Google

Prior to Apple's earnings report I read at least one article suggesting that the most important indicator to watch was Apple's margin. I suppose this was due to a recent decline in margins from a peak gross margin of 47.4% in Q1 2012 to 36.7%.

As the graph below shows, margins began to recover by Q3 2013 and are nearly on par with year-ago levels.

The guidance for the present quarter is a gross margin between 37% and 38%. This would imply a flat q/q GM line (blue line above.)

This is not quite catastrophic.

To better understand margins, it helps to compare them with other companies. When Apple reached that peak of near 50% gross margin I noted that such a level was higher than Microsoft's and Google's. The irony being that Apple was nominally an (implied) low-margin hardware company while Microsoft was an (implied) high-margin software company and Google was an (implied) high-margin internet services company.

Here is the picture with the last two years added:

In the last two years Apple's margins have declined but so have Google's. And although Microsoft's fell, they fell less than Apple's and thus overtook it to remain slightly more profitable (32.5% vs. 30.3%) into Q4.

I also added Samsung Electronics' operating margin. ((As a large conglomerate, Samsung will have a lower blended average. Separating the Telecom group's operating profit shows a 16.14% divisional operating margin.))

So although Apple stabilized, it did so at an extraordinarily high level, well out of band for a hardware company. Thus the question remains: Are Apple's margins a fluke? Is the recent rise of margins to levels far above those of a comparable hardware company and into the realm of software and services sustainable?

The simple answer is to assume that the iPhone and iPad, which make the bulk of revenues and which explain much of the rise, enjoyed a temporary buzz which allowed them to be priced at a premium but as that buzz wore off, the pricing and margins would decline. This is common with fads and fashions.

But the situation is far more nuanced. If the margins were due to mere novelty, the effect should not have persisted over so many years. Pricing data shows that the iPhone remains exceptionally valuable and that the iPad, excluding line extensions, has also held the line on pricing.

The missing piece in the puzzle is that the iPhone and iPad and iPod touch and Apple TV are pieces of an inter-dependent network of assets. The iTunes stores, Apple's services and Apple Retail are easily ignored because they are not "profit centers" but I believe they are a key component to the sustainment of these margins.

In other words, the iPhone and iPad enjoy margins not just because they are new and well designed. But also because they form part of a ecosystem. The key word is 'system'. The user buys into a system not just what the device embodies.

This is why I've always said that the iOS product businesses should be thought of as "hardware as a service". The inspiration comes from the notion of "software as a service" which posits the idea that software purchases should be thought of as services and thus recurring revenues.

iOS devices are part of a service matrix: the user experience in the stores, the after-sales support (including the easily ignored Applecare), the broadband supplied through operator service (which is part of a trillion dollars of value), the apps and content that can be purchased (which add up to a mountain of money), the network effects of iMessage and iCloud and now iRadio and Match and Siri.

These services attachments are well understood as great business models and underpin some of the most celebrated businesses to emerge in the last decade including Google, Amazon, Facebook, Box, Dropbox, Windows Live, etc.

It's curious therefore that whereas these other businesses are highly valued as services, in the case when the service is a component within a larger system, the value is missed. In an integrated context the connection between services and high margins is not understood. The reason may be the absence of robust systems analysis and a preference for the facile explanation.

The increase in net sales of iTunes, Software and Services in the first quarter of 2014 compared to the first quarter of 2013 was due to growth in net sales from the iTunes Store, AppleCare and licensing. The iTunes Store generated a total of $2.4 billion in net sales during the first quarter of 2014 versus $2.1 billion during the first quarter of 2013. Growth in the iTunes Store, which includes the App Store, the Mac App Store and the iBooks Store, was driven by increases in revenue from App sales reflecting continued growth in the installed base of iOS devices and the expansion in the number of third-party iOS Apps available. Net sales of digital content, including music, movies, TV shows and books, from the iTunes Store was relatively flat in the first quarter of 2014 compared to the first quarter of 2013.

Apple Inc. Form 10-Q.

During the last quarter Apple changed the pricing for iWork and OS X to zero ((OS X server is still priced at $20 and iWork for previously unlicensed devices and computers is still priced above $0)).

I estimate the net effect to have been a reduction in revenues from those software titles of about $350 million for the quarter. Nevertheless, increases in services and app revenues means that the iTunes total reported revenues increased to a new record.

The total with estimated contributions by media and service components is shown below right.

Note that revenues do not reflect total billings. As Apple reports only the 30% of App transaction values, the full iTunes/Software/Services transaction values are shown in the above graph on the left.

The "gross" revenues are now nearly $7 billion per quarter. On a yearly basis the iTunes/Software/Services group had gross revenues of $23.5 billion with growth of 34% y/y.

Other estimates for full year 2013 growth are:

• Third party content +46.6%.
• Music downloads -14%
• Video +19%
• Apps +105%
• Books -9%
• Services +37%
• Pro apps +29%
• OS X -8%
• iWork and iLife -8%

Although iTunes/Software/Services are not usually included in a "sum-of-the-parts" total contributing to Apple's overall enterprise value, the scale of volume and value of transactions is becoming harder to ignore.

To illustrate this, I plotted the history of gross iTunes revenues vs. Google's search business ((Excludes Motorola and "Other" segments as reported by Google))

On a yearly basis iTunes/Software/Services is nearly half of Google's core business and growing slightly faster.

The iTunes "empire" of content and services would be ranked as number 130 in the Fortune 500 ranking of companies (slightly below Alcoa and above Eli Lilly).

Horace builds on his discussion of Google from the previous episode in light of the Nest acquisition news. We also look at the relatively unreported news regarding China lifting its 13-year ban on game consoles and the variables it introduces to a "big niche" industry.

via 5by5 | The Critical Path #109: Google Ventures.

On a recent podcast I noted that Google was perceived as invulnerable. In contrast, Apple is seen as temporarily enjoying a stay of execution. ((The list of Apple Achilles' Heels is so long and creatively composed that it would take ages to compile, but here are just a few: the Mac (vs. Windows), Digital Rights Management (which kept the iPod alive), dozens of lawsuits (including from The Beatles), the Mac (when it ran Windows), PlaysForSure, Music Labels retaliation, the Zune, Android and clones, the Kindle and Amazon in general, more Mac, iTunes, iPod and iPhone and iPad killers than can be counted; Steve Jobs is ill, Jony Ive will quit, Tony Fadell quit, Rubinstein quit, Forstall was fired, etc. Feel free to add more through comments. See also Apple Death Knell Counter.)) This is not necessarily a bad thing for Apple. The more gushing the loathing or scorn, the more likely it's a reaction to love and attraction. A brand dies not from hate but from apathy.

But nor is it necessarily a good thing for Google be be seen as invulnerable. There might be no "Google death knell counter". There might not be a "Google is doomed" trope. If an executive from Google quits or is fired there is no investor panic. If a product is withdrawn there is no mourning. There are no journalists pursuing Pulitzer prizes by describing some seamy underside of Google. But there are no overt displays of affection either. Google is seen, on balance, as benevolent and hopeful. The discussion on business robustness is simply missing.

I suspect the absence of scrutiny comes from Google being seen as an analogy of the Internet itself. We don't question the survival of the Internet so we don't question the survival of Google -- its backbone, its index, and its pervasive ads which, somehow, keep the lights on. We believe Google is infrastructure. We don't dwell on whether electric grids are vulnerable, or supplies of fuel, or the weather(!)

Too complex, too pervasive. These are systems, not things. And people are not designed to contemplate systems. We leave that to experts, or better yet, computers.

The reason Apple is contemplated at all is that it's not seen as a system. Even the suggestion that Apple is a system is implicitly treated as an impossibility. Because it's not a system it's fragile. It's a person, or an idea, or a product or a singular "key" to something. It is, ultimately, mortal. The only debate is when it will die and points are earned for calling it sooner rather than later.

But what if Apple were a system? And what if Google were a person (or three?)

 

In my essay on Google's absence of profit (or income or business) motives questions were raised on the stated absence of hunger for profits from Apple and what difference there might be from Google's philosophy.

Indeed, Jony Ive stated:

"Our goal isn't to make money. Our goal absolutely at Apple is not to make money. It may sound a little flippant, but it's the truth." ((at the British Embassy's Creative Summing in July 2012)).

He was probably repeating what Jobs had previously stated:

"I remember very clearly Steve announcing that our goal is not just to make money but to make great products" ((Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs))

However, note that both quotes are qualified. In the case of Jobs, he said "not just to make money". Jobs clearly stated that great products lead to money. That great products are causal to money and therefore that if you make great products you make money. One leads to the other.

Ive also continued in this reasoning:

"Our goal, and what gets us excited, is to try to make great products. We trust that if we are successful people will like them. And if we are operationally competent we will make revenue. But we are very clear about our goal."

I would paraphrase the Apple logic as "Great products are the means by which we sustain our business. By focusing on the product, the customer is satisfied and through that satisfaction we create the free cash flows which can be used to fund more products."

There is a difference between Apple's "indifference to money" and the "indifference to business models" that Google exhibits.

Google steps even further away from cash flows. Its goals are to build great things guided by their vision and patterns in the data they collect. The value is in the data itself rather than in any transaction.

As long as the source of money is unfettered, its provenance is uninteresting. A business model is a profit algorithm. It could be linked to the data but it need not be. Markets are messy and imperfect. Data provides much clearer views into value. You could conclude that value itself cannot be trusted to the judgement of the public. Value is to be determined through the recognition of patterns on data privately collected.

So when I say that Google has disdain for market mechanisms I mean that they believe they can do better. Apple still values the user as the ultimate adjudicator of its actions. Google looks past the user and interprets their intentions.

Google sees markets as ultimately obsolete.

A company is nothing more (and nothing less) than three things: people, processes and purposes. In the language of the software engineer these would be inputs, algorithms and specifications. In the language of classical business analysis they are assets (or resources), organization structures and business models. In military theory, these are logistics, tactics and strategy.

This is the trinity which allows for an understanding of a complex system: the physical, the operational and the guiding principle. The what, the how and the why.

When approaching any analysis problem, these questions form the foundation of causal inference. What is it, how does it work and why does it exist?

When analyzing nature the sciences often help with the what and the how but rarely address the why. ((Religion attempts to answer the whys which science leaves as unanswerable.)) In contrast, man-made systems (e.g. systems of law, religion and commerce) require an answer to the why as there is a presumption of a will in their creation and preservation. The why allows ultimate judgement on the merit of an enterprise. The why may escape us but it's assumed to always be there. For instance, in criminal law the motive is often a crucial piece of evidence but it's not always found. In business, the motive for action or for organization is a crucial piece of the puzzle which often explains the what, who and how, but here the ultimate why is usually profit. This the characteristic of a for-profit business, the purpose is explicit.

Some companies try to define their purposes beyond profit but they are often too vague or merely speak of values represent a quality not causality.

This is the case with Google. The problem isn't only that "don't be evil" isn't a priority or a purpose, but also that its resources are not applied to cohesive goals. In fact, there seems to be no interest in pursuing a direction aligned with generating income.

This is not in itself a bad thing. The notion of operating as a learning (vs. a deliberate) organization, informed but not driven by a goal, is the best approach when seeking new markets or discovering new needs and new business models. The difference with Google is that there seems to be no expectation of business model discovery. In other words, that the learning is not for any purpose other than learning itself.

This might be noble but learning for its own sake has not been attempted by public, for-profit organizations ((The Bell Labs story in an interesting possible exception but on deeper inspection it was the by-product of a  government sanctioned monopoly and hence a ward of the state)) since there is an implicit fiduciary responsibility to generate profit and unrestricted experimentation, unguided by profit, is unlikely to ever learn the needs of markets.

 

The evidence I note supporting this is in the persona the company maintains, both internally and externally. There is no representation of themselves as a "business seeking profit" or even as a commercial entity. It's not simply because their business model is embarrassing. It's because all business models are embarrassing.

The representation is one of a research laboratory succeeding against difficult problems. Very similar to a successful academic or industrial laboratory sustained by grants from a benevolent (but messy) organization. Google becomes the embodiment of "big science" and "the world's laboratory" unfettered by politics and unsoiled by commercial interests.

There is a business in Google but it's a very obscure topic. The "business side" of the organization is only mentioned briefly in analyst conference calls and the conversation is not conducted with the same team that faces the public. Even then, analysts who should investigate the link between the business and its persona seem swept away by utopian dreams and look where the company suggests they should be looking (mainly the future.)

There are almost no discussions of cost structures (e.g. cost of sales, cost of distribution, operations and research), operating models (divisional, functional or otherwise) or of business models. In fact, the company operates only one business model which was an acquisition, reluctantly adopted.

It's as if the management is not only uninterested in its own profit model but deeply scornful of it. For all the technology innovations the company can claim, it has not had one internally sourced business model innovation.

But is this wrong? Again, we need to ask if Google breaks with convention then maybe convention needs to be broken. This is the radical bet underlying the Google thesis: are business models necessary? This is in fact a bet many VCs are implicitly placing within the current start-up culture. The notion of making a profit or even having an interest in doing so seems passé. This notion is directly traceable to the Google ethos as it acts as the source of acquisition funding and is driving the agenda of VCs and entrepreneurs. This is leadership by example and the example is one of blissful ignorance of market constraints.

But we have to go back to the profit model, even if analysts, observers and the company itself sweep it under a rug. The reason is that this laboratory runs only as long as the grant money keeps coming. No bucks, no Buck Rogers. So far the money rains down from heaven, but that rain is not infinite nor permanent. The answer seems to be diversification, even the creation of a conglomerate. In other words, the answer seems to be that if enough great technology is developed or acquired, then a business model will appear (think about it as a probability problem) and the vulnerability of revenue sources is managed. Clever? Convenient? We'll see.

But that's not the only problem. The deeper problem is in us knowing their intentions. The absence of a purpose rooted in profit makes Google resistant to analysis. There might be a purpose, known only to the founders ((or not known at all)), but it's one that is potentially naive, amoral or too abstract to be useful. Shareholders are aware of this and have agreed to entrust control to only three individuals. The purpose of the organization is in their hands alone and reflects their priorities. Bearing in mind that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, they must be brave indeed.

This would not be too troubling if the effect would be restricted to the company stakeholders. The trouble lies in that organization also having de-facto control over the online (and hence increasingly offline) lives of more than one billion people. Users, but not customers, of a company whose purpose is undefined. The absence of oversight is one thing, the absence of an understanding of the will of the leadership is quite another. The company becomes an object of faith alone.  Do we believe?

Benedict Evans explains well the problem with measuring Android tablets. There are no reliable data collected because many of the devices are invisible through the regular, measurable channels:

• There are no firms which report their shipments
• They are not sold through retail chains which normally are sampled in the US and Europe (NPD and GfK respectively.)
• They don't show up in browsing or ad transaction data
• Google Play statistics are missing most of the activations since they are not sold as bona fide Google-sanctioned Android.

The only measured statistic happens to be component shipments. Items such as screens, CPUs or perhaps memory might be visible to market analysts. It's therefore tempting to add up tires manufactured to determine what's getting sold in auto dealerships.

But it's also hugely problematic.

Before we go into that rat's hole, I want to re-visit my original criticism for market analysis based on device attributes. When the iPad was new it was famously labeled a "media tablet" by Gartner and excluded from being counted (and hence compared) with PCs. This created an implicit signal to the analyst's clients to ignore the entrant as irrelevant.

That actually accelerated their demise (and the revenue prospects for the analyst).

In contrast to that exclusion--of a clear and present danger based on an arbitrary definition of form factor--the analyst who defines categories of products purely on the definition of their components is guilty of the same sin.

Snowing the audience with irrelevant comparisons is just as bad as withholding relevant comparisons. This is explicitly asked of witnesses: to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The "nothing but the truth" means the exclusion of irrelevance.

The correct approach is to identify which devices are comparable (and thus in the same category) based on the jobs they're hired to do. If a tablet overlaps considerably in the work it does with a PC (e.g. browsing, email, media play, and other applications) then they should be considered comparable. If a tablet does nothing that a PC does or nothing that an iPad does (e.g. no browsing, email, apps or ecosystem activity other than piracy) then they should not be considered comparable.

Which brings me back to the question of what these dark matter "Android tablets" actually do.

To answer I want to recall another "dark matter" technology that seems to have gone largely unnoticed but was exceptionally popular. This was the VCD or Video CD. It was an alternative to the DVD without the licensing and DRM overhead it entailed. It was extremely popular in Asia as a way of not only buying but also sharing video content. The cost of content was a fraction of sanctioned versions, essentially taking the role that mass-copied VHS had in previous years.

The "job to be done" was to enjoy video content cheaply and conveniently for the equivalent of pennies a day. A job very similar to what we think of as cable TV today.

These devices and discs were largely invisible mainly because they did not exist in economies which adopted protected DVDs and because the content consumed did not hit against any databases that tracked consumption. Nevertheless there might have been hundreds of millions of these devices sold and billions of discs viewed.

Now we are in a situation where devices whose primary purpose is to watch video content (cheaply and conveniently) are being counted. By their counting, their implicit competitiveness is asserted. But it means nothing if they are not hired for the same jobs. In fact it misdirects attention.

Sometimes these "low end" devices do grow up to swamp the higher-powered alternatives with good enough functionality. That is the innovator's dilemma for low end disruption. But in some cases they don't because other factors are at work. Because ecosystems have complex multi-sided markets and because regulations and channels and consumer behavior conflict with the technical specification.

For this reason the VCD did not "disrupt" DVD or grow up into a Blu-Ray equivalent that caused Hollywood to crumble. It faded away as an anomaly.

Whether the dark matter Video-only Android device will come to swamp the iPad will depend not on just volume shipments in select geographies. It will depend largely on the ecosystems built around it. The ecosystems of VCD were largely unsustainable because there was no value placed on the content itself. The value chain did not strive to sustain the technology. When something better came along, it got dropped.

In contrast, content-based value chains sustain technologies which keep the revenues coming. And we can measure this revenue.

You don't need to look too hard for that in tablets. Apple states it quite frequently: total payments to developers.

Apple has sold 700 million iOS devices. Google claims one billion Android device activations. Microsoft has about 1.5 billion Windows users and Facebook about 1.19 billion. LinkedIn has 259 million users and Twitter has 232 million. Amazon has 215 active account holders and PayPal 137 million.

Markets place a value on these users implicitly when company shares are priced. For example, Twitter whose users are worth about $110 or FaceBook's $98 and LinkedIn at $93.

This consistency suggests a universally accepted value per social media user but what is the value of an ecosystem user? Apple, Google, Microsoft and even Amazon aspire to enable ecosystems which should be seen are more valuable than mere communities. Ecosystems enable a higher level of economic activity because they are unbounded by the medium itself. Any number of media can be created. Or so the theory goes.

If we could determine a value for an ecosystem user we could test it against the going value of a social media user. Fortunately we have enough data to do so.

The total number of iOS devices sold per quarter allows us to measure the install base of device users. With some assumptions regarding the retirement and attrition rate we can get the following history:

Since the total number of iTunes accounts is updated with some regularity I've added it to the graph. I've also shown on the same graph the total number of iCloud accounts. For calibration, I included survey data showing the number of iPhone users in two regions (US and EU5).

These combined graphs give us an upper bound of active users (iTunes accounts) and a lower bound (iCloud) calibrating our device-based estimate. The regional iPhone data offers some additional test on growth.

The result is "about 500 million" ((482 million by my count but with quite a bit of margin of error)) with a growth of about 11 million per month.

So if we know with some confidence that there are about 500 million active users as part of the iOS ecosystem, how do we know how much value they generate? The answer is in the consolidated iTunes revenues as reported by Apple: $4.26 billion/quarter. With some attention to the reported media retail and purchases, the following picture of the average iOS user's quarterly spending emerges:

The bottom line is that in the last 12 months the average iOS user contributed  about $48/yr to the ecosystem via Apple's own properties. They also bought the device and paid for cellular service in most cases. They may also have engaged in quite a bit of browsing and online purchases which fed other ecosystems. But as far as Apple is concerned, it transacted about $48 per user.

As Twitter revenues last year were $317 million, the Twitter user today generates about $1.36 of revenue per year or one thirty-fifth of what an iOS user generates through iTunes and iCloud alone. And note that the number of iOS users is about twice that of Twitter.

Of course one could argue that the iOS user's participation is not profitable for Apple. It does obtain massive cash flow from iTunes which finances its fashionable data centers and bandwidth but it does not presume to value itself primarily through this revenue.

Or at least the market doesn't think so. We don't hear much about how Apple is worth so many dollars per user. ((I suppose the corollary to this is that Apple users are disloyal or fickle or fleeting, and quite contrary to observed behavior.))

The paradox is that while the device which enables this commerce is where Apple guides the consumer's perception of value, markets discount devices and bid up services. In other words, users continue to pay for the devices which delight them enough to participate in services (especially the monthly billable kind) but markets walk right by these shiny baubles and and shower money on services which have negligible sales and even fewer profits. There must be some serious misdirection going on here. The question is who's being fooled.

My thanks to Niaz Uddin for asking some good questions and posting my replies:

Horace Dediu on Asymco, Apple and Future of Computing | eTalks.

Full interview is here, excerpts below:

Niaz: Why do you study Apple?

Horace: Apple is an interesting company to study because its success comes from being a serial disruptor. This is a very rare type of success formula. I am trying to "reverse engineer" its operating model and I hope that such a model is one which others might learn from if they were to emulate it. The trouble is that very few others seem to want to emulate Apple. Why that is is also an interesting question.

Niaz: […] Do you think apple has lost its image that it has created over the years as a center of innovation and building excellent products?

Horace: I cannot comment on how Apple's image is measured by people in the industry. I have been listening to commentary on Apple for about a decade and I have never seen any change in pattern. The company has always been perceived as a failure by a majority of observers. With respect to its products, I also do not see a change in the pattern established over the last decade.

Niaz: Are you optimist about the future success of Apple? Like after 10 years and then 20 years?

Horace: Let me put it this way: if there were no Apple then somebody will have to invent an Apple to do the same thing Apple does. In that sense I'm optimistic that there will be an Apple in some way in perpetuity.

Niaz: What will be the next big innovation from Apple?

Horace: I have no idea but it's likely to involve refining new user interaction methods. Similar to the breakthroughs that came from the use of a mouse, a scroll wheel and a touch screen. It means making computers better at gleaning our intentions without our getting involved in explaining them.

Niaz: Will Apple, Google and Samsung be the major player for the future of computing? Or we can hope to see some new faces?

Horace: I am fairly sure Samsung will not be because they have not yet grafted software and services to their operating structure. I would give Amazon a higher probability in being a successful platform alternative.

Niaz: In 2011 you’ve written a blog post ‘Steve Jobs’ Ultimate Lesson for Companies’ on Harvard Business Review Blog and you have cited ‘A leader should aspire to do more. A leader should claim to have left a legacy not just on their company but on all companies.’ As you know Google, Amazon, Samsung, Facebook … all have learnt lifetime lessons from Steve Jobs. What do you think about the impact that Steve Jobs have created?

Horace: He led by example and like all great leaders sacrificed much as a way to inspire others to follow him. He also spent time in the wilderness and chose asceticism. This gave him authority. Many historical figures had the same quality. The problem is that few business leaders have it but I don't see why they shouldn't.

Much more on evaluating Tim Cook's performance, the iPhone portfolio, the rise of Android, Microsoft/Nokia, wearable technology and disrupting Google. Check it out on eTalks.

 

In February I asked Why doesn't anybody copy Apple?

Put another way: Why is it that everyone wants to copy Apple’s products but nobody wants to copy being Apple?

Being Apple means, at least:

• Insourcing all aspects of operations which affect the customer experience. Increasingly that has meant insourcing everything, a toxic idea to every MBA-trained professional since forever.
• Organizing functionally and having no product level P/L responsibility. That also means removing almost all incentives for employees to climb ladders and thus prove their worth.
• Developing products using integrated "heroic" efforts which shun  every best (or even adequate) process for product development.

I asked somewhat rhetorically because it's an open question. Apple's operating model and devotion to integration have been asymmetric to technology dogma for decades. To the casual (read: naïve) observer, pursuing the Apple way seemed also to be tied to one individual. You could not "be Apple" unless you were also Steve Jobs and there was only one of him.

But it seems I did not give enough credit to other observers.

According to Microsoft, they began negotiating the buying of Nokia assets in earnest (coincidentally) in February. It has, also since February, been planning a massive re-organization along functional lines. Thus, by owning significant hardware operations and organizing functionally, Microsoft might go about two thirds toward "being Apple-like". The development process is the final hurdle and it may be a bridge too far, but my thesis that nobody wants to copy Apple is now in tatters.

And it gets worse. We can see a similar, though far weaker, example in Google's approach to integration. Their purchase of Motorola did not result in an integrated business, with Motorola being kept at arm's length and allowed to wither on the vine. Crucially, while Google bought Motorola's IP, Microsoft only licensed Nokia's. Microsoft clearly valued Nokia for something different than  what Google valued Motorola for.

Nevertheless there is a semblance of similarity. We can generalize enough and say that Apple (iOS), Google (Android/Chrome) and Microsoft (Windows (Phone)) are all becoming near facsimiles of each other. They are all producers of Software, Services and Hardware. Each came from a different basis but expanded into areas which were missing.

• Google started with a service, expanded into systems software and bought into hardware.
• Apple started with hardware running its own software, expanded into application software and is developing services.
• Microsoft started with software, expanded organically into services and bought into hardware.

All three major platform companies are now racing to offer that which completes them as an integrated producer and eliminates the dependencies on others as a modular producer.

This is re-integration of the computing industry--a reversal of the dis-integration brought about by the personal computer. Mobility, it turns out, was as important to the evolution of the computing value chain as microprocessors were to the previous era. It just had the opposite effect.

I should point out that Apple was more lucky than enlightened through this sea change. Having always been integrated, Apple was out of favor during one period of the computing epoch, but, simply by surviving, its model came back into favor in the next. I don't think anybody there foresaw just how dramatic the shift would be and how important their structure was to being successful.

But there is one company which seems left out of this discussion. Samsung is absorbing a large part of the available profits in computing today and it's not an integrated hardware/software/services player. Does this mean that there is room to be a module in an interdependent world?

I argue that no, there isn't. Samsung must either stretch into becoming one of the ecosystem contenders or be relegated to a commodity hardware company--a path clearly visible when looking at Chinese entrants. Samsung itself benefited from disrupting from below and should be aware of the threat it faces as it races up-market. More importantly though there is the ability of creating new markets altogether. This new market creation and rapid iteration due to integration is what the Google/Microsoft/Apple trio are seeking.

Without the components of software (ecosystems included[1]) and services, Samsung will depend on the good graces of suppliers. They may not be as keen to share when profits accrue to the whole rather than the part.

 

---

Note:

[1] e.g. BlackBerry

Bill, I think the smartphone market has always been competitive. [Only] the names have been changed.

Tim Cook responding to Bill Shope's question on the competitive landscape, April, 2013.

Indeed, over the years, the companies considered Apple's primary competitor have been many.

In years gone by in the phone market there were RIM and Nokia and Palm and HTC. In the iPod era there was Creative and Sony and innumerable others long forgotten (not to mention the tyranny of DRM).

Even today we struggle to decide whether Apple competes with Google first or Samsung. Or perhaps with the iPad it's with Amazon or  Microsoft. Or maybe iTunes is threatened by Netflix or Spotify. The Mac surely competes with HP and Dell and Toshiba. What about iCloud? Clearly it's Dropbox or Google Drive. iWork? Both Office and Google Docs.

Doing a competitive analysis for Apple is then mostly a struggle of whom to compare it to. So forgive me that I only track the few challengers shown below.

Note also that these companies all may compete with Apple to some degree but they may not compete with each other. Competition, it seems, is not transitive.

There isn't much that I can observe in the data that hasn't already been observed. Google shows steady but not spectacular growth in revenues with decreasing margins. Microsoft shows even more modest growth in revenues with flat earnings. Apple growth is moderating from near vertical while earnings pause. Samsung has great growth but there is a similar set of doubts about its sustainability and finally, Amazon continues to grow the top line by 20% and  has nothing to show for it.

Operating margins have mostly fallen with the exception of Samsung whose increasing reliance on smartphones has led to a modest increase, though not nearly to the level of the others. (Amazon, lacking in profits, cannot be compared.)

 

In summary there is little change to report.

Except that it's been reported that in the last quarter Samsung managed to "dethrone" Apple from the phone operating profit crown. This is a matter of estimates and for that we need to understand clearly the assumptions.

I estimate that this is not the case. That indeed Apple remains most profitable phone maker by a wide margin.

To estimate operating margins you need to estimate gross margin and the allocation of operating expenses (SG&A and R&D) to a particular "division" or product line. The problem is that Apple does not operate as a divisional organization so its marketing and R&D budgets (i.e. people) are not assigned permanently. You have to move them around based on whatever is being worked on at any given time.

What's more, we need to account for the huge SG&A costs associated with iTunes and Retail. They both consume vast resources which cannot be allocated directly to any product. There are 41,000 people working in retail.  Also, some of the expenses for iTunes are overhead and cannot be considered cost of sales. That's also SG&A. Then there's corp research and design (Mansfield and Ive), which are not allocated to any particular product. When you slice out these costs, there is very little to apply to iPhone, etc.

So if (and it's a big, sanctimonious if) you want to cast iPhone out as a separate business unit, it would be wildly profitable. There is a huge gross margin of 46% (this assumes a cost per unit of $316) and only another 5% of sales spent on engineering and marketing leaves a 41% operating margin or $7.4 billion. (Why only 5%? Because there's only 10.8% to allocate and after taking out iTunes, Retail you're really only left with 4.49% for SG&A and 3.3% for R&D or 7.79% so 5% is about two thirds of the operating budget).

If you take all of Samsung's IM division which is PCs, Tablets and phones their operating profit was only $5.6 billion.

You can see the difference in the grey areas of operating profit in the first graph above.

Bear in mind that this is still an artificial comparison. The split of profit between product groups is not only an estimate by the analyst, it would be an estimate for Apple itself since it has only one P/L.