Category Archives: Smartphones

Android, AOSP, Cyanogen, Microsoft, Samsung, Smartphones

Samsung’s Microsoft deal and Cyanogen

1 Comment

SamMobile reported last night that Samsung was planning to pre-install a number of Microsoft applications on the Galaxy S6, which is to be announced in a few weeks at Mobile World Congress. I think this is a huge boost for Microsoft’s Android apps and for the services behind them – far bigger than the applications that come pre-installed with Microsoft’s own devices, obviously. To get on Samsung’s flagship device (presumably others will follow) is a huge coup for Microsoft. But it’s also a big deal for Samsung, which has until now been pre-installing ersatz versions of Microsoft apps on its devices for productivity.

But what I really wanted to talk about here was what this says about Microsoft’s broader strategy, and what it might mean for the rumored investment Microsoft is making in Cyanogen. Nokia, of course, forked Android itself using AOSP when it created the Nokia X line of smartphones shortly before the Microsoft acquisition was announced, but it was killed off right after Microsoft took control. So rumors of an investment in yet another Android fork seem funny – was Microsoft hedging its bets on Windows Phone and preparing another Android-based device line?

I think the much more likely explanation is that Cyanogen and Microsoft are planning something rather different, something much more along the lines of that Samsung deal. Cyanogen’s biggest weakness is that it’s missing all the Google apps and services that you sacrifice when you use AOSP. The challenge for any company doing this outside of China has always been what to replace them with. Inside China, it’s simple, because Google’s own services are largely irrelevant and local alternatives are actually better. But outside China, Amazon and others have struggled to provide really compelling replacements. The two companies that have comprehensive sets of services and applications that can replace Google’s today are, of course, Apple and Microsoft. Apple’s are (today) unique to its own products and platforms, but Microsoft is increasingly pursuing a cross-device strategy. Hence its investment in Cyanogen.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if at least some flavor of Cyanogen devices in future come with Microsoft apps and services where the Google ones would normally be. We won’t see Microsoft launching another Android-based line of devices, but rather an Android-based line of devices that puts Microsoft’s services and apps front and center. That, after all, is the real goal here: getting Microsoft’s services in front of as many customers as possible, integrated into the platform in a way that makes them the default options for key tasks, and which provides benefits across the platform. Windows Phone has been the only platform where that’s been true, but Cyanogen could easily become a second. Quite what Cyanogen’s current customer base would make of that is unclear, but then Cyanogen’s future depends on broadening its appeal way beyond the hackers and tinkerers who flash alternative ROMs on their Android devices, and Microsoft could be a great fit there.

Both these deals – Samsung and Cyanogen – are good for both parties. Samsung and Cyanogen both need compelling apps to set their platforms apart, while Microsoft badly needs the broader exposure it will get from being pre-installed on these devices.

Earnings, Lenovo, Motorola, Q4 2014, Smartphones

Motorola’s impact on Lenovo

Note: this is part of a series on major tech companies’ earnings in Q4 2014 (click here for previous posts). In this post as elsewhere, I’m using calendar quarters (e.g. Q4 2014) to designate reporting periods, even though Lenovo and certain other companies have fiscal years which use different designations. Q4 2014 in this post and elsewhere refers to the quarter ending December 2014.

Lenovo reported its results yesterday, and although I have not traditionally covered Lenovo in depth here, I wanted to examine something specific: that is, the impact of the Motorola acquisition on Lenovo’s reported numbers. As such, I’m going to highlight a handful of charts here, but I’m also sending a deck on Lenovo with quite a few more charts to subscribers (if you’d like more information or to sign up, click here).

One quick note: the acquisition of Motorola closed in October, but Lenovo also acquired IBM’s server business around the same time. As such, not all the impacts described below are entirely due to the Motorola acquisition, though several are, and I’d estimate the Motorola acquisition had a significantly greater impact than the server business did. Lenovo reported a full quarter of System X (server) results in its reporting, and two months of Motorola results.

Smartphone shipments

The most obvious impact of the Motorola acquisition was a dramatic rise in smartphone shipments reported by Motorola. The chart below shows the trend line, with a very clear bump in Q4:

Lenovo smartphone shipmentsIt’s worth noting, however, that shipments have been growing at Lenovo even before the Motorola acquisition. In my mind, the company has been one of the more successful and stable players in this space over recent years. However, that success has come largely in China, which has dominated shipments in the past. So another impact from the Motorola acquisition is the change in that mix:

Lenovo smartphone shipments China and RoWHopefully you’ll notice two things here. First, and perhaps most obvious, is the spike in rest-of-world shipments in Q4, which rose from under 4 million a quarter to over 14 million. Motorola shipped 10.6 million devices in Q4 alone, so it accounts for the majority of those rest of world shipments. Secondly, you may notice that China shipments actually fell year on year and quarter on quarter. Shipments rose from Q3 to Q4 in 2013, and this dip is fairly significant. It’s quite likely that Lenovo, like Xiaomi, suffered from the impact of Apple’s new iPhones in China in Q4. What’s worth watching is whether this recovers in Q1.

Mobile as a contribution to revenues

Until Q3 2014, Lenovo’s business was dominated by revenues from PCs. PCs contributed nearly 90% of Lenovo’s revenues two years ago, and it’s always stayed above 75%. That business, too, has performed well over recent years, despite the difficulties in the overall market, and so this dominance happened despite the growth in Lenovo’s smartphone and tablet businesses. But with the acquisition of Motorola, Mobile Devices suddenly went from around 15% of its revenues to almost a quarter:Lenovo mobile as percent of revenueThis is helpful for Lenovo particularly because of the overall headwinds in the PC space. PCs have continued to grow for Lenovo, but lessening its dependence on this business while exposing itself to the upside in smartphones is critical for Lenovo’s future growth, and the Motorola acquisition helps significantly with the balance of these two businesses.

Regional impact

We’ve already looked at the impact of Motorola on smartphone shipments outside the US, but the other big impact from this is the share of revenues from different regions. Motorola’s revenue contribution is essentially recorded in the Americas segment, and you can see the impact in this next chart:

Lenovo revenue by regionNote the dramatic growth in the size of that Americas block in Q4 2014 (again, the Motorola acquisition wasn’t the only contributor, as the IBM server business is also US-based). EMEA also grew a little, while China and AP remained fairly steady.

Margin impact

The impact of the two acquisitions can perhaps be most clearly seen in the regional segment margins Lenovo reports. The chart below shows these:

Lenovo margins by regionMargins in China and AP were essentially unaffected by the acquisitions, with AP rapidly catching up with China’s margin levels. But Americas margins dipped into the red for the first time in a long time in Q4, and EMEA margins also dipped somewhat. This is the downside to adding both the new businesses: neither was profitable under its previous owner. With the significant growth in smartphones year on year at Motorola, and efforts to get the Motorola brand back into China, together with various synergies, Lenovo expects Motorola to become profitable within about 18 months of the close of the deal. But in the meantime, Motorola’s results will be something of a drag on overall results.

I’m generally very bullish on Lenovo and the Motorola acquisition. I wrote more about it on Techpinions recently.

Below, I’ve pasted a screenshot of the Lenovo deck which will be going to subscribers shortly.

Lenovo deck overview

Developers, Devices & Services, Microsoft, Nokia, Platforms, Smartphones, Windows, Windows Phone

The Windows Phone app gap

Much has been written in the past about Windows Phone’s lack of apps compared with iOS and Android. Both Nokia and Microsoft have responded in the past with claims that quality and not quantity is what matters in an app store. Both arguments represent over-simplifications, and neither accurately captures the reality of what’s going on with the Windows Phone app store and its competitiveness with Android and iOS. This post is a summary of one of the major sections of a new report on the state of Windows Phone published by Jackdaw Research this week, which examines this question among others in depth. The report is available for free here, and I encourage interested readers to download it and read the whole thing.

The quantity gap

Windows Phone does suffer from a quantity gap versus both Android and iOS, which are essentially neck and neck in the app store stakes. On the one hand, Microsoft has done well to get out of the gate quickly and get a good number of apps on the platform in a short space of time – the chart below shows the number of apps on each of the three major platforms within the first 15 quarters following launch:

Major platforms first 15 quartersThe problem, of course, is that Windows Phone isn’t competing against those platforms 15 quarters from their launch – they launched considerably earlier, and the current situation is much less favorable:

Apps available in major storesWindows Phone continues to lag the other two major app stores (and even Apple’s iPad-specific list of apps) considerably, and the gap is widening rather than narrowing.

The quality gap

The frequent response from Nokia (before its acquisition by Microsoft) and from Microsoft itself has been that Android and iOS have thousands of apps no-one needs or uses, and that the real question is one of quality rather than quantity. But the problem is that Windows Phone suffers from a lack of quality as well as a quantity problem. There are several ways to look at that, so I’ll run through a few of them. Continue reading →

Earnings, Q3 2014, Samsung, Smartphones

Thoughts on Samsung’s Q3 2014 earnings

6 Comments

Note for new readers: this post is part of a series on major tech companies’ earnings for calendar Q3 2014. 

I’m going to link here quickly to two of my past posts on Samsung as they provide useful context which I don’t want to revisit in this post:

  • Is Samsung’s Exceptionalism Coming to an End? – on Techpinions. This post focused on the fact that Samsung had always seemed an exception to my rules for success in tech, and it seemed inevitable that its reign would sometime come to an end.
  • Thoughts on Samsung’s Q2 2014 earnings (and its future) – on this blog. In this post I talked about Samsung’s margins as being unusual for a pure consumer electronics business, and how those margins were likely to revert to the mean eventually because of Samsung’s lack of differentiation. (This is also the most-read of any post on this site since its inception a year ago)

All past analysis on Samsung on this blog can be seen here. My analysis tends to focus on Samsung’s mobile business specifically – other than a brief mention of chips, I won’t cover Samsung Electronics’ other businesses (air conditioning, TVs, refrigerators and display panels, among other things).

Plunging growth numbers

It’s worth starting with a quick financial review, to make sure we’re all on the same page. The relevant business unit from a mobile point of view is “IM”, or IT and Mobile communications. This includes PCs and tablets as well as smartphones, but it’s the lowest-level division where Samsung reports both revenues and profits, so it’s the one we’ll focus on here. However, it does report revenues for the Mobile segment specifically, so we’ll start there. First, revenue growth:

Screenshot 2014-10-30 13.51.42

As you can see, year on year revenue growth has plummeted from positive 90% in Q1 2012 to negative 30% this past quarter. The decline over the past year is alarmingly linear, and one wonders how much worse things can get before that decline levels off. Continue reading →

Margins, Samsung, Smartphones

Smartphone margins and Samsung

Since I’ve been talking to a few journalists about Samsung’s fairly dismal Q3 earnings forecast, and pointing people back to my previous pieces on Samsung, one thing that’s been coming up a lot is profitability and margins in smartphones. I thought I’d quickly jot down a couple of thoughts on this point in particular, as there seems to be a poor understanding of this topic in general.

The key here is that there are at least two components to profitability in smartphones, though they’re often conflated or one ignored entirely:

  • Gross margin, i.e. the difference between the cost of manufacturing a device (cost of sales or cost of goods sold) and its selling price.
  • Operating margins, i.e. gross margins minus all the shared costs of running the business that sells the smartphones, including all non-manufacturing employees, advertising, general and administrative costs, depreciation and amortization and so on.

It is entirely possible for a company to make a positive gross margin on each phone sold (even a significant one) and yet be hideously loss-making because its advertising, general and other costs are greater than the gross margin on the device. Motorola, for example, claims that it makes money on each device it sells, but that’s a reference to gross margins, and the business unit itself continues to be unprofitable as part of Google, because the other costs are greater than the modest gross margin it makes on its device sales.

This is important in the context of Samsung’s earnings forecast for a couple of specific reasons. Firstly, Samsung’s overall margins have benefited from two key factors:

  • Firstly, it has achieved significant share of the premium smartphone market, and an extremely high share of the premium Android market. Gross margins are much higher at the premium end than at the low end, and this is a major component of Samsung’s overall high margins relative to every competitor except Apple.
  • Secondly, it has massive scale, as easily the largest smartphone vendor in the world over the last couple of years. Scale is important because it spreads shared costs such as advertising, general employee costs and so on over a much greater number of devices. In other words, if Samsung spent a billion dollars on advertising and sold a hundred million phones, advertising costs per device would be $10, but if it sold two hundred million phones, advertising costs per device would be $5. The more devices over which you can spread these shared costs, the bigger the impact on operating margins. There are also some scale benefits to gross margins, of course.

Both this quarter and in previous quarters, Samsung’s earnings have taken a hit because of reduced scale (affecting mostly operating costs per device) and reduced prices (affecting gross margins), so both parts of the profitability equation are suffering at once. Some have suggested that Samsung should go harder after the low end of the market, while others have said that would be stupid because there are no margins there. This is where the above understanding of profitability becomes relevant: yes, the gross margins are lower at the low end, but there’s massively more scale there, which can help operating margins. So it’s not as simple as saying that Samsung should steer clear of the low end because the margins are poor.

Having said that, Samsung does face increasing pressure at the high end, especially since Apple has closed a major competitive window with the new iPhones launched a few weeks ago. So it may be increasingly important for Samsung to focus on the low end. However, that’s easier said than done too: the low end is arguably the main focus of many of the most aggressive moves in the industry at present, with Microsoft providing reference designs for cheap Windows Phones and Google launching the Android One initiative, along with the Moto G and other low-cost smartphones. It’s not necessarily going to be any easier for Samsung to compete at the low end than at the high end, especially if it wants to generate the kinds of margins it has in the past in smartphones. But there’s not really anywhere else to go: the mid-market is rapidly disappearing as the market bifurcates between premium and low-cost, with very little in-between.

Hence, perhaps, Samsung’s renewed investment in the chip business, as a potential supplier to other players. There’s far less competition in that business than in smartphones, and Samsung already has a very strong role in this business as a supplier to Apple and itself. Even as Apple’s reliance on Samsung chips wanes, there are plenty of other opportunities for Samsung to go after here. But of course the average selling price of a chip is far lower than the average selling price of smartphones. Even if the margins are good, it’s extremely unlikely that Samsung will be able to make up the difference on chips alone. Which means it has to continue to go after the smartphone market aggressively too, even though it faces falling margins and shipments going forward.

Android, Android Wear, Motorola, Samsung, Smartphones, Smartwatches

Motorola’s lessons for Samsung

I’ve been testing three of Motorola’s new devices for the last several days: the new Moto X and Moto G smartphones, and the Moto 360 smartwatch. I don’t do traditional reviews – there are plenty of sites out there that do those well – but I thought I’d share some of my thoughts about these devices, briefly, but also about what they can teach us more broadly, and tech Samsung specifically.

Moto X

Last year’s version of the Moto X was already a very good device in a number of ways, and this year’s version fixes several problems: the price/performance ratio feels a lot better, the materials and build make for a more premium experience, and the camera is a lot more competitive. I’ve been using the Moto X as my main phone for the last few days, and I’ve really enjoyed it. The camera still isn’t as good as the iPhone camera, or arguably the Galaxy S5 camera, especially in low light. And the digital shutter mechanism still frustrates me by taking pictures when I’m trying to change the focus point. But it’s an awful lot better, and I’ve taken some nice pictures with it, including this one:

IMG_20140914_162715In short, the Moto X is much better on the things it was bad at. But it’s also got even better at the things its predecessor was good at – namely the little software customizations that added significantly to the stock Android experience without taking it over, adding huge numbers of visual customizations and tweaks, or overloading the device with gimmicks and widgets. What Motorola has done really well in these devices is creating in its software elements that significantly add value to Android without feeling like they’re trying to replace it. They’re done in such a way that they feel like they are – or should be – part of the core OS, both visually and in terms of their functionality and integration into the OS itself. Unless you’ve used stock Android, it would be hard to see where Android itself ends and Motorola’s enhancements to it begin.

In many respects, this is just the sort of thing Samsung should have been working on over the last few years, to set its handsets apart against the flood of other Android phones. Instead, it’s focused on gimmicks – features that are eye-catching and make for good demos, but that don’t really make life easier or improve upon the core Android experience. If Google were keeping Motorola, I would say these features should slowly work their way back into the core Android experience as Motorola invents new ones. Under Lenovo, I wonder to what extent these innovations will continue and to what extent Lenovo will embrace them at a corporate level and build them into its other devices too. If it’s smart, it will realize what it’s getting here and fully embrace it.  Continue reading →

Apple, iPhone, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, Smartphones

Apple closes another window for competitors

This is the first of what will likely be several pieces from me over the course of this week on Apple’s big announcements, both here and in my weekly Techpinions column. This one focuses on the iPhone specifically.

Apple has always provided windows of opportunity for competitors

In the in-depth Apple profile I wrote for clients a couple of months ago, I said the following:

Apple competes very effectively in the market segments it targets, but deliberately limits the segments of the markets it competes in.

As a corollary to that, one of my first recommendations to Apple’s competitors was:

Play where Apple isn’t. The easiest approach to take is to play where Apple chooses not to. Early in this report, we discuss Apple’s focused approach and the ways in which it limits its own addressable market through its focus on premium devices, a small number of devices, and a relatively controlled approach to customization. Competitors should play up their differences and focus on those markets where Apple doesn’t play, or doesn’t play effectively. Very few companies can go up against Apple in its target markets and win.

What’s been fascinating about Apple’s history with the iPhone is the ways in which it has deliberately held back features or functionality in either hardware or software which competitors offer. In the process, it’s provided a series of windows of opportunity for competitors to differentiate on that basis, and to hammer Apple for it in their advertising. The chart below shows a number of these features and the windows of opportunity Apple has allowed competitors to offer them without competition. In each case, the starting point is when major competitors began to offer the feature, and the ending point is when Apple began offering it, either in iPhone hardware or in iOS. (To be sure, some of these were far more useful and meaningful differentiators than others).Apple windows of opportunityIn some cases, the window has been very small, lasting just a year or so. Such was the case with the initial iPhone’s lack of 3G, push email and third party apps. But other windows have lasted much longer, such as the absence of widgets. But in all these cases, Apple has been content to allow competitors free rein in these areas while it either didn’t consider the feature important or wanted to wait until it could get it right. Continue reading →

IFA, Microsoft, Nokia, Quick Thoughts, Smartphones

Quick thoughts: on Microsoft’s IFA announcements

Half the tech world is making announcements this week at the IFA trade show in Germany. A couple of other companies are making announcements elsewhere (Motorola today/tomorrow in Chicago, Apple next week in Cupertino). Samsung, Sony and other companies’ IFA announcements have received plenty of coverage, but Microsoft’s have flown somewhat under the radar, at least in part because there was no new flagship device. And yet I think there’s more significance in Microsoft’s IFA announcements than people realize. Here’s why.

Reconciling “devices and services”: a third way

There’s been significant discussion about how to reconcile Microsoft’s continued focus on both cross-platform services and making its own devices (this is a topic I’ve previously tackled here). The question has been: does Microsoft distinguish its services on the basis that they work just as well on any device, or its devices on the basis that its services work best on them? This week’s announcements suggest a third possibility: Microsoft will distinguish its own devices through commercial bundling of its services at attractive terms in a way others can’t match. For example, bundling in three months of Skype international calling with one of its new phones. We’ll see more of this sort of thing going forward both with Lumia smartphones and Surface tablets. Incorporating Nokia into Microsoft made this sort of thing much easier, and it will fully take advantage of that.

Smartphone positioning beyond low end remains challenging

Microsoft was smart to sit out this round of flagship phone announcements – Nokia’s flagships haven’t sold well anyway, but going head to head against new entrants from Samsung, Sony, Motorola, Apple and others seems particularly foolhardy. But Microsoft’s big challenge is that it’s been unable to establish a solid set of differentiators in the mid and high end, even as its “cheap, but still good” strategy makes big inroads at the low end. Its 500-series devices are its top sellers in almost all its major markets, and that’s useful for scale purposes, but it doesn’t help at the high end (and in fact may hurt if the Lumia brand gets a reputation for being a budget marque).

Branding strategy is confused but should be reconciled soon

The IFA announcements also highlight some brand confusion caused by the co-existence of the Nokia and Microsoft marques on the devices announced. The two smartphones are dubbed Nokia Lumia, while the accessories are the Nokia Wireless Charging Plate and the Microsoft Screen Sharing solution. The Nokia brand is supposed to go away soon except for low-end phones (since it belongs to the rump of the Nokia corporation), but that hasn’t happened yet. And yet Nokia needs to do more than just replace the Lumia brand – it ideally needs to reconcile its various hardware brands, at the very least Surface and Lumia.

Microsoft Screen Sharing has promise but not just yet

The Microsoft Screen Sharing device flew almost completely below the radar, but has in fact been heavily trailed for months. It’s a Chromecast equivalent, but at an Fire TV / Roku price point, and that’s its first big problem. But it’s symbolic in that it’s Microsoft’s first foray into the living room for non-gamers. The second big problem is that Microsoft has done very little to promote the Miracast support in its devices until this point, mostly because it hasn’t had a companion device to sell. But now that it does, the challenge will be educating existing device owners that their devices are compatible. Microsoft Screen Sharing may become a Google Cast / AirPlay equivalent brand which we’ll see show up in more places now, and I think Microsoft should absolutely play that up. But it should also cut that price significantly and/or enable carriers to bundle it for free with Lumia devices.

I’ll be publishing more on Windows Phone in the coming weeks as I have an in-depth report on the state of the platform coming shortly, though I may follow Microsoft’s lead in waiting until after the IFA / Apple hubbub dies down…

Amazon, Fire Phone, Kindle Phone, Smartphones

Why an Amazon smartphone makes sense

It seems highly likely that Amazon will finally announce its long-rumored smartphone next week at a special event. From what I’ve seen on Twitter and elsewhere, there’s a lot of skepticism about Amazon’s entry into this market, so I thought I’d review some of the reasons why I think it makes sense for Amazon to make a smartphone.

Amazon needs a storefront on mobile

Amazon is becoming an increasingly diversified company, with offerings across many parts of e-commerce, an increasingly strong digital content business, local grocery deliveries, a range of enterprise cloud services, and many others. On the desktop, Amazon.com is where these things come together – a unified storefront for all the things Amazon wants to sell you, carefully curated and personalized to combine what Amazon particularly wants to sell today with what it thinks you may be particularly interested in buying today. This allows Amazon to promote its Fire TV product, its Kindle Fire tablets, Prime shipping and Instant Video and various other products prominently, and thus cross-sell and up-sell to the hundreds of millions of people using Amazon.com on a regular basis.

But Amazon lacks such a storefront on mobile. Yes, it has a variety of standalone apps on mobile devices, including an Amazon.com commerce app, Instant Video, Kindle and Amazon MP3 apps. But they’re not interconnected the way the Amazon.com experience is, and there’s little push from one to another. In addition, though there was a time when a number of Android smartphones came with the Amazon MP3 app pre-installed, those days are now passed. Though Amazon still manages to do deals with Android OEMs and carriers from time to time to get some of its apps pre-installed, they’re often buried in a folder, and there’s little push for the user to use them. Meanwhile, the OEM, carrier or OS vendor’s own competing apps are often put front and center for the user.

Amazon therefore needs to create a mobile storefront equivalent to what it has on the desktop with Amazon.com, and to do that it needs to create an Amazon-centric experience on the most ubiquitous device, the smartphone.

The growing role of m-commerce

Continue reading →

Amazon, podcasts, Smartphones, Subsidies

Techpinions Podcast Episode 2

I had the pleasure of recording the second episode of the new Techpinions podcast with Bob O’Donnell and Ben Bajarin on Friday, and the podcast went up on Saturday May 3rd. The podcast focused mostly on Amazon’s potential entry into the smartphone market, and we mentioned a few things on the podcast which I thought would be worth linking to.

  • First off, Ben’s post from this week on Amazon’s smartphone potential
  • Bob referred to this chart I shared earlier this week about the upgrade rate for smartphones among the major US carriers – it’s the second one from the bottom on this piece (more analysis on some of these numbers here)
  • My earlier Techpinions post on the potential impact of changing device subsidy models and how it might hurt carriers on the one hand, and help certain OEMs on the other
  • A tweet from a week or two ago about Amazon’s testing of installment plans for Kindles
  • You can see the number of apps on the Amazon Appstore for Android which are tablet vs. phone optimized about one scroll down in the left sidebar

I’m excited about the Techpinions podcast, because it will give the varied group of people that write for Techpinions an interesting new channel for sharing their views and insight. I’m looking forward to doing future episodes from time to time too.