. More than one in three iOS units in use are non-cellular devices. As the iPad rolls that number could move toward 50%.

The iPod touch has been around about as long as the iPhone. It was launched three months after the first iPhone 2G, almost exactly three years ago. While the iPad has been in the market less than six months, a large number of potential competitors have been launched running Android and there seems to be a real rush to market. Six months is about as quickly as any hardware product can be reasonably engineered.

So the question is why is the iPad being cloned while the iPod has remained in the market by itself?

The value of the iPod is arguably as high with a healthy margin and consistent pricing. The volumes are comparable with tens of millions already sold so there is no obvious economic disadvantage to the iPod vs. iPad. Indeed, the iPod touch is a large (1.6) multiplier to the whole iOS platform. The demographics are very sweet too with a clear upsell opportunity.

One explanation might be that the iPod is a music device and that market has been locked up with iTunes, putting up a huge barrier to entry. However during the music launch this month, there was almost no mention of the iPod touch as a music player while it was loudly touted as a game and app platform. Browsing and Facetime are also huge uses for the device.

So in the iPod touch we have a mini iPad–ironically, the dig at the iPad was that it was nothing more than a large iPod touch.

So if cloners are rushing to copy the iPad, why not its smaller incarnation?

LG has reportedly told Korean sources that “it expects WP7 to outperform the two rival smartphone operating systems” – one of these platforms is definitely Android (I’m not sure about the other platform LG is referring to; Symbian? iOS? BlackBerry?).

via LG to bank heavily on Windows Phone 7, says WP7 will outperform Android » Unwired View.

While Samsung believes WP7 is doomed, LG believes it will RULE!

This might go some way to explain why LG is in such dire straits when it comes to smartphone share.

“We are not seeing visible demand for Symbian,” she said.

via Samsung says to focus on Android, bada software | Reuters.

I was ready to dig into this, but the same person is quoted saying this of Microsoft’s new Windows Phone:

“There is still some professional, specialized demand there,”

Whaaa?

Windows Phone is anything but professional and specialized. It’s designed to orphan business users and is targeted to mainstream use.

Another example of head-scratching random marketing word generation.

Talk of ownership flared up again in the last decade as various game consoles and boxes paraded in front of consumers. There were wars waged over DVD formats, encoding formats and DRM. Then came hulu and Apple TV and roku and who knows what else I missed.

It’s all bound to go badly. Here’s why this property will remain off limits:

• The ownership is not for the space but for the time and attention of the audience. The time spent consuming televised content is what’s at stake.
• That time is increasingly being fragmented. It was first broken into tiny pieces by cable channels that divided audiences into niches.
• Erosion of cohesive audiences continued with DVD rentals and Netflix. Home theaters ate into both broadcast and outside-the-home entertainment
• Attention was attacked with PVRs like Tivo.
• Demographics were exploded with game consoles with age groups separating into different modes of consumption.
• Migration of other portable devices like laptops, smartphones and iPads into the couch room are now further degrading the value of the “living room” as a significant target for advertisers.
• Internationally there never was a unified living room. Consumption patterns and even broadcast business models vary widely.

Ultimately there’s really nothing in “the living room” worth fighting for. The disruptive play here is the crumbling of monolithic audiences that used to define “prime time”. It’s not a new box to take over from another box.

The technologies that are coming to invade the living room have already broken it into parcels that lack cohesion.

Just like the division of land among numerous generations of heirs creates land only useful for residential development, it’s time to abandon dreams of owning the farm. That farm has long ago stopped being fertile.

Pshaw to all that, says Symbian. The company points out that according to Canalys’ research, there’s 300,000 Symbian devices activated on a daily basis, which equals 109.5 million phones activated annually.

via Sad Nokia Wants You To Know It’s Activating 300,000 Smartphones Daily.

I long for the good old days when we used to just measure units sold per quarter.

To make it more readable (but conceptually more complicated) I put the data on a log chart.

Discussion

The time span covered is nine and a half years. The top of the graph marks the one billion threshold. Reaching one billion in less than 10 years is an interesting challenge for any platform and, at first glance, it seems that both iOS and Android have a shot at it. This does not seem likely for any of the other platforms.

The challenge is that as penetration grows, it’s natural for the slope for the lines to become shallower. Some platforms are simply not able to address one billion users:

• i-Mode, AOL and other technologies with localized value networks are clearly limited to populations in their home countries.
• iTunes is limited by the use of a PC, which has a small footprint in under-developed countries (dependency by iOS on iTunes should throw up a red flag here).
• The iPod was embraced and extended by more ubiquitous mobile phones.

In contrast, mobile phones in general and smartphone platforms in particular have potential to reach a billion users (per platform.)

To wit, note that iOS and Android have similar curves to date and are both likely to overtake iPod and any other contender.

So for the obligatory theological question: Will Android follow the curve of iOS or will it diverge and continue on a steeper trajectory? Does it matter?

Discuss…

As recently as 2007 Apple was priced 50x one year’s earnings.

Now it’s priced 47x one quarter’s earnings.

Should we consider applying old yearly earnings multiples to quarterly earnings as the new valuation normal?

Assuming that 100 million was crossed half-way through June, then the additional 20 million units must have been sold during half of June, and all of July and August. That’s approximately 20 million over 75 days or 267k units per day.

Apple also announced that there are 230k new iOS activations per day which seems consistent given that they classify these as “new” activations.

There is one huge implication of this figure:  Forecasts for iPhone, iPad and iPods may be too low. I had forecast 20 million units for the entire quarter (12.1 million iPhones, 4 million iPads and about 4 million iPod touch). The iPhone figure assumed 65% y/y growth at that looks way too low. There is still another month in the quarter meaning that the total could be 30% too low.

I will be updating the forecast accordingly.

“iPhone 4 demand remains very robust and despite efforts to close the supply-demand imbalance and the continued supply ramp, Apple still cannot meet iPhone demand,”

via Apple unable to keep up with iPhone 4 demand, say execs | MacNN.

Ghai now estimates that Apple will sell 5.75 million iPads in the quarter that ends Sept. 25, up from an earlier estimate of 5 million, and 22 million in fiscal 2011, up from 19.5 million.

via The iPad as Trojan horse – Apple 2.0 – Fortune Tech.

That’s very close to my estimate of 21 million, though I might add that my estimate is unrevised since US supply met demand. There are still markets which don’t have iPad distribution however, so we’ll see if global demand can be met before year end.

By the way, the estimate of 5.75 million for this quarter is higher than all but three of 14 analysts estimates on iPad unit forecasts *for the first year*.

Apple’s continuing valuation struggle continues to fascinate. While underperforming on a multiple basis both the S&P 500 and its own historic value, Apple is nearing bargain bin pricing.

To illustrate this further, get the new Asymco Data Download for the iPhone.

You can now use an iPhone to visualize how the owners of the company that created it are being punished.

Google Translate.

Original article in Finnish.

“A wave of iPhone and iPod owners behave differently than others.”

Weird bunch, those iPhone owners…

[1] Installed base of iPhone is small but share of smartphones in recent quarters is above 20%.  See: YLE: Nokia’s smartphone share crumbles in Finland

Flush with $45 billion in cash and investments ($50 per share) and no debt, Apple sports an enterprise value of about $190 per share. Compare that to $15 of earnings this year and enough catalysts to make next year’s estimate of $18 seem easily attainable, and you have a stock that actually trades at a discount to the S&P 500.

via Why Apple’s Stock Actually Looks Cheap — Seeking Alpha.

This is not news around here…

Devices – Windows Phone 7 Central.

To be built by HTC, Samsung and LG with Dell and Asus rumored.

Vendor love for Android runs as deep as Operator love of Android.

One of the takeaways was the logic of Microsoft’s entry into the Office market. The main internal justification was not that it would be a hugely lucrative new business, but that it was a necessity to the maintenance of the Windows business.

The story was that Lotus, having a huge installed base, could (and did) arbitrarily refuse to upgrade their software to the latest Windows version and in so doing, could kill the franchise. Lotus owned the “killer app” and could hold Windows hostage. Users would rather keep their applications than upgrade a largely invisible OS.

Another way to read this was that Microsoft needed to “vertically integrate” Windows so that it encompassed not only the OS but also the key applications that ran on the platform. A purely horizontal OS platform was obviously not viable as a business even back in the early 90s.

What reminded me of this story was the news that Dell is launching a new smartphone in the US.  Called Aero, it will run Android 1.5, an ancient version released in April of 2009, 18 months ago.

Now think about the idea of Adobe coming to market next week with a new version of Photoshop that ran only on Windows XP. Or even more poignantly, if Office were not part of Microsoft, seeing a *new* version of Word that only worked with Vista.

Through an aggressive acquisition plan twenty years ago, Microsoft avoided this scenario. Google today is faced with the prospect that not only the devices (which sit on its OS) but also services and apps on top would choose to remain on old versions of Android. There is nothing to stop them from doing just that. Unlike Microsoft, Google does not enforce licensing terms for Android. It is at the mercy of the value chain.

Couldn’t Google crack down and deprecate Cupcake? It’s not as easy as that. Not only do they not have license terms that permit that but in the phone business, development lead times are so long and global distribution can be so elastic that a low volume vendor like Dell has no choice but to sell multiple OS versions of their own products. Microsoft has almost the same problem with Windows Mobile, with a variety of given-up-for-dead Windows Mobile 6.5 powered devices still in the pipeline while Windows Phone 7 is imminent.

Taiwanese operators Chunghwa Telecom and Taiwan Mobile have reported much interest in iPhone 4 pre-orders. Both operators announced at 9pm on 26 August they would open pre-ordering at 10am on 27 August and both operators saw their websites crash, the China Post reports. By noon, some 10,000 users had signed up with Chunghwa Telecom and by 11am Taiwan Mobile had sold out all of its 3,000 iPhone 4 handsets available for pre-ordering. Rival Far EasTone said between 30,000 and 40,000 people signed up for a phone on its website and the operator will notify people that will be able to get the handset.

Taiwan Mobile sells out of iPhone 4 pre-orders – Telecompaper.

Brian Marshall, an analyst with investment firm Gleacher & Co., predicts that Apple will have sold 200 million iOS devices by this time next year. He expects the iPhone and iPad to represent 68 percent of gross margins for 2010.

via Apple’s mobile OS could move to more devices.

My expectations for the next 100 million were made in June:

My expectation is that well over 100 million iOS devices will sell during 2011, but even during the next 12 months (2H ’10 and 1H ’11) the total may well reach 100 million, making 200 million installed by June 2011 very likely.

The next 100 million iOS devices

My current expectation is that iPhone and iPad will account for 70 million additional iOS units for the twelve months following this June quarter. This excludes any Apple TV units moving to iOS.

As iOS moves to more of the iPod line-up it’s quite possible that another 30 million iPads with iOS will ship in the same time frame making Marshall’s forecast sound reasonable.

I’ve been delighted that contributing readers are not only civil and polite, but that they almost always move the intellectual level of the blog higher. That’s very gratifying because although one major consideration when publishing is creating a large audience, a high quality audience is much more important. Especially to a site dedicated to elevating analytical discourse.

So, being analytical, I wanted to find out how to characterize the audience and understand the attributes of the readers. Naturally, where appropriate I would like to share that information. I hope to share some stats, perhaps with some interesting highlight, every month.

To kick off, here is a snapshot of one month’s worth of visits to www.asymco.com ranked by operating system.

What is perhaps unexpected is that mobile platforms (iPhone, iPad, Android etc.) generated more views than Windows. When comparing browsers, I also observed that Internet Explorer makes up only about 5% of views. (If that’s not a leading indicator of the intellect of the readers, I don’t know what is.)

Time will tell whether these ratios persist, but so far, it seems that Asymco readers are at least eating their own dogfood.

Let your fingers do the walking through Apple’s income statements since FQ1 2005. Glide effortlessly through juicy bits of assets and liabilities. Slide your finger through nineteen quarters of financial goodness.

A special bonus: included is a separate visualization of Apple’s liquid assets: cash, cash equivalents, Short-term marketable securities and Long-term marketable securities. $$$$$!

Brilliant to use and look at on both iPhone, iPad and iPod touch:

Get it here.

AAPL Balance Sheet v2 using your iOS device.

You will need to have Roambi™ installed on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to open this file. (It’s free!) Tap Here To Install.

Read more about ADDs in Asymco’s ADD Page.

Yet another tablet

They all bear an outward resemblance to another tablet that was widely panned.

So what strikes me about all of these designs is that they’re basically just shiny rectangular things. There is very little you can do as a vendor to stand out with any particular rendition of a rectangle.

This is also becoming obvious with the mechanical design of smartphones. They are all smaller rectangles with shiny black screens.

Which begs the question: as they are all just screens, shouldn’t what’s on the screen matter more than the screen itself?

It seems only one vendor shows what’s on their screen.

The world’s largest mobile-phone maker’s bonds are trading as if Nokia’s rating has been cut, with spreads over government debt widening as the company strives to develop devices with the same mass appeal as the iPhone, Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry and devices based on Google Inc.’s Android software.

There’s a “significant amount of risk overall with Nokia’s business model,” said Scott Shiffman, who directs bond research at Chapdelaine Credit Partners in New York. “Credit spreads should move wider over time and ratings will continue to move lower. We think the ratings agencies will play catch-up to the business deterioration.”

via Nokia’s Credit Rating in Jeopardy on Falling Profit, Bonds Show – Bloomberg.

Management response continues to be that Nokia is “by a very wide margin the largest supplier of smartphones and small computers in the world.”

Microsoft executives told Goldberg during a recent visit to company headquarters that the company, carriers, and manufacturing partners, would spend “billions” of dollars in the first year on marketing and development of Windows Phone 7. Another source estimated a $1 billion price tag for the launch, with half of it going to marketing.

via AppleInsider | Microsoft to spend over $500m to catch up to iPhone, Android.

Note the scale of spending here.  The number quoted is twice Apple’s yearly ad budget, for all its products.

$500 million is roughly the equivalent of Apple’s entire advertising budget for its 2009 fiscal year. In its 2009 Form 10-K filing to the SEC, the Cupertino, Calif., company listed $501 million in advertising expenses. Microsoft’s fiscal 2009 advertising budget was $1.4 billion.

But beside the unrepentant destruction of Microsoft’s shareholder wealth, one other thing jumps out at me: why are the operators and vendors going along with this?

Fragmentation increases the cost of development, marketing, operations and hinders the creation of cohesive ecosystems.

Most companies are very aggressive in consolidating around internal platforms and standards. Supporting R&D teams and marketing teams around each platform is costly and dilutive to one’s brand.

With hundreds of Android devices and RIM and Apple increasing distribution, why would operators be willing to spend hundreds on a venture to promote a new platform? This decision is even more puzzling when realizing that the vendor of the new platform left nothing but business model carcasses behind the last time they got involved in the industry.

In addition the positioning of this product is suspiciously awkward. One could argue that as a vendor or operator, having an unaddressed or underserved market (say, business users) might mean this platform could expand the distribution of your product or service. But Windows Phone is being positioned as a consumer brand and that’s a crowded space where every other platform is also targeted. See the survey data below (unconfirmed source: US Army)

So again, why would operators and licensees spend hundreds of millions to introduce yet another platform in the market?

Maybe they are just taking Microsoft for a ride.

• Total Apps Approved: 301316
• Total Available Apps: 252076
• Total Available iPhone Apps: 239210
• Total Available iPad Apps: 23742

via iPad Apps, iPhone Apps, Deals and Discovery at App Shopper – Popular Recent Changes.

Note the near 24k apps for iPad.

However, I am considering sharing the data I have in a format that is easier to read than a spreadsheet but richer than a screen shot of a chart.

To that end I’ve begun experimenting with a solution based on a service called Roambi. Interested readers can download Asymco authored “roambi” files which I call ADDs (Asymco Data Downloads) will display rich data sets on iOS devices. These representations are interactive and easy on the eyes.

Rather than bore with details, the following images should be sufficiently descriptive.

So, to start, I am making available the market data from the article Android’s Pursuit of the Biggest Losers for your viewing pleasure.

Here is a quick FAQ about this new way of enjoying analysis:

• Q: What is an ADD?
• A: An ADD is an Asymco Data Download, a new way to look at the data behind the analysis with far more detail and a visually appealing representation.

• Q: How do I get ADDs?
• A: You will see the latest ADD featured in most pages in this blog and new ADDs will appear from time to time in blog articles. Here is an example:

• Q: What do I need to get and use ADDs?
• A: Any iOS device (iPod touch, iPad or iPhone) and download the Roambi visualizer app which is free.

• Q: Where do I get the Roambi app?
• A: Tap Here To Install Roambi

• Q: Is the iPad version different than the iPhone?
• A: Yes, much better.

• Q: Where can I get help on using the app?
• A: Hopefully you won’t need help, but there is help in the app and at Roambi’s site.

• Q: Will ADDs work with Android?
• A: No.

• Q: Will ADDs work with <insert non-iOS device here>?
• A: No.

• Q: Can I see ADDs on a Windows PC or with a Mac?
• A: No.

• Q: Can I download the actual spreadsheets?
• A: No.

• Q: How much does it cost?
• A: ADDs are free.

• Q: What if I see an error?
• A: Send me a message.

• Q: Will you publish more of this data, like the Apple financials?
• A: Yes. I hope to publish all my data. Stay tuned.

• Q: I don’t have time to read your blog every day, can I just get the data?
• A: I’m considering ways of creating a “premium” service. If you are interested send me a message that you would like to receive email-based links. Send request to: horace.dediu -at- asymco.com.

Tap Here To Download

Tap Here To Install Roambi

When I asked members of The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council, a group of chief executives who meet each year to deliberate on issues of public interest, to name the most influential business book they had read, many cited Clayton Christensen’s “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” That book documents how market-leading companies have missed game-changing transformations in industry after industry—computers (mainframes to PCs), telephony (landline to mobile), photography (film to digital), stock markets (floor to online)—not because of “bad” management, but because they followed the dictates of “good” management. They listened closely to their customers. They carefully studied market trends. They allocated capital to the innovations that promised the largest returns. And in the process, they missed disruptive innovations that opened up new customers and markets for lower-margin, blockbuster products.

via The End of Management – WSJ.com.

Here is the book: http://amzn.to/9jycyp

Altogether, there are have been 166 Android phone SKUs in the market with another probable 25 or so ready to launch in the next few months.

Now this may seem like a large number of different phone models in a short time, and it is, but Windows Mobile was even more proliferated as a licensed OS. At its peak over 50 new devices were released every month. The total now is over 1700 and it’s still growing.

The 183 known Android devices are distributed among 10 principal vendors with another 18 minor vendors. The 18 “other” vendors (see footnote 1) have either one or two devices in the market.

The vendors or original design manufacturers list ranked by most devices follows:

I broke out the devices also by the number of operator branded devices designed by the same manufacturer (green) and any devices designed and built by one vendor but sold under a different vendor’s brand (orange). It shows how, excluding “other”, HTC is the most prolific Android builder (and seller) but also how it still depends a lot on Operator branding.

The proliferation of Android devices is indeed striking, but as I’ve pointed out before, the licensing model for Android is symmetric with that for Windows Mobile with the exception that Android is both open source and cost-free to license. This should make it highly disruptive to the paid-license model that Microsoft worked so hard to implement. It should be no surprise then that the adoption dynamics for the platform are very similar, with the same licensees that took Windows Mobile a few years ago embracing Android today.

The proliferation still has a while to go. There is production capacity for over 2000 SKUs among all the vendors in the market (especially the “other” category) and it’s only been two years since a stable version of the OS has been available. So it would not be surprising if the total number of licensed Android products will overtake the 1700 or so Windows Mobile SKUs.

So what’s the paradox?

The question that should jump out from this data is what’s the value to the participants in this, or any mobile OS licensing model? When I analyzed the Windows Mobile field in 2007 or so, it was pretty evident that very few vendors other than HTC shipped enough volumes to make a product profitable. In fact, I coined the phrase Pocket PC Paradox to describe the situation where hundreds of vendors would line up to make undifferentiated products competing for a shrinking pie. This went on first with Pocket PC PDAs, then repeated with Windows Mobile and is now repeating with Android. Nobody ever made money except for HTC, not even Microsoft.

It’s still a mystery to me why any manager would decide to make the (n+1)th Android/WinMo phone. It must be difficult to make market projections that justify the cost of developing and marketing this new product.

But here’s some help: The total number of Android phones sold through the end of last quarter was about 23 million units. The total number of SKUs launched to date then was about 118. That means that the average Android phone SKU sold 200k units (2).

Now this may seem comically low, but I will again bring up history and point out that while the WinMo bubble was in its zenith, the average Windows Mobile SKU had 50k units sold. With the SKU count increasing more rapidly than the sales rate (40% more SKUs since June) it’s very likely that the average units per SKU is dropping. So by my reckoning there’s plenty more in the Android bubble to go.

—–

(1) The “other” category includes the following vendors:

• Lenovo
• Gigabyte
• Highscreen
• Notion Ink
• WayteQ
• Forsa Posh
• Inventec
• Kyocera
• Pantech
• TechFaith
• Saygus
• Sharp
• Ziss
• Alcatel
• General Mobile

(2) I’m fully aware that the distribution of sales over the products is not even and very likely exponential, but there is no way to predict whether a given new product will be a “hero” or DOA. The dream for every manager must be that his product will be a star, but the odds get worse and worse over time and the average units sold has to be considered as including these odds.

Smartphones, or Mobile devices, will soon become the dominant computing platform for humanity and supplant the PC which has reigned since Apple ignited the Personal Computer revolution in the late 1970′s.

via The numbers don’t lie: Mobile devices overtaking PCs – Google 24/7 – Fortune Tech.

I guess Gartner didn’t get the memo. By keeping the two categories separate, it implies no overlap in consumption and hence no need to worry if you’re in the PC business.

I installed HTC’s leaked version of 2.2 on my incredible last month. It has been noticeably faster, has better battery life, and the extra features are nice. As expected, Verizon put a lock down on the wifi tethering feature, and if I want to use it I have to pay an ADDITIONAL $25/month, which is completely ridiculous. Luckily, my phone has been rooted (it was the only way to get froyo on there) and I can use a number of FREE wifi tethering applications that don’t cost anything extra per month either.

It’s pretty sad that the only way to enjoy an android phone is to hack the crap out of it, and doing so requires relative technical expertise.

via Motorola’s Android 2.2 Rollout: What a Mess – PCWorld.

Reminds me of Windows Mobile in another way: the only real fans were those who could play with cooked ROMs. Conversely, imagine if the only iPhone fans were those who jailbroke/unlocked iPhones.

See also: The Android abdication

The OS market in the mobile space is dominated by other players. Is that a cause of worry?

I think it’s a temporary issue. I don’t put a lot of face and snapshot and time into what is going on. On a global basis, I see what is growing and what is shrinking. Text messaging is the fastest-growing on simple phones part of the mobile market. That’s where growth is. The smart phone part of the market, or the premium market, is in the downward part of the market. It will not be there for a long time in the future.

People want something that’s simple. The design goal for the Windows Phone 7 is that with rich experience you get simple stuff easily. Great keyboard or touch or both – so you can have that. It is too early to talk about dominating, but I’m excited about it. Android coming into the market says there is room for more innovation and we see ourselves playing a role in that space. People talked about the iPhone and thought that was the end of the world for OS. Windows Phone 7 will prove there is more room for innovation.

via Q&A: Tony Scott, Chief Information Officer, Microsoft.

In other words, Android’s entry in the market and remarkable growth, there is room for Windows Phone. And because Windows Phone is easy to use and has a keyboard and touch it will have a chance at dominating.

Microsoft’s enthusiasm for yet another mobile platform joining the fray (along with iOS, Android, RIM, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Meego, various sundry Linux and Bada) is not just delusion. I’m sure that they gathered positive feedback from operators. By this time next year there will be dozens of Windows Phone devices on the market. After all, Windows Mobile attracted 1700 licenses.