http://www.ismashphone.com/2011/05/appl ... venue.html


So it now makes as much money as the rest of the industry combined.

Nice chart showing 'operating profit per phone sold' on Asymco today - here.
Pete.

Maybe it has something to do with customer service and repairs... Although I would expect it to do better in sales.

I've had to repair 2 htcs and 4 iPhones this month. The htcs were replaced at our office, we got a new body, we just had to keep the battery and battery cover.

The boss's iPhone 4 has never worked propery - no WLAN and Blutetooth range of 15cm. Apple won't replace defective 'phones. They had to be sent in for repair and the boss has to do without e-mail etc. for 2 weeks, until it is returned or replaced. In the end he bought another iPhone 4, to use while his is away for repair...

HTC over here seem to take forever. A mate of mine has been without a phone for over a month because his Desire failed a while ago and HTC wanted him to send it to them.

Different policies in different countries...

Possibly. Although you'd assume repair/support cost would grow proportionally with sales so over the whole market they'd even out - you get more repair costs if you sell more phones, but if you sell more phones you maker more profit etc. I suspect the picture is actually much too complicated to summarise on one graph. You'd assume some of the costs of Apple retail for example are split between the iDevice and Mac divisions which, given relative revenue, means the iDevices are actually somewhat subsidising Macs, at least as far as the bottom line goes. However HTC make more different models, which means higher average manufacturing costs per device.

This graph is interesting, although not conclusive. Share price is a hugely blunt measure but it does suggest that recently HTC have been improving whereas Apple have been rather static.

Jon

I certainly won't be buying another Apple iPhone, based on the treatment I've had so far.

With my 3GS, I had to do without it for 7 of the first 8 weeks of ownership, because it was sent away for repair 3 times, because they couldn't find a fault! The shortest time I had it between repair attempts was 1 hour! It was only when I went into my local T-Mobile store at lunch time, when it was fully packed and spoke in a very loud voice that this was the third time it had been returned un-repaired, that they agreed to send it away and replace it - but I still had to wait 2 weeks for the replacement! As a replacement 'phone during that period, they gave me an old, beaten up Nokia 3310!

The problem was, the iPhone would switch on, but after a random amount of time, it would cease up and you couldn't turn it on or off for about 8 hours. Every time they got it back at Apple, they could turn it on, run a quick diagnostic and then send it back... Then, as soon as I started to load it up with apps again, it would cease up and die.

My iPhone's earphone socket now doesn't work properly - you have to constantly twist the headphone jack in the socket, until it gets a signal. But due to the above experience, I've decided to live with it - I list to my audio books through the loudspeakers most of the time anyway and I use my Mozart for podcasts.

The same is still true, with the above tale from this week.

Apple's customer service is very poor, compared to the other mobile phones I've had. Nokia have local repair points dotted around in most big cities and T-Mobile/htc will exchange a defective Android or WP7 phone out the next day, wherever you are.

That is strange Dave. If I've ever had a problem with my iphones I've just wandered in to my nearest Apple store & they've swapped it out no questions asked.

Sounds as though the problem is mainly with the T-Mobile shop, not primarily with Apple as such. I suspect if you'd taken it into the Apple Store you might have got a faster fix, but I'm not sure you have one nearby.

That is probably part of the problem, there aren't any Apple stores here...

Yup

"Stability is always inversely proportional to the distance between the computer and the engineer"

Just as an update
Linky.



That's not 'any one of them'. That's all of them.

Jon

Has Steve Jobs been looking for hollowed out volcanoes for the new HQ? With that sort of money that might be the objective of the company.

Has Steve Jobs been looking for hollowed out volcanoes for the new HQ?

No, he's building a star destroyer instead.


Jon

But a Star Destroyer looks like this.

Yeah, but that's obviously not been across Jonny Ives' drawing board...