[ZeroGravitas]

"They set out to make the most money."

It really worries me that there's a new breed of Apple fan that actually believes this.

In reality they set out to build the best device (for affluent, white, middle-aged, American males with a taste for minimalism) and semi-accidentally became fashionable status symbols.

The crowing about making the most money was just fanboy bragging because every other stat they bragged about was slowly being eclipsed by Android. Fanboy rule number one is to make far too big a deal about anything unique about you or your enemy. Some people seem to have latched onto profit margins and run wild with it. This has gotten to the point where I'm half expecting, even here on HN, someone to come along and claim that Samsung "isn't making any money" from selling these phones.

[Tichy]

"for affluent, white, middle-aged, American males with a taste for minimalism"

So what do you reckon, what would a perfect smartphone for black, middle-aged American males look like?

[bane]

For the last few years, if you add "part of the hip hop culture", it's been a Blackberry.

Recently, I've seen a lot more high end Android devices, but a few of my friends have gone back to flip phones surprisingly.

[ZeroGravitas]

Well these stats seem to suggest that iPhone is half as popular with the African-American demographic (with RIM and "other" noticeably more popular):

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/among-mobile-ph...

And this suggests that "Demographically, Android phones are especially common among young adults and African-Americans, while iPhones and Blackberry devices are most prevalent among college graduates and the financially well-off."

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2054/smartphone-ownership-demogr...

Blackberry seems to win, probably through being an early provider of group messaging to a young, early-adopter demographic on one side and a business staple on the other and the twin lock-ins that provides.

Though note that "white people" are about 10-15 years older than other categories on average so white, middle-aged, and affluent kind of go together and can be hard to tease apart.

[rimantas]

What other stats make sense to the company? It is called "business" for a reason.

[sharmajai]

Ya business as USUAL is what apple is known for. Ya right.

[sharmajai]

If all the 'Think Different' ads, the product differentiation by Apple, and the Jony Ive's memorial speech about caring about months for things that the user will never see, with no regards to its contribution to profit, cannot convince the downvoters that Apple is not like all other run the mill companies, then I don't know what will.

Regardless I hate it when people act and support the cynicism that all companies are the same, they all work for profit, there can never be a do no evil company. May all such thinkers stick to their dogma lifelong and suffer from it.

[Shivetya]

You don't come up with nearly a hundred billion dollars in cash sitting around because you only aimed ay making the best product. They aimed for the best product so as to make the most money. They used marketing to exploit the market place for those whom are easily convinced than items give them status.

How more simple could their model be? Exploit human greed.

[greyish_water]

I like how you cut straight to the ad hominem and kept it up the whole way through.

[moomin]

To be honest, I'm not an Apple fan. I'm a fan of the iPhone; I think it's a superb bit of kit. But I waited 4 years to upgrade my last one, so I'm probably not exactly their best customer.

I don't really see the problem with claiming a company sets out to make money. But Apple's achievement in this area is nothing short of phenomenal. They've driven component costs down to the point that there's _hundreds_ of dollars of margin on every device. Then they've got the app store. The only firm I can think that does it this well is Nintendo, who even in the days they weren't fashionable were nonetheless very profitable.

[wanorris]

From the standpoint of operations and supply chain, Apple's work is absolute genius. People who keep up with successful businesses and study business strategies should marvel at this. HN is full of people who care about the running of business, so this is a natural topic.

But the drift amongst consumers in general from discussing things like "Apple makes great phones!" and "Android phones really empower me to do things I find useful!" to arguing your phone is superior to someone else's because of the supply chain management involved or the profit margin is utterly baffling. These things have no bearing on the consumer experience.

Even the sales stats are ultimately a pretty silly thing to argue about. If you have a device with the limited ecosystem of a WebOS phone, then market share matters, because at that level, not many people will write apps for your phone. But both iOS and Android phones are tremendously successful, and both have pretty much all the third party apps anyone needs (plus or minus something new enough that it hasn't been ported or knocked off on the other platform).

[jamesrom]

So you're upset that Apple fans are claiming that Apple set out to make a lot of money instead of claiming they set out to make the best device?

That sounds backwards to me.

[ZeroGravitas]

I like a lot of things about Apple, and I've bought a lot of their products and often recommended them to friends (still do, only recently bought my parents an iPad).

I can honestly say that their profits have never been something I've been impressed by, and indeed, for most of that time they didn't have impressive profits, so if I was impressed by profits I would have bought and recommended Windows PCs instead.

[sjwright]

> > > > They set out to make the most money

> > > they set out to build the best device

Surely it's equal parts of both: Apple try to make the best products (in order to) make the most money (in order to) make the best products (in order to) make the most money (in order to) make the best products (in order to) etc etc...

In the sandpit where Apple plays, you can't have one without the other. A beautiful symbiosis of business and craft.

[ZeroGravitas]

It would be nice if that were true, but actually network effects and path dependency mean that the best products will rarely "win" in IT markets where those factors dominate (see arguments about who has the bigger app store, or developer base, or patent portfolio, or pile of money).

I hope people don't lose their sense of surprise that Apple is "winning" with nice products or start to think it's inevitable, history tells us otherwise.

[cooldeal]

I guess the beef is that the metric keeps changing. Before Android took over the market crown it was all about unit sales and marketshare percentage that everyone touted. Once Android took over, the metric changed.

For example, Windows Server makes billions per quarter and probably is the Server OS that makes the most money for it's maker. But you won't find that argument on HN to say that Windows Server dominates the server OS market. In fact some believe that Windows has no viable presence in servers.

[jamesrom]

Before Android took over the market crown, RIM held the market crown.

Sure MS might not have a viable presence in servers, but if they are making more money doing it than anyone else... by definition, they are winning. They aren't going to pack-up a billion-dollar-per-quarter sector of their company because they don't have the market share numbers they'd like. If anything, having such a successful business with such a small market share represents potential growth.