Was this the Microsoft's best phone quarter ever just people fail to see?

[labsii]

I stick to the math. It is objective. I stick to financials, that's what counts in corporate world, not the love of people around the world.

So let's see. Apple has around 15% of the market share. It has 90% of mobile industry profits. It has more than 70% of app purchases, and is a source of more than 70% of ad revenue (including Google's). Now let's guess that around 10% of the market share are Android flagships. It would be anything but impossible that if you add it up to iPhone users that they represent anything but 95+% of everything.

So value of a non-flagship user in the business world is very close to 0. If you loose millions of those users, multiply that with 0... you have still not lost anything.

If you take that in mind, let's re-evaluate the quarter again. Notice that Microsoft's revenue fell significantly less than the number of units sold, so Microsoft was selling significantly more expensive phones. Add to that that Lumia 950 wasn't even available in the whole period and definitely not in all regions. So yes, it is likely that Microsoft has sold more flagship phones than ever. And if you see from the statistics above that only those phones matter, I believe this is the best phone quarter Microsoft has ever had.

I think that Microsoft is sending a clear message to value phone buyers: "We don't earn anything from you. We don't care what phone you use. We are just there that if you want a Windows experience you can have it as it is added value to our laptops that we at least get some money from. But if you don't want that's perfectly OK, no one's crying for you.'

This should be also a wake up call for Android OEMs. Don't subsidize the users. The era of growth has ended. If you don't earn money now, you will never do it. It is a very basic business school lesson.

Jut to note I am not saying that this was some very good quarter Microsoft should be proud with. Just that things might be moving in the right direction. Do you agree?

[UPDATE] I have just read that Sony has reported almost identical figures as Microsoft and reported that as a good result of their strategy that has significantly narrowed the losses in their phone division (they also report phone profits separately).

 

[PepperdotNet]

That is an interesting way of looking at it.

You are right, we still have no indication of how many of the new Microsoft flagships were sold. Should be even more interesting once we see those numbers.

 

[PepperdotNet]

I am extremely surprised that nobody else noticed this theory or had any comments whatsoever.

 

[peter leung 10586]

I agree with that. flagships are more profitable than value models.

 

[justonlumia]

Which is why the quality and speed difference between development of phone OS and the other software and services which are on multi platform are so far apart. They failed at getting the market share but can piggyback on market leaders with apps and services for $$$ while still working on the OS at a level of investment which would not hurt the company bad with the value models keeping the OS and store relevant.

Microsoft is going in the right direction but with the history of failures, the silence, stagnant 8.1 phones which were marketed with the promise of W10, phones not yet on denim and the point above, they will go through a rough time till the intent comes to fruition frustrating and driving people away.

One more thing to be noted is the flagship was sold with a beta OS "intended for fans" with no warning which brings to the doubt how many would trust Microsoft to to buy a flagship till the whole thing is ready apart from the fans. They need to be able to sell the flagship for it to be profitable