Why does the cellphone market need to be so much different?
Because Microsoft is making money selling software and commoditizing hardware, while Google sees both software and hardware as a compliment to their business (and so, gives software away for free (hardware is commoditized enough)). By comparison, Apple is trying to make profit off markup in precisely those areas: hardware + software.
In short, the numbers are very different. While laptops are now split nicely at $1000 (<1000 - mostly PC's, >1000 - mostly Macs), what we're talking about is devices Apple wants to sell for $700 soon costing less than half of that for similar "Android" manufacturers. I forget the marketing-speak explaining this, but that gap is a big problem.
In summary, Google wants a world where both hardware and software are a commodity. For Apple, this is bad, bad, bad, as that's precisely the market they're trying to make their markup.
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Why does the cellphone market need to be so much different?
Because Microsoft is making money selling software and commoditizing hardware, while Google sees both software and hardware as a compliment to their business (and so, gives software away for free (hardware is commoditized enough)). By comparison, Apple is trying to make profit off markup in precisely those areas: hardware + software.
In short, the numbers are very different. While laptops are now split nicely at $1000 (<1000 - mostly PC's, >1000 - mostly Macs), what we're talking about is devices Apple wants to sell for $700 soon costing less than half of that for similar "Android" manufacturers. I forget the marketing-speak explaining this, but that gap is a big problem.
In summary, Google wants a world where both hardware and software are a commodity. For Apple, this is bad, bad, bad, as that's precisely the market they're trying to make their markup.