This case is one that Groklaw used to cover, and... I have no idea what's going on there anymore, and don't know where else to look for anything of similar depth and trustworthiness.
Groklaw was a news site which covered tech company litigation, which shut down in 2013 because the primary author, Pamela Jones, felt threatened by bulk email collection. (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175) Finding out that the old cases it covered are still going through appeals and maneuverings, its absence is deeply felt.
I knew Growklaw shutdown some time ago, but never had the chance to read this entry.
Wow. It's very dark.
It really made me think.
However... aside from that, and trying to shake down a bit of that darkness, I read the update with Sheier's advice, and this stood out:
"Prefer symmetric cryptography over public-key cryptography. "
Why would that be? I've never actually read anything that would touch on the subject. Does anyone have any references to why are these comments so? is it that symmetric crypto can use larger keys? or is it because using an OTP makes it unbreakabale?
Last 12M ending 9/30/2015 (last available financial data): Google did $71.7Bn in revenue and $14.7Bn in net income. I assume the lawyer meant that Android had generated $31Bn since inception, but that can't mean gross revenue since they only take a 15% cut on the Play store (so wouldn't be able to show $22Bn of profit (71% margin). So $31Bn in net revenue implies $207Bn in gross revenues. The Apple App Store did $20Bn in 2015 and generated 75% more revenue than Google (http://blog.appannie.com/app-annie-2015-retrospective/), implying $11Bn in gross revenue for Google Play, or $1.7Bn in net revenue in 2015.
You're not counting the license fees for the Android OS. Only Android AOSP is free, and nobody outside of China ships that. Android including the Play Store and all the Google apps costs real money, I've heard estimates of about $10 per phone. Android ships about 1 billion phones a year, so $31B lifetime revenue sounds about right.
I've never heard of this before, and previous leaks of the contracts between Google and OEMs[1] made no mention of this. I doubt OEMs would agree to those terms. As far as I know, the license only covers things like hardware and software requirements, apps you have to include (Google Play, Gmail, etc.), etc.
> Techically the money OEMS have to pay covering certification does not go to Google.
OP was referring to license fees, which google does not charge. Mandatory certification by a third party is different from that, and judging by the numbers in that article amount to less than a dollar per device (probably far less for flagship devices that sell millions of units?).
> You may be right that most OEMs don't agree to it. But the larger ones that are on the western markets definitely do.
No OEM agreed to licensing fees, they don't exist (as far as is publicly known).
Probably not after tac, though I guess it depends on what you call fat margins. Rumors are google pays apple 75% for their search deal. My suspicion is google keep under 30% of mobile ad spend too.
my point (re: fat margins on mobile advertising) was that anyone who can control the default search engine stands to take a big piece of the profit associated with google ads delivered via those searches
repnation probably meant that of the 30% they keep half (which I think I've heard before). That doesn't seem to be accurate though; apparently in 2014 the WSJ reported (paywalled) they switched to keeping most of it; see (in lieu of a primary reference; I can't be bothered searching further):
I think Google thought they had their bases pretty well covered. They had implicit, if not explicit, agreement from Sun that Sun wouldn't take action on Java. Then on top of that, the code they were using was clean room engineered based on decades old precedents in court that held that clean-room engineering an API was legally allowed. Then they probably felt that in the worst case scenario a switch to OpenJDK would get them out of trouble (and for the future it probably will). With 3 separate levels of protection I think they just felt the odds of them losing all of them were small.
> I seem to remember that the (much more expensive) purchase of Motorola was considered as a defensive move specifically to counter Apple IP claims
Or more specifically, to counter the $4.5B Nortel IP that Apple, Microsoft et al outbid Google to get. In retrospect, the IP arms race was foolish and extravagant.
I don't think it was nearly as clear back then that this is how things would play out. Sun still controlled its own destiny when Android was nascent and it's my understanding that while Sun wasn't exactly thrilled about them building on Apache Harmony / Dalvik, etc., they weren't going to sue them over it either. Motorola on the other hand was literally telling Google and Wall Street that they were ready to go nuclear on other Android ODMs if someone didn't make them an offer (because their actual operating business wasn't cutting it anymore)
So it is that time of the year again for me to quote Gosling:
"We were all really disturbed, even Jonathan: he just decided to put on a happy face and tried to turn lemons into lemonade, which annoyed a lot of folks at Sun."
"I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of others from Sun in offering my heartfelt congratulations to Google on the announcement of their new Java/Linux phone platform, Android. Congratulations!"
Because if I disagree with you, I must be drinking Google's coolaid, right?
Edit: before you say the quote was part of "putting on a happy face", maybe have a look at what he had to say when he was called as Google's witness in Oracle v Google. It is also telling that he was called in by Google, rather than Oracle.
> Because if I disagree with you, I must be drinking Google's coolaid, right?
Well on HN, it seems Google cannot do no wrong and Oracle is the devil, regardless of them both being corporations and not really persons.
> before you say the quote was part of "putting on a happy face", maybe have a look at what he had to say when he was called as Google's witness in Oracle v Google. It is also telling that he was called in by Google, rather than Oracle.
1 - Yes it was part of "putting on a happy face"
2 - Usually when one gets called to the court, it is not easy to say no, regardless which side puts your name on. So Google lawyers just were faster than Oracle's.
3 - Ah but he testified on court. Well, having been born in a country just getting of dictatorship and where corruption is part of daily life, I don't believe people always "tell the truth and only the truth" when at court.
The fact is that Google forked and frozed the Java eco-system.
Now in 2016 we are stuck with a Java 6 and a half, with no future in sight for newer versions. With the community coming up with hacks to try to use newer language features.
Java 9 and 10+ will bring major language features making it even worse to keep Java applications portable between the real Java and Android Java.
Google just managed to do what Microsoft failed at, and yet Google gets the brownie points.
So no matter what evidence he shows to the contrary, you won't believe it because you can't trust anything. Except the pieces of info that agree with your theory. Gotcha.
You'll note Schwartz's quote sounds like any other corporate PR-speak when companies partner up and in no way constitutes the grant of a license. The thing then was that Sun still had hopes of getting Google to license Java without a lawsuit, simply because they couldn't afford one a they circled the drain. There are other accounts from people at Sun that corroborate that account. Nobody at Sun, including Schwartz, as incompetent as he was, liked what Google was doing.
Yeah, Google tried the "Schwartz said it's OK" defense during their trial, even putting him on the stand. Nobody bought it. That is the most telling thing of all.
I think Google thought that the software patent issue was going to go the other way, where some sort of unwritten agreement of "Let's not screw this up for everyone" would be reached. So the idea of paying $4B just for patents wasn't something that would have been done. AFAICT Google had a slim patent portfolio because Google didn't think software patents were the right thing to do, either ethically or from a business perspective. Nokia [1] pressed the button on the mutually assured destruction after the sale of Sun to Oracle.
I think it's the wrong language to say that Android generates revenue, as really it's ads and app store that do. Android just enables those activities. It's like saying that iOS generates revenue. It doesn't. It would if it was commercially licensed software, but Android OS isn't as far as I know. Maybe I'm just being persnickety.
So Facebook generates no revenue as well since it's just their ads that do? In both cases the platform (Android/Facebook) is the vehicle, whose sole purpose is to generate revenue, so I think it is safe to say that that vehicle is directly responsible for the revenue.
The Facebook social media desktop and web applications don't directly make money (unless there is some enterprise hosted version of Facebook). So, sure, it's the Facebook Ads product that makes the money.
That's like saying a magazine doesn't generate revenue, the ads do. It doesn't really make sense. The ads won't exist without the platform, therefore the platform generates revenue.
Except that if Android didn't exist, those users would be using another phone that was serving Google ads (as opposed to not having a phone).
A better analogy might be television. If a company such as GE produced TVs and also owned a television network (NBC), then selling TVs so people could watch NBC would generate ad revenue but if someone replaces their GE television with a Sony TV, NBC still makes money selling advertisements.
I'm not sure I would describe the television equipment business as the entity generating revenue.
In the Google ad world, it is the ad-network that is generating the revenue, not the phones/tablets/computers that are rendering the ads.
That isn't to say that Google isn't getting revenue from Android, just that it would be odd to attribute the ad-revenue to the device business.
No they would be using a phone that serves some ads.
Google makes money directly from Google play and from having Google Ads as an integrated part of the platform this is a big big difference.
If Google didn't had android they could not access the same revenue stream if there was an alternative OS the only thing they could do is either generate revenue via regular browsing.
Your TV analogy is incorrect because in your case these ads are platform agnostic, a correct analogy would be GE selling smart TV's that allow NBC to display ads outside of it's regular TV broadcasting (which anyone who owns an LG TV knows just how annoying the fuck it is) in this case this capability is platform specific meaning NBC can only display these types of ads on GE smart TV's if some one has a Sony TV NBC can't display these ads hence NBC can't make money on selling those specific advertisements.
Google Ads are not an integrated part of any Android OS. Google Play Store is available on most western Android phones but is not part of an OS - see Amazon Kindle and most Chinese phones.
Google ads are delivered either via web pages or as ads in apps. In both cases the owner of the page/app decides which ad network they'll use. There is plenty of competition in ads space.
The situation is the same on iOS, where Google has no leverage, yet they have the same revenue stream from ads.
The only advantage Google has is the default search engine setting on official Google Android phones.
The magazine analogy doesn't work though, unless you are referring to a free magazine. The magazine generates revenue through sales of the magazine and advertising within the magazine. Whereas platforms provide users with free services that are supported by ads.
Note that those ads can be served on any number of platforms, so the platform itself just drives traffic to the ads. The magazine drives traffic to the ads. The website drives traffic to the ads. The ads make the money. The platform is the magnet that drives traffic.
Android is commercially licensed software. Android AOSP is free, but Android bundled together with the Play store and all the Google apps is very definitely not free.
> Play store and all the Google apps is very definitely not free.
You keep repeating this, yet all the public knowledge on this subject (leaked docs) suggests that Google apps are free as in beer. Not only are they free, but OEMs are willing to jump hoops (contract with Google) get the $0 Google apps. Do you have any sources that say Google sells it's apps to OEMs?
>but OEMs are willing to jump hoops (contract with Google) get the $0
So OEMs pay Google for contracts and the only reason to get these contracts is to get access to the apps, but the apps are free? Sounds like paying Google for the apps.
Do you have any citations (even semi-official) that support the idea that OEMs pay Google for the contracts? The leaked OEM contracts[1] did not support your hypothesis (to be fair, they do not discount it either).
Do you have any evidence for this claim? Or is this just conjecture on your part?
Last time I checked, most Android hardware manufacturers - including Samsung (although that may be for other reasons) - were bleeding money. HTC's financial trouble are well known, Sony's Android division isn't profitable either.
Can you think of a single Android manufacturer that is raking it in?
Google also doesn't make the phones directly - other manufacturers like LG do. Can you think of any reason they would be making more money? Keep in mind that Nexus phones don't sell anywhere near the same quantity as widely advertised phones, like say, the Samsung Galaxy range.
Maybe I just don't understand the nature of financial data, but what makes this so sensitive? What could someone do knowing this number that could have such a dramatic effect on Google's business?
Google heavily relies on a perception that Android is practically a charity for the good of the world, wholly open source, etc. The reality that it's a walled garden ecosystem that makes bank isn't really good for them.
And a lot of OEMs have reason to ask why they're expected to pay the burden of liability and work on software updates and security patches when Google's raking in most of the profits.
The only viable competitor to Android at the moment seems to be iOS. You could go ask Apple how much money they've ploughed into iOS development. It's probably more money than either you or I have seen in our lives before.
The fact of the matter is, they (OEMs) are getting something they historically haven't been able to get right - and if they don't like it, they are free to fork it. E.g. look at Amazon, and their Fire range. (The problem being that now they've forked, they don't get upstream updates, and have to take on the maintenance burden themselves....)
So I have very little sympathy for them - they're getting a pretty good deal. The alternative would be everybody using iPhones or Blackberries...haha.
The reason Android is the only viable competitor is because they're an illegal monopoly, and they're under investigation for it in several countries.
Hardware manufacturers would be better off with their own platform than forking Android. Because Android's built that way. Between proprietary APIs apps are built on, and Google having a chokehold over the primary distribution channel for apps, forking leaves a manufacturer with almost nothing to go on. The only thing they gain is a loss: They don't control the development direction of the platform.
Meanwhile, OEMs have to bear the cost of deploying software updates, even if they're to fix Google's security mistakes. When Stagefright went out, any of the few devices that got patched, that cost the OEMs money. Why isn't Google paying the burden of all of that development and deployment? It's their screw up! OEMs signed a deal with the devil on Android, and now they're in a situation where they have no way to escape. Dropping Android means financial ruin, but sticking with it means they can't do anything without Google's approval.
You must be referring to the antitrust charges that companies like Microsoft and their allies petitioned the EU to look into.
I would also love to see hardware manufactures use their own platform because it would make them realize how incompetent they are at writing software and creating ecosystems. It would also eliminate them from the market as no one would buy a phone with such poor quality software and the lack of app availability.
As for OEM's having to bear the cost of deploying software updates, well, if these OEM's weren't so insistent of rolling their own Android OS, complete with their nasty UI changes, (in an effort to trick their customers that they actually created the OS from scratch) and simply shipped Google's version then the cost of deploying the updates would be much less. Additionally, I don't get why you think Google is on the hook for an OEM's OS. They created the OS by customizing it so they're responsible for it. But, let's face reality, these OEM's would prefer shipping a brand new phone rather than issuing updates because it's in their nature to make as much money off of their hardware and OS updates just prolong their support and detract from future sales.
You have to pay Oracle to develop Java apps? That is news to me. I thought the idea was to offer the JDK for free to spur adoption. Is that only the JRE? Does the same "no-commerce without paying Oracle" apply to JavaScript or Node.js?
The case is more complex. Oracle is claiming that Google violated their copyright by cloning Java API's for the Android development kit. They didn't use the code from the Oracle API's, but rather provided the same interfaces only.
Oracle won and now they're going to try to bleed Google dry on the Android front.
I wouldn't say that Oracle won, as I don't believe Google has given up nor do I believe they have exhausted the legal tactics/maneuvers available to them. I fully believe this case will end up in front of the supreme court, as fundamentally this is a 1st amendment issue: do you have the right to say what other people are saying? (that's effectively what re-implementing APIs is).
I believe the 1st amendment provides for this.
My hope is that Google does not settle the case with Oracle, as I'm sure this case shows up at the top of their legal budget.
The Supreme Court turned down the opportunity to hear Google's arguments that APIs are not protectable by copyright. Turns out, they are, according to the Supreme Court's implicit affirmation of the Federal Circuit's decision.
But "copyright protection can extend to APIs" is all that the courts' decisions amount to so far. As the article says, the case has been remanded back to the district court, which will be trying to answer the question, "Given that APIs are not inherently unprotected, are Google's actions in this case punishable, or did they amount to fair use?"
Here's how that's gonna go:
Allsup is almost definitely going to find it fair use, and (with a little less certainty) the Federal Circuit is going to reverse that decision when Oracle appeals it. At that point, we're back to waiting to see if the Supreme Court will hear Google's arguments, but this time their argument will be that, APIs being unprotected or not, their actions were essentially no different than the ones the Supreme Court determined were defensible in Lexmark v. Static Control in pursuit of interoperability. First Amendment probably won't actually factor in to this.
This is assuming that neither Oracle nor Google capitulates before it makes it that far. Oracle probably won't. Google might.
> The Supreme Court turned down the opportunity to hear Google's arguments that APIs are not protectable by copyright. Turns out, they are, according to the Supreme Court's affirmation the Federal Circuit's decision.
That's not an affirmation. An affirmation would be if the Supreme Court took the case, and agreed with the Federal Court. This is "we're not going to bother", which leaves the decision as good precedent in that Federal court (but not in any other).
Yes, it's always worth reiterating that the Federal Circuit's decision is precedent nowhere, not even in the Ninth Circuit where the district court is located.
This is one of the reasons why the FSF, for instance, sided with Google but still urged the Supreme Court not to take the case. They said the GPLed OpenJDK already gave Google the right to the APIs in question, but also noted that there wasn't precedent any court needed to defer to for the Supreme Court to address anyways.
There's nothing to infer from a denial of a petition for certiorari, and there's certainly no precedential weight to it. And there's actually precedential weight to the fact that a denial has none :)
It is true that they implicitly affirmed the decision in this particular case, but as to the larger question of copyrightability of APIs, as I mention above, the reasoning for denial could just as easily be they didn't think this case would be a good test for that question for whatever reason.
Wikipedia cites a few cases in which the Supreme Court has explicitly stated this in [1] (see paragraph starting with "Conversely...")
Nope, I didn't downvote you. I think the rest of what you wrote is pretty accurate. I also don't think Google will capitulate. I think they're moving to OpenJDK to limit their downside, but I think they're doing it with the idea of fighting it out.
No, the lawsuit (or what remains of it since Oracle lost on all of their patents) centers around the SSO of 37 Java API's (not code implementation, but method signatures and how they are arranged). Oracle is claiming copyright on those 37 Java API's. Oracle has no such control or claim to the Scala API's.
When using Java, use is subject to Oracle Binary Code License Agreement (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/terms/license/...). In this license use and distribution of the JRE & JDK are granted except for a few particular situations, outlined in various sections of the license.
Although a Java programmer is free to write new code from scratch without relying on prewritten methods, the Java Standard Library provides convenient building blocks for writing computer programs.
Although respondent [Oracle] does not claim a copyright interest in the Java language itself, respondent owns a copyright in the Java Standard Library. Pet App. 7. Respondent makes the Java Standard Library available to computer programmers under any of three copyright licenses, including a conditional royalty-free license. See id. at 7-8.
On page 7: Petitioner [Google] assets that it copied the declaring code so that programmers familiar with the Java platform would be able to switch over to the Android platform without having to learn entirely new commands for invoking commonly used methods.
In total, petitioner copied approximately 7000 lines of declaring code.
Herein lies the core issue -- Google did not have a prearranged license agreement to copy the declaring code of Java's standard library, and in doing so infringed on the copyright by using it in their own platform.
Section F of the Oracle Binary Code License reads JAVA TECHNOLOGY RESTRICTIONS. You may not create, modify, or change the behavior of, or authorize your licensees to create, modify, or change the behavior of, classes, interfaces, or subpackages that are in any way identified as "java", "javax", "sun", “oracle” or similar convention as specified by Oracle in any naming convention designation.
tldr; Consider a painting created by an artist. A photographer comes along and thinks, "great painting!" and snaps a photo. If the photographer goes on to distribute and replicate the photograph of this painting (without an agreement with the artist) and earns a profit, the photographer has infringed on the artist's copyright.
Take your own advice, that article concludes with "Patent and copyright attorney John Arsenault told Fstoppers that New Portraits, although it looks like a case of outright plagiarism, might be a little more complex if it were argued in a legal context."
Meaning it is (or was) not, at the time the issue arose.
Additionally, in a legal context it is "more complex" because the artist marketed these as vignettes of his Instagram feed. To prove copyright infringement, one would establish copyright ownership of the artist's feed. Who own's a particular user's Instagram feed -- the user, Instagram, or is it shared copyright of all entities listed within the feed? To enforce copyright the latter would need to be true since the artwork is marketed as part of a social media feed.
It is true an API is not a painting, but this is not a claim I made. The API specified in these legal matters is work product created on behalf of a legal entity who has a claim to its copyright that is legally filed and maintained. Both Google and Oracle agree on that fact according to the document I linked. If you still disagree, take it up with those parties.
I don't have any special insight or knowledge, but there's absolutely no way Oracle's numbers are right. It is in their interest to exaggerate and take the most ridiculously optimistic estimate. In actual fact, I bet Google (again just my rank speculation) probably sees Android as a loss leader. Doesn't Microsoft make more per device on Android than Google through IP licensing shakedown settlements? I know Android enables a lot of things, but does Google really earn much (or any) revenue from it directly?
I think the lawsuit is ridiculous but from reading that article it feels like Oracle has a decent case if all that matters is convincing a judge.
The space race argument and the revenue figures sound like a good enough simplistic argument to score a decent settlement (imo). I hope Google hardballs this but I have a feeling they won't.
This is amazingly low considering that they have 80% of global market share of an incredibly large and fast growing product that almost everyone in the world will own.
Samsung (and Google, to a much lesser degree) are the only companies that make any profit on Android. Everyone else loses money on it, even if they have billions in revenue. "Lose money on every sale, but make it up in volume" isn't a viable business strategy, but that's where a lot of companies are at right now.
You're not looking at the whole board. There are other companies that make money off of Android. Qualcomm, for instance.
They've made money off of Android by being the dominant SoC provider in the Android ecosystem (could've gone another way in a hypothetical Android-free world) and because Android pushed the smartphone market to grow faster than the alternatives (Symbian, Windows Mobile, etc) would have.
They might have at one point, but I doubt they make close to that number anymore. Samsung was responsible for half of that revenue, but Samsung didn't like the deal they worked out and heavily renegotiated it which is why you see MS software bundled on their devices.
Patent licensing fees. Microsoft holds a number of patents that they developed or purchased like exFAT and Exchange ActiveSync that are in every Android device made recently.
Only a little bit less than coca cola at $46b, they have very high global market share of a product bought by billions, that almost everyone over 10 have purchased dozens of times.
Yes, but in retrospect Google would have gotten into the game one way or another. If not Android it would have either been their own in-house solution or even WebOS.
You have broken the HN guidelines at least a dozen times in this thread. That's egregious and bannable, but since your comment history is mostly pretty good, we'll chalk it up to going on tilt, a sudden internet malady that afflicts everyone at some point.
Please review and follow the guidelines when commenting here in the future. That means posting civilly and substantively or not at all, and dropping tedious flamewars rather than pursuing them. Comments like "you are either stupid or drunk" are right out.
I guess I need to learn how to step away from these debates even when I really, really know that "the other people" are wrong...
(By the way, just a random thought: I know that you are a moderator because I read it somewhere, but there is nothing in the post or your profile that shows that you are. Perhaps it could be useful to have some sort of optional "show moderator emblem" flag when you post these things, in order to cut down the amount of misunderstadings.)
I'm presuming that you're making the assumption that ads delivered to less affluent people are less valuable (otherwise I have no clue what your post is supposed to mean in context).
That's a fallacy. You can sell one widget for $1M or one million widgets for $1. Very often conversion rates are higher in the latter case.
So even if we take your word that Android users are - worldwide - poorer than iphone users, it doesn't mean anything in the the context of this thread. And as was said, that's why you've been downvoted. Doubling down by calling HN readers stupid (on average) is unlikely to help your cause here.
>I'm presuming that you're making the assumption that ads delivered to less affluent people are less valuable (otherwise I have no clue what your post is supposed to mean in context).
They are, I don't think you understand how modern ad networks work.
Ad networks work on a bidding system when you access a website with ads the ad network uses the profile they have on you which includes your sex, age, "interests", location and also presumed income and pretty much sell you rather than the spot in the banner.
Ad networks charge much higher fees for iOS users than Android users, Android generates 3 times the ad traffic that iOS does but both iOS and Android have the same revenue share as far the global mobile ad market goes.
This means that the average iOS user is worth 3 times than the average Android user as far as advertisement goes.
> Ad networks charge much higher fees for iOS users than Android users, Android generates 3 times the ad traffic that iOS does but both iOS and Android have the same revenue share as far the global mobile ad market goes.
Isn't this exactly what I said? Ultimately the value per user is less useful than the bottom line. It just means that one platform favors a different type of advertiser than the other.
Are most advertisers advertising english language products in english speaking countries? I don't know if this is the case or not, but I would hazard that english language companies demand more ads because they are in more mature markets, and therefore face more competition. In Indonesia, there are many people, but fewer companies advertising there because the market is less mature and consumer choice is more limited/demands less advertising.
Ads sell because they lead to other consumer action. Not for the sake of showing people banners.
Advertisements are very localized some one from Thailand will not see ads in many cases which are aimed at say US buyers neither would Germans, and in most cases not even Brits, Australians or even Canadians.
Exactly. I was responding to the claim that the price of ads was necessarily correlated only the wealth of buyers. It is on average correlated to the expected return a given company expects to get in terms of products sold / conversions.
So I agree with you. If I advertise to sell something in the US (where I am, where my company does business, where I am willing to ship goods, etc.) then ads in Thailand are worth $0. Not because the people there are poor, but because I don't do business in Thailand.
I don't think that anyone argues that it doesn't the value of an ad impression is directly tied to the purchasing power of the audience it's presented to.
That said this is "somewhat" mitigated with local ad partners.
People from Indonesia will receive ads that are provided by local ad partners and while their spot will still be considerably cheaper this is regional pricing rather than pure valuation.
A US user is just as worthless for an Indonesian advertiser as an Indonesian user is to a US advertiser.
Companies have regional pricing to deliver products to markets that cannot afford it movies and games cost considerably less in China, Russia, South America etc. than in N. America or Europe, ads are no exception.
Also whats up with Indonesia? they have a GDP 4 times that of say Ireland, the individual income is still quite low but as far as Indonesia as a country goes they probably have bigger purchasing power than many European nations.
Also it really depends on what you advertise because in many places you can't disregard income inequality if you are talking about countries with ~300M> people they might have more "rich" people than many other smaller European nation so while the average purchasing power within a country isn't that impressive it's actual purchasing power might be quite considerable.
One thing that I've at least noticed on the few ads i did managed to receive while being in China, HK, India and the Philippines is that instead of ads for Spotify, GoPro, or Clash of Clans I've received ads for luxury watches and high end cars more likely than not because due to the income inequality in said countries if you are accessing content from a high end device you aren't just middle class you are very wealthy as many of those countries don't really have a traditional middle class (China has one now and it's one of the biggest consumer of luxury goods in the world).
The Ad market is complicated, I wouldn't just go around sticking prices to users from different countries because it's much harder to estimate that, logic that works in western developed nations quite often fails everywhere else.
I don't think you understand how income inequality works.
If you think it's a problem in the west then you have no idea how it works in developing nations.
The top 20% of the income bracket in Germany makes only 4.2 more on average than the bottom 20% in China it's 20-30, in many African countries it's 40-50.
The average is influenced by outliers, so in cases with high income inequality, it does not necessarily represent central tendency well. In such cases, the median (or other percentiles) can be used for more accurate representations of economic power.
While this is technically true it's not exactly the case.
iOS users tend to be of higher income than Android users within a specific country especially in the west.
When it comes to differences between countries its more about social perspective and Apple's operation within each country.
Apple has a huge share of the mobile market in China because having an Apple device is pretty much mandatory as a status symbol there, in South Korea on the other hand Android dominates at over 85% of the market share because of Samsung and LG.
In many European countries Android has the majority of the market share even in very wealthy ones like Germany and the nordic states because of various political and social views and that Apple hasn't been kind to many of the smaller European countries as far as support goes.
Overall in Europe Android's market share is well above 75% and you can't really call them a poor country, the UK probably has the biggest iOS market share in Europe and that's because Apple has a big operation in the UK and the Brits really want to feel American.
Sure if you bring in countries which are extreme cases like Nigeria you'll get a completely skewed picture but mobile phone manufacturers have special devices for emerging markets which are considerably cheaper in many cases running a very limited version of Android (and no Google Play) or some homebrew OS, there aren't that many iPhones in Nigeria but there aren't that many "Samsung Galaxy Edge S plus 6 Curve's" either...
iOS users tend to be of higher income than Android users within a specific country especially in the west. - Would it not be more true in poorer countries. Like in India it cost around $700+ which attracts higher income people. For the status guys who can't afford, Apple has been selling 2 generation old mobiles for around $300. US and UK mobiles are sold at subsidized rates correct? Would then those users be considered High income users?
They are not sold "subsidised", they are sold in instalments that make your mobile bill higher.
Sure, a $700 device every 24 months is affordable to almost everyone in Western Europe and is not for "high income only", but my interpretation of the point in your parent post is that the people who prefer an iPhone at double the price (or double the monthly instalment as it were) are people who either:
* are rich enough not to care about $300 if there is even a little status/brand cachet/convenience - this then translates to not caring about nickles and dimes on app store purchases either
* are desperate for being perceived as the group above - basically the same people who spend two month's salary on Prada/LV/Chanel handbags
There is socioeconomic divide within developed nations mostly the US as Android has the largest market share in Europe regardless mostly of income.
As far as developing countries go and emerging markets it's not really that relevant either.
If we are talking about really poor countries then Google Play isn't available on the phones there so they generate 0 revenue for Google the Android eco-system is also considerably more limited to the point in which you can pretty much not call it android anymore.
Then explain Android popularity in Europe ;) . 'on average', we are richer then the US ( Belgium and the Netherlands), I also believe your 'facts' are just assumptions based on nothing ( didn't downvote you though :) )
Android has roughly 2 billion users. Europe, which is rich on average, has 0.5 billion people.
Do you now see how it is possible that the average Android user is kinda poor, even though Android is also popular with certain people in Europe, who sometimes are rich?
I don't see how averages are relevant here. Android might have more usage among low-income users in certain countries, but in other countries (e.g. most of Europe) it has a vastly bigger market share, certainly not only because of low-income users. While the average ad impression on an iPhone might generate more revenue (that sounds about right), there are more ad impressions on Android in total, making this irrelevant to the topic of discussion. Additionally, the fact that a) country X is low-income on average and b) country X has a 90% Android market share doesn't have any meaningful effect on the price of ad impressions in high-income country Y.
About 1 billion Android devices were sold in 2014, versus less than 200 million iPhones. Even if we assume your number is correct, that means 250 million Android devices were sold to users in high-income countries. Even if we assume that 50% of those users fall into the low-income range of their respective countries (the "Android users are on a budget"-argument), that's still 125 million Android devices owned by high-income users. The remaining 875 million users surely are gonna generate at least as much revenue as the remaining 75 million iPhone users in this scenario, don't you think?
You're being downvoted, not because we don't like facts, nor because your facts are wrong, nor even because we're stupid. You're being downvoted because what you are saying is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
That would be extremely relevant... if you had some facts. A bald assertion gives very little to the discussion. A data set (or a reference to one) would be more useful.
Even more useful would be more relevant data - like Google ad revenue from users of the Android platform, whether or not broken down by country, and whether or not correlated against average income from that country. Anything else is just speculation, no matter how firmly claimed to be fact.
Well, to be fair, Android is extremely successful in poorer (middle income) countries. For example, only 4% of Brazilians and 10% of Russians use iOS compared to 30% of Americans. iPhones are just plain expensive.
There are many very inexpensive Android smartphones, tablets, and wearables, but no such thing for iOS devices, too.
The U.S. is somewhat of an outlier here, e.g. Norway has signifcantly higher per capita income and 75% Android/ 20% iOS market share.
I guess this has more to do with the way mobile phone contracts work in the U.S. AFAIK in the U.S. the real handset cost is hidden behind monthly rates, so most consumers didn't see they paid $700+ for their iPhone. In many other countries (including Norway) consumers have the choice to select handset and contract separately.
Which is few times more expensive than the phone with contract.
I think the biggest difference is Americans willingness to use credit (debt) compared to other countries.
Larry Ellison is a joke. Oracle is slowly fading into mediocrity. He thought ERP was just a bunch of tables and UI that corporate america would be suckered into paying millions of dollars for.
Groklaw was a news site which covered tech company litigation, which shut down in 2013 because the primary author, Pamela Jones, felt threatened by bulk email collection. (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175) Finding out that the old cases it covered are still going through appeals and maneuverings, its absence is deeply felt.