Interesting Links for 28-10-2011

[andrewducker]

• French government 'banning vegetarianism' in school canteens
  (tags: food france vegetarianism )
• Wheat is EVIL. Apparently.
  (tags: wheat gluten weight diet food health )
• Samuel L. Jackson Is the highest-grossing actor of all time.
  (tags: SamuelLJackson movies money )
• Sentencing laws: Mandatory life and public protection. A difficult balancing act
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Comments

[channelpenguin]

Wheat is evil. Sugar is more evil.

Apple make a decent profit on each device sold, Samsung don't, so market share as raw numbers-of-units is a little misleading.

[andrewducker]

It's misleading if you care about profits. If what you care about is units shipped then it's completely leading. And as that's what I care about, I'm very happy with it.

[johncoxon]

What's more misleading is the fact that Apple lost sales during that quarter due to persistent rumours of an imminent refresh, so the quarter isn't representative of sales (as Andrew already noted in his link description). I would be astonished if Apple does not reassert its dominance in the next quarter's results.

Although I agree that profits are a more reliable indicator of market share than units sold, I wouldn't say it's 'misleading' - it's not like the article isn't completely crystal clear about the measure it's using. It might actually be more helpful, I suppose, to discuss 'profit share' and 'user share', since those are basically the two things you're discussing.

[andrewducker]

Although I agree that profits are a more reliable indicator of market share than units sold,

Depends what you mean by "market share". If you mean "the number of phones on the market" then units sold seems to be much better than the profit made on said units. And other than Apple or Samsung shareholders, I'm not sure why people would care who is making the most cash.

[johncoxon]

"number of phones on the market" is unit share; "amount of profit in the market" is profit share. Both are equally valid ways to consider the market, and that's why I think market share is an unhelpful term. Profit share's more useful because it gives you a better idea of how the company is doing in that market - unit share is ultimately useless as a masure of a company's health, since profit will inform a company's strategy and decision making far more than units sold will.

[andrewducker]

Aaaah - I don't really care about Samsung's health, per se. Just that they've sold a lot of phones :->

[johncoxon]

So if you don't care about their health, why do you care about their products? I don't get it; surely if you care enough to want to know about their sales, you care about how the company itself is doing?

[andrewducker]

Nope, I care largely about the Android ecosystem, and the fact that Samsung is pumping out huge numbers of their phones is why I'm interested.

I'm also interested by what phones people are using, in general, and the changing fortunes of the different operating systems, and that's connected.

My next phone _might_ be a Samsung one. But if it's not then it'll be an HTC, or a Sony Ericsson.

[johncoxon]

I'd get whichever one puts the least bullshit on the phones.

Well, no. I'd get an iPhone. But you know what I mean.

[andrewducker]

Well, yeah. I'm most likely to go with a Samsung precisely because it doesn't have HTC Sense on it. And if I can get one that doesn't have any carrier crap on it then I'll be going with that.

Heck, if I can manage to buy the phone outright and then just go sim-only then that would be perfect, but I'm not sure whether I'll have the cash up front to manage that in January. I'll see.

[johncoxon]

This is one of the reasons I prefer iPhone; no crapware. (Ditto Mac OS, actually.)

[andrewducker]

It's definitely an advantage Apple has, where they can throw their weight around. Steve Jobs did a _fantastic_ job of keeping the phone companies in line.

[johncoxon]

It's also a very good example of just how much the iPhone changed things, given that four years ago Apple didn't have _any_ weight to throw around.

[andrewducker]

Four years ago Apple was riding high on the iPod, which was the world's best selling MP3 player. When the iPhone was launched he got a great deal out of AT&T, with complete control over the phone from the very beginning. There was a huge amount of fuss about it before people even knew much about it.

Sure, Apple have more weight now - but they were already doing very well then.

[johncoxon]

It's true. But it's testament to how attractive the iPhone was, compared to the rest of the market, that they got that deal with AT&T. That was very little to do with iPod sales and a lot to do with the fact that the iPhone was clearly miles ahead of anything else on the market, which is very impressive.

[andrewducker]

It certainly had its advantages :->