Apple passes Nokia, scares Nintendo

Clarity

Nokia making less money overall or just "less money on smartphones" ?

If less money overall, I'm amazed because the volumes are so different.

The Nintendo DS has dual screen controls. There is no Brain Training on the iPhone and Mario Kart without a physical button would be unthinkable. That said, when games are £5 compared to £25 limitations can be tolerated.

Not quite

Cupertino's multi-pronged strategy to put an iPhone into the pocket of every smartphoner, mobile gamer, and on-the-go web surfer is working.

I fit into all three of those categories, and I don't have (or want) an iPhone. I'd prefer something I have control over, rather than letting Apple decide everything for me (I know you can jailbreak, but you shouldn't have to!).

There's not that much meets my needs at the moment, but there's a fair few that meet it better than that heap of shit.

I utterly respect Miyamoto for this

What a perfect leader. He is completely aware of his consumer-base and appreciates they are of free will. He shows complete respect for his competitors. He absolutely won me over here. I want to be giving my money to a company like that.

What a leader.

Yeah, right.

Of course Apple has passed Nokia. An iPhone is much more expensive than your standard Nokia handset, especially the cheap ones which are Nokia's strong product. As the article pointed out, it isn't winning Nokia on number of mobiles, but on gross sales.

I doubt Nintendo has any worries from the iPhone; real gamers will stick to the DS or the PSP, and as other commenters have pointed out, Mario, Resident Evil and similar games are unthinkable without real buttons. In fact, I'd rather play on an N-Gage ;)

@Sarah Baucom

Yeah - that is basically the camp I am in. I wanted a MP3 player for my music - and got a 32 GB iPod Touch this summer after looking around. (My first MP3 player!) Then I downloaded 1 (free) game as a diversion while in Korea for a week. I now have about 20 games - most paid for. If the iPhone was not just on ATT, I think I would get one. The interface is slick and it is very easy to use.

Lunch

After finishing a plate of kaalikääryleet, Jobs burped, turned to his partner and said, 'I think we should try Japanese tomorrow'. The gentleman from Sweden appeared somewhat relieved, but the Finnish fellow just started at the bottom of his glass.

Apples vs Pears?

Apples revenue in 2008 = $32.48 billion

Nokias revenue in 2008 = €50.722 billion ($75 billion)

Microsofts revenus in 2008 = $58.437 billion

Apples net income = $4.83 billion

Nokias net income = €3.988 billion ($5.9 billion)

Microsoft's net income = $14.569 billion

Nokia as a phone company generates more revenue than Apple does in *all* its ventures, Mac, iPod, iPhone, whatever and its net income is only marginally higher than Apple (figures are from 2008). So unless 100% of apples net income comes just from iPhones, then the article is misleading. Bear in mind that Nokia spends more on R&D every year than apple and employs 4 times the number of people.

So there we have it, Microsoft wins with its Windows mobile.

Anyone notice?

Anyone else notice that one of the "Read more" tags for this article is "ninendo"?

@David Webb

It's the amount of *profit* that's the important part though, not just the total amount.

And Apple is severely reducing it's profits/total at the moment in my opinion since the entry point for their phone is so high. I know at least 10 people (number pulled from my bum) who would buy an iphone tomorrow if the price dropped.

It's pretty obvious (to me) that:

A PSP/DS is a much 'better' games machine.

A Nokia is a 'better' phone.

An iphone is still too expensive.

As a multi-function device (web/email/games/etc) the apple choices are almost perfect.

Or you could try an android/symbian thing. I have and hated it.

Either way - it's a great time to be a gadget freak, since there are soooo many different models around at the moment. Just think of all the brilliant toys that will be available in second-hand shops next year (when current contracts finish).

@Ben Tasker

"I'd prefer something I have control over, rather than letting Apple decide everything for me"

I suppose you have "control" over your PSP and Nintendo DS?

"I know you can jailbreak, but you shouldn't have to!"

Right, like you can chip a PlayStation or XBox but "shouldn't have to"

Just because something doesn't do exactly what *you* want it to doesn't make it a "heap of shit".

iPhone minus the phone

Why don't Apple just release an iPhone without the features of a phone?!?! Honestly, they'd make a killing! It could even include WiFi so you could connect to the internet without using 3G... and therefore be able to use the appstore to buy games.

Steve Jobs should be replaced by me, and that company would finally make an impact instead of languishing at the bottom end of every market in which they are involved. And I have all my own organs.

@ AC 10:34 "minus the phone"

Er... Oh, what the hell, I'll bite: iTouch?

I don't have an iPhone, but I know playing games on my iPod drains the battery life like no tomorrow. There's a huge difference between drining the battery dead on a pure gaming & music device, and killing your PHONE to while the time away. Until that's sorted, the iPhone won't be a real challenger to portable gaming as the game-time is much more limited.

iPhone without the phone

It's called an iPod touch... seriously look it up LOL

@JP Sistenich

You're spot on there, mate. Doing anything other than listening to music on an iPhone / Touch kills the battery in record time and then gives you 6-7 pop up warnings each and every time the battery's capacity fluctuates past 20%. The DS meanwhile seems to run forever...

And playing any moderately touchy game on the iPhone just ends up rubbing the oils out of the end of your fingertips making the screen increasingly difficult to slide your fingers across... so then you have to start alternating fingers. And unless you've got fingers the size of toothpicks there's just no way you can get close to the fidelity of a stylus for accurate gaming.

No, the only thing Nintendo should be worried about is the ridiculous price of their DS games cos in that respect the app store blows them out of the water. It still amazes me that a 32MB DS game can go for £25 when collosal PC titles encompassing massive development costs go for £35.

@Jason Hall

I tend to agree, as a multi-function device (phone/browser/pda) the iPhone is reasonable, though as a pda it is slightly sub-par (having to use a scroll wheel to select date/time for an entry? what where they thinking from a design point of view?), but its reasonable for the Western market.

The Japanese however are loyal to the point of obsession. If they get wind that Apple are gunning for Nintendo in a fight in Japan, the iPhone sales in Japan will drop like a brick whilst Nintendo sales will, well, I'd say rocket but they are already massive over there.

I don't think Nintendo nor Sony will be worrying at all about the iPhone in the gamer market, simply because the choice of games they offer are different in many ways to the games that the iPhone have. Sony/Nintendo and to an extent Microsoft can (and do) pull the "exclusive" card, Xbox has Halo, Sony has Tekken/Gran Turismo, Nintendo has Mario/Zelda, the iPhone has fart applications.

However, the iPhone is already old hat, the OS hasn't really changed in 2 years, just added more apps to it, and a compass. If you look at version 1.4 of the iPhone OS you won't see many changes between that and 3.1.2, just hardware upgrades, this is allowing other phone companies to catch up and over-take Apple on the UI front, the phone I'm most looking forward to is the new Nokia with that Linux os that I can't remember, looks fantastic.

On the other hand, Apple are locking people in to their "way of life", all the apps downloaded, all the music downloaded all to the Apple device, if you want to keep them there is only one upgrade path, another Apple device, where you get more apps and music so get further locked down into the Apple way of thinking, either that or turn off the phone part (or shove in a PAYG sim) and use the iPhone as an iPod touch.

Now, I actually own an iPhone and I generally hate the device, I can't see what the fuss is about, its unlocked and jailbroken running on vodaphone so I get to choose my Apps, but nothing about the phone has made be go "wow", well, except "wow, my hands are getting warm from the heat this thing generates".

Nokia won't be looking at Apple as a threat, in the phone market they are selling small amounts of mobile phones, in the game market the iPhone can't compete with a dedicated game device, if they could then you can bet your bottom dollar that the next PSP to come out will have a built in mobile phone, touch screen, buttons (important for games) and exclusive top-tier games, as well as all the lovely hi-tech phone wizardry that the Japanese expect from their mobile phones.

Not as straightforward as it looks

Apple have done very well in the last couple of years - they have come from nothing in the phone sector to substantial profitability in a very small space of time. However if you are trying to look at the Apple phones dept in isolation then the profit figures are a bit misleading - the basic design procedure of the iPhone was to take an iPod Touch and shoehorn some old phone tech in (which, depending on who you believe they may not have properly paid for :D ). This would have been very cheap to do and with the handset being retailed at the high-end of the market it would have been very profitable on a per-handset basis. Later revisions of the hardware haven't hugely strayed from this tactic, the phone hardware is all being introduced that little bit behind the rest and its therefore coming to Apple when its already established and probably cheaper to implement.

Oh and before the fanboys start screaming I'm not knocking Apple here - I might not be an iPhone fan but the way they have approached it has been very successfully making them money so i tip my hat to them! The mobile phone business isn't about making the best handsets - its about making the most profit and on that score Apple win 2009

Nokia have done ok considering the financial disaster that was the Full Fat N97, to have a flagship phone that has by their standards flopped completely is surely going to have been a big blow to profitability. R&D for it must have been substantially expensive (even if QC wasn't :D ), and they have ended up costing themselves a lot both in lost sales and all the remedial work carried out to the phone.

Looking to the future however the Mini appears to be a very good bit of kit and anecdotal evidence suggests its selling OK, alot of the development cost for the Mini has been and gone with the N97 debacle and the phone still retails for a healthy amount. Couple this with the N900 being due any minute as well and I think 2010 may well be a better year for them.

Ain't surprised

Unlike everyone else, Apple gets a huge cut on all the data pland sold by those who provide air time to iPhones. On top of that by someone's calculation a year or so ago, for $10 of an iPhone sold, Apple kept $4 as profit [rest making it, etc.].