Problem - nobody is making any money

[cgk]

In the first quarter, according to Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt, Apple accounted for about 80% of all profits in the mobile phone business, with Samsung accounting for the rest. The two companies combined, he figures, had 74% of mobile handset industry revenues.

?It is getting increasingly hard to understand where the rest of the device vendors will get the capital to fund necessary R&D and sales and marketing investments to continue to compete with Apple and Samsung,? the Raymond James analyst writes.

He wonders where, aside from Samsung, Google and Microsoft will find hardware partners to use Android and Windows Phone.

?With essentially all of the other hardware vendors besides Apple and Samsung struggling to find profits to reinvest into R&D, Microsoft and Google have to be wondering who their hardware partners will ultimately be,? he writes. ?Neither wants to be in a position where they have to take on more of the R&D burden, and neither want to have to initiate bidding wars to give Samsung an incentive to focus on its platform. Our assumption is that both Huaweii and ZTE will be courted heavily over the next few quarters by both Microsoft and Google as they look to strengthen their stable of sustainable hardware partners.?

Apple, Samsung Account For All Mobile Phone Maker Q1 Profits - Forbes


if WP7 or any other platform is to be successful, OEM have to actually make a profit - who do you think is the most likely candidate on the Windows phone side?

 

[HeyCori]

Marketshare wise I think Nokia has already taken the lead. And one carrier in particular looks like they want to fight back the Apple flood.

AT&T “sick of taking orders from Apple”, Nokia Lumia 900 marketing “to go into high gear in May, June.” | WMPoweruser

 

[selfcreation]

WP = Nokia for sure .

NOKIA is the flag ship of WP ... MS paid them millions if not billions to make it their flag ship .. and Nokia just invested MORE millions for AT&T to push WP .


and like at&T said , watch the news for WP cause it should be hitting HUGE int he next 2 months.. ( starting new marketing campaign for WP)

if we can only get one or 2 more BIG carriers to push WP like at&T should be in the next couple months . WP will quickly clime to the top.

 

[mattpga]

it also depends where you are in the world. In the UK you have a choice of Nokia 900, Nokia 800, Nokia 701 or HTC Radar. At the moment Nokia are windows phone and that won't change before apollo is released.

 

[Gungzwei]

I don't think the author of the arcticle understands the Mobile phone world very well at all. Like he states, MS and Google both are on Samsung devices. But Google owns Motorola and MS is pretty deep into it with Nokia.

Add HTC to both camps and, no offence to Huaweii and ZTE, but why would Microsoft and Google need to "court them heavily" when they have little brand recognition.

No. Microsoft and Google are not "wondering who their hadware partners will ultimately be". They are just looking to increase market share. AT&T, Verizon(hopefully soon), and other carriers are eager for this to happen because it costs the about $400 to buy an iPhone for a customer, where it only costs about half that for an Android or Windows Phone.

 

[Seketh]

it also depends where you are in the world. In the UK you have a choice of Nokia 900, Nokia 800, Nokia 701 or HTC Radar. At the moment Nokia are windows phone and that won't change before apollo is released.

And also Samsung Omnia W. Still, a ridiculous ammount of devices for a whole platform, especially when comparing to Android.

And don't forget that european operators treat the Lumia series like they are Symbian devices. No investement on Windows Phone and 0 attempts in selling it as such.

Then they complain no one goes to a store asking for Windows Phone… People have to know it exists first, and the european operators share much of the blame in the lack of awareness.

For example, the biggest operator in Portugal, if you go to their page, they don't differentiate Windows Mobile from Windows Phone:

loja > Smartphones (Click on Windows Phone, see first offer).

And then there's those prices...