You can only argue which has the better model(Short term profits vs Long term Market share), I personally think Androids is better long term.

Right because chasing after market share by selling lots of low profit margin products seems to be working as well for the Android OEMs as it did for PC manufacturers.

Even Samsung is reporting lower revenues and profits and that use to be Android's shining star.

Can we get this in perspective please?
How many phones does Samsung and Google sell every time there is a new Android phone

Well....

  1. The only phone that Google sells are Nexus's and they don't really sell in volume.

2. Google has said numerous times (including in front of congress) that they make more of their mobile revenue from iOS devices than Android.

3. Samsung's revenues and profits are declining because more high end buyers are buying iPhones and more low end buyers are buying Chinese phones.

The release date is not relevant. Relevant is the end of production date.

Okay, the 3GS was last sold as new until the 5 came out in September 2012 and got a security update in 2/2014. So even if you bought the lowest end iPhone available you still got 18-24 months of support -- the same as the top of the line flagship Android Nexus. I'm not aware of any security related patches that have come out since then that weren't released for the 3GS.

It's had "real multitasking" since 2007. It's had third party app multitasking since 2010.

18 whole months!

The 3GS was released in 2009 and got a security update 2/2014

The iPhone 4 was released in 6/2010 and had the latest OS until 9/2014.

Every iPhone released since 9/2011 can be upgraded to the latest OS.

They'll go back to DRM because they can make it so they have the only music store on many peoples' phones and tablets. No choice in vendor, helping insure they get their music from apple, then no choice in players so they must buy apple devices to listen to iTunes music. It's not a cornered market, but purposeful vendor lock-in isn't exactly unheard of.

1. So are they going to take away support for mp3 and aac files?
2. Are they going to make Spotify, Pandora, Rhapsody, Amazon Music, and Google Music, etc. take their apps of the store?
3. Are they going to remove mp3/aac support from Safari?
4. Are they going to remove all of their API's for streaming music?

Too lazy to Google kid ?
Here's some good reading for you
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

What is that suppose to prove?

There was a lawsuit? If Apple was "ordered by the court" to drop FairPlay then how do you explain that it is still used for video, e-books?

Why would Apple -- go back to pushing the full album when they pushed for single song downloads over a decade ago or why would they push for DRM when they encouraged the music industry to get rid of it.

(And before anyone says they were forced to get rid of DRM by the competition, check when Jobs published "Thoughts on Music" and when the other stores started selling DRM free music.)

Google keeps providing security updates for older devices. I'm not sure how far back it goes but Gingerbread still occasionally gets patches, so that's 2010. They are provided via the Play Store app, and can patch OS level issues just like iOS updates.

That only helps for frameworks and API's that are covered by Google Play services. Anything else is up to the vendor/carrier to actually send updates to your phone. How many vendors would send a security update to a phone released in 2009 four years later?

Updates should keep coming for years, although realistically 5 years is a stretch. Apple tend to release crippling updates after a couple of years so that you either get stuck on an old version or are "encouraged" to upgrade your device.

Google only promises upgrades for 18 months. Apple provided security updates for 3GS released 6/2009 in 2/2014. The iPhone 4 released 6/2010 will have the latest OS until 9//2014. I used iOS 7 on an iPhone 4 and it works fine.

I think it is the even number rush.
The original iPhone (iPhone 2) Had a good demand on it.
People gradually got the iPhone 3 and 3g (incremental improvements nothing show stopping)
There was a big demand on the iPhone 4 (The higher res screen, and FaceTime)
The iPhone 4S 5 and 5S were incremental improvements the bigger screen on the 5 is nice but not enough to get people off the 4.
The iPhone 6 with a significantly larger screen means the people who have been hanging onto the 4 needs an upgrade.

[sarcasm]
It's almost like someone in the US has a reason to buy a new phone every two years....what could possible cause this pattern?
[/sarcasm]

The purpose of a buyback program is to BUY BACK stock to progressively regain a higher % of ownership of the company. The higher the stock price, the lower the effect of the buyback. Apple spent about 44 billions to buy back some of its stock over the last year. But it did not make a huge difference.

That's not the reason for the buy back. There are two reasons for a company to do a partial stock buy back.

1. Each share of a company's stock is a share of the company. If the company buys back shares, that makes each outstanding share worth a greater percentage of the company - in theory that raises the value of shares.

There are two ways you can give money back to shareholders - through a dividend and through a share buy back. Because of the way the US tax code is structured, dividends are taxed as regular income but long term sell of stock that appreciates is considered a capital gain with much lower tax rates.

2. Whenever shares are given to employees, it dilutes the value of existing shares making them less valuable. To counteract that, a company buys shares from the open market to counter act the effect.

It's like you think that going private is a bad thing or is a sign of financial struggle. But it's quite the opposite; a company that goes public is basically borrowing money from a shitload of small investors, and giving away the control of the company to a group of board members elected by the investors.

Wow. When a company sells stock they are selling a share of the company to the public. They are not *borrowing money*.

In fact, a company "borrowing money" and selling equity is completely opposite from each other.

Dell's revenue, profit, and stock price had been declining for years before they went private:

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ADELL&fstype=ii&ei=n-oFVKiwMdDm8QbZpIH4Bg

And from that point there is an ongoing conflict between the people in the company who want to work on long term projects and the investors who want to see the stock price go up and to receive higher dividends quarter after quarter.

And that didn't seem to be a problem for Apple transitioning from a computer company to a company where most of its revenues from phones....

Apple has a buyback program but it's not making a dent.

Not making a dent in what? Apples stock is at an all time high.

Then maybe they will have the opportunity to do like Dell, but I doubt it because Apple never had the kind of cash Dell has.

Apple right now has $67 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Dell had to borrow the money for the buy out.

You don't know what you are talking about. Dell went private because they wanted to switch the company's focus on enterprise services and software, but the short-term agenda of shareholders was preventing them to do that and was forcing them to keep wasting energy trying to increase their PC sales.

So that must explain why Apple had to go private to switch the company's focus from selling computers, to selling mp3 players, music, phones, and tablets....

oh wait...

All those companies won. They made great profits from an important product. So what if many are no longer in business. Many steam engine companies are out of business. That doesn't mean that steam engines were bad and we should have invested more in horses or blimps. Life moves on.

A good company run by strong management knows how to adapt. A steam engine company that went out of business is evidence of management that thought they were in the "steam engine" business and not the business of powering things.

Netflix knew their business wasn't "delivering DVD's to people" and that it was "delivering movies to people" and they switched from DVD delivery to focusing on streaming.

Apple has been selling personal computers for almost 40 years. So why is Apple the most valuable company in the US and the rest of the PC titans has-beens?