Samsung Group
Apple bought 23% of the world's NAND flash last quarter
January 6, 2012: 11:39 AM ETAnd re-sold it to consumers for billions more than it paid, according to Toni Sacconaghi
The only difference between a 16 GB iPhone 4S and the 32 GB model is 16 GB of NAND flash memory, for which Apple (AAPL) charges customers $100.
But according to Bernstein Research's Toni Sacconaghi, Apple buys that memory for a heavily discounted price of $0.67 per gigabyte, or a total $10.72.
That's a pretty sweet mark-up. And an extraordinarily profitable strategy, Sacconaghi writes in a note to clients entitled "Apple: The NAND Gravy Train."
It's such a sweet deal, he can't understand why Apple's competitors aren't doing the same. I quote:
Apple earned an estimated $2.2B+ in operating profits in CQ411 – at 78% gross margins – purely from upselling consumers to products with more NAND storage beyond Apple's base configuration models. Moreover, a majority of these profits came from iPhones yet no other handset OEM has emulated this strategy...
Ironically, Apple earns nearly twice as much from reselling NAND than all the NAND suppliers combined, with NAND resale responsible for 20% of Apple's total operating profits last quarter, at an annual run-rate of $10B+.
By comparison, Google (GOOG) Android phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S2 come with a single pre-specified amount of internal storage (32GB in this case) and offer users the option to add an external SD card. Good for users, not so good for Samsung's bottom line.
Below: One of Sacconaghi's spreadsheets.
-
Ad wars redux: What Google has finally learned from Apple
The Galaxy Nexus "Calling all pretty faces" is an homage to Apple in more ways than one
Android marketing has come a long way from the 2009 TV ad for Motorola's Droid that asked:
"Should a phone be pretty?"
Judging from the spot that debuted Thursday for the Galaxy Nexus -- the new Android smartphone manufactured by Samsung for Google -- Google's (GOOG) answer in 2011 is an emphatic "yes!"
The ad -- like MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Nov 20, 2011 7:05 AM ETPosted in: Advertising, Android, Apple, Droid, Galaxy Nexus, Google, Marketing, Motorola, Samsung Group, Think Different, TV -
Major Android setback: Galaxy Tab banned in Europe
Apple granted an injunction barring distribution in all of the EU except The Netherlands
A week after Samsung agreed out of court to postpone the launch of its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia, the leading manufacturer of tablets running Google's (GOOG) Android operating system has suffered a second major setback.
A court in Germany Tuesday granted Apple (AAPL) a preliminary injunction barring distribution of the device in the entire European Union except MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Aug 9, 2011 1:02 PM ETPosted in: Android, Apple, Australia, Florian Müller, FOSS Patents, Google, iPad, Samsung, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Samsung Group, Tablets -
Samsung's Australian setback: A peek at Android's future?
Its settlement with Apple does not bode well for devices that "slavishly" copy the iPad
If all had gone according to plan, Samsung would have launched its latest tablet computer -- the Galaxy Tab 10.1 -- in Australia on Thursday Aug. 11.
But Apple (AAPL) objected, telling a federal judge in Sydney that the device, based on Google's (GOOG) Android operating system, violated at least 10 Apple patents. And in a deal MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Aug 2, 2011 7:41 AM ETPosted in: Android, Apple, Australia, iPad, iPhone, Samsung, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Samsung Group, Steve Jobs, Sydney, Tablets -
Apple overtakes Nokia to become the world's No. 1 smartphone maker
The next contender: Samsung, whose Android phones are gaining fast
The companies that track mobile phone sales are just now catching up to the news that came out of Apple's (AAPL) last week. According to the company's Q3 earnings report, Apple sold nearly 20.24 million iPhones last quarter, up 142% from the same quarter last year.
On Thursday, IDC reported that that makes Apple the world's No. 4 manufacturer of all mobile MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 29, 2011 8:06 AM ET -
Much ado about patent lawyers
Apple changes its in-house legal guard. Samsung wants Apple's outside counsels ousted
On the heels of a Reuters report that Apple's (AAPL) chief patent counsel has been replaced by Hewlett-Packard's (HPQ) top intellectual properties attorney (something that, according to their LinkedIn profiles, may have happened two months ago), comes a 20 page motion from Samsung asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to throw out most, if MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 12, 2011 8:45 AM ET -
Apple vs. Samsung: 8 venues, 6 countries, more than 50 patents
A move to "streamline" an epic legal battle has only made it more complicated
There was some confusion in the tech press last Saturday when Bloomberg reported that Samsung had quietly dropped a countersuit filed in California in response to Apple's (AAPL) charge last April that Samsung had "slavishly" copied Apple's iPhone.
"One down, one to go?" wrote Christopher Trout for Engadget.
Hardly. As FOSS Patents' Florian Mueller reported Wednesday, what Samsung did MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 7, 2011 5:31 AM ETPosted in: Apple, Engadget, Florian Müller, Galaxy, iPad, iPhone, Law, Mobile, Patents, Samsung Group, Tablets, Trademarks, United States International Trade Commission -
Samsung seeks import ban on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch
Apple and its main supplier of memory chips seem headed for "ugly divorce," says expert
The legal battle began in April when Apple (AAPL) filed a suit in California accusing Samsung of "slavishly" copying its iPhone and iPad designs has gone nuclear.
After trading suits and counter suits in several legal venues, from South Korea to the U.K., Samsung on Thursday took its case to the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington. MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jun 30, 2011 6:33 AM ET -
The iPhone's vector of growth
If Apple's share of global profits is going up, others' must be going down
Last fall, Asymco's Horace Dediu introduced a new way of visualizing the dynamics of the worldwide mobile phone market.
He started with two sets of data -- market share and dollar share in 2007 and 2010 -- for the eight largest vendors in the mobile phone space, from Apple (AAPL), the smallest in 2007, to Nokia (NOK), the MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 26, 2011 7:19 AM ETPosted in: Apple, Asymco, Horace Dediu, HTC Corporation, Market Share, Mobile, Mobile phone, Nokia, Research in Motion, Samsung Group, smartphone -
Apple vs. Samsung: The battlelines
Samsung's countersuits were "swift and strong" says an expert
On Thursday, Samsung filed its fourth response to Apple's charge of "slavish" imitation: A suit in a California federal court alleging infringement by Apple (AAPL) of 10 Samsung communications patents.
"Samsung has mounted a swift and strong response to Apple's initiative," writes Foss Patent's Florian Mueller. "The speed with which Samsung responded to Apple's lawsuit in four different jurisdictions (in three of them MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Apr 29, 2011 10:19 AM ETPosted in: Android, Apple, Florian Müller, FOSS Patents, Google, iPad, iPhone, Mobile, Patent, Samsung Group, Tablets
