Carriers pay Apple the subsidy that is able to keep the iPhone down to its $199 price point even after cramming in loads of new features in every release. For Apple, this is good. For consumers, this is good. For carriers, this is very bad.

During 2009 and 2010 before Verizon Wireless was selling the iPhone, its EBITDA margin was at an average of 46.4 percent. Right after the Verizon iPhone became a reality, the profit margin dropped to 43.7 percent. Last quarter, which was the first quarter to include iPhone 4S sales, Verizon’s margin was at 42.2 percent.

Fortunately for Verizon, its margins are comparably high to those of AT&T and Sprint. AT&T’s EBITDA service margin last quarter was 28.7 percent, an 8.9 percent decline year-over-year. Sprint’s margin last quarter was even worse at a sad 9.5 percent. The year before that when Sprint wasn’t selling the iPhone, its margin was 16 percent.

The good news is since Apple sells so many iPhones, carriers are still making plenty of money off of them. Don’t ever lose sleep about them not making money — if something doesn’t add to their bottom line, you can bet carriers will not go through with it.

[via CNN Money]

Now jump ahead to the present: You and your friend still own those same phones, but which one out of the two feels like a worthless piece of crap? The Motorola Droid. This is the case with many Android and BlackBerry devices — they lose their value after a short period of time — and a new study from Priceonomics supports this.

Priceonomics studied cell phone resale values after usage for 18 months. It found that after that period of time, iPhones retain 53 percent of their original value. Android phones have only 42 percent of their initial worth and BlackBerrys have 41 percent. This means an 18-month-old iPhone would sell for $312.

Additionally, the total cost of ownership for BlackBerry and Android devices are far higher than that of an iPhone. Apple’s handset only costs an average of $13.20 per month, while BlackBerry is around $17 per month and Android phones are around $18 per month — the latter being 40 percent more than the iPhone.

Priceonomics had this to say about the study:

At Priceonomics, we firmly believe that resale value is the best objective indicator of product quality. If you wanted to figure out the best cell phone, you could look at all the reviews, test out all the phones, talk to all the experts, but still your assessment will be subjective. Or you could let the market tell you which phones are the highest quality by seeing which ones best retain their value over time.

Taking that belief into consideration, it’s clear the iPhone reigns in terms of overall quality, even in the long run.

[via Priceonomics]

If you read deep into the words: “integrate” and “time-consuming” you instantly think about a software related issue, right? Well, not according to Moto’s SVP. She claims that “hardware is the long pole in the tent,” adding that many hardware components found in the company’s devices need some fine tuning to fuse a new OS. When someone asked her about Motorola’s custom user interface, MOTOBLUR or whatever it’s called today, Wyatt responded saying “the software is never the hard part.”

She also talked about things we already knew, like Google prioritizing manufacturers who has dibs on the company’s “hero” device (think any Nexus phone), as this gives them access to the new code first. Sorting through all the fluff, I found that the most compelling part of what Wyatt said was carriers have the final say when it comes to updates. Motorola also says the carriers have a large impact on when things happen, or whether they happen at all. Wow.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: This ultimately is a Google issue, as it needs grow a pair and put its foot down on some of the behavior from these carriers. Truth is, the search giant has empowered the carriers way too much, giving them the last say so when upgrades go out. It’s ridiculous that only 1 percent of Android user have ICS 4.0, especially since its been out for over two months — it’s absurd. Just stating the facts, people.

[via mobileburn]

Spokesperson for Halliburton, Tara Mullee Agard, said to Reuters in an email, “We are making this transition in order to better support our mobile applications initiatives.” The transition she speaks of is the movement from BlackBerry to iPhone over the next two years for 4,500 employees. She also pointed out Apple is helping the company with the process.

Apple didn’t just steal a large amount of candy from RIM, it’s getting the dirty pleasure of chewing slowly right in front of RIM.

BlackBerry advocates, you are now presented with a challenge: come up with a better excuse than “BlackBerry devices are for business users.” I’m afraid that argument is no longer valid. Oh, and since BlackBerry isn’t so hot with consumers either, what exactly is the target market? Please hurry. The BlackBerry Bold Team is waiting for its next mission.

[via Digital Trends]

The vendor announced plans to hold a special event yesterday and it immediately sparked rumors for an unveiling of the Galaxy S II successor. Instead, a spokesperson for Samsung told The Next Web that the event will just be a regular day of talking about the company’s current line of products. How fun.

Last week, Samsung also shot down rumors of a Galaxy S III debut at Mobile World Congress 2012, which officially begins in Barcelona on February 27th. A representative responded to those rumors saying, “The successor to the Galaxy SII smartphone will be unveiled at a separate Samsung-hosted event in the first half of the year, closer to commercial availability of the product.”

So there’s no Galaxy S III at MWC or at the French event. Maybe the third time’s a charm?

This rumored device is anticipated to be the king of all Android phones so far. Think only 7mm thin, 2GB of RAM, a Super AMOLED Plus display, an 8MP camera on the back and a 2MP shooter on the front, and of course Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Alas, this dream will not become a reality any time soon.

[via BGR]

Now what’s the big deal, you ask? Well, the newer LTE chip inside the Galaxy Nexus is substantially cheaper than the previous version, as the latest model is estimated to cost half as much as its $23 predecessor, according ABI Research. The cost shouldn’t be surprising because this kind of thing tends to happen when consumers are shelling out big money for technology that seems to get better and faster.

In the end, this, without question, is great news for manufacturers who want to bring in these 4G smartphones downmarket and offer them at a lower price point. I guess the big picture is how components are becoming cheaper, but this doesn’t make smartphones ultimately less expensive — case in point — Apple makes over $400 dollars profit from a phone that costs the company slightly less than $200 to make.

[via mobileburn]

Eight in ten women now say they have an interest in consumer electronics and 41 percent of them indicated they were “very interested.” This is an increase of about 10 percent from CEA’s 2007 The Truth About Women and Consumer Electronics study. You can bet that the rise in smartphones and tablets is helping this cause because these are much more personal devices.

Men typically spend more than women per year in electronics, but the gap is shrinking. Men previously spent around $200 more on average than women, but this latest study tightens the gap to about $61 with men spending $728 per year and women spending $667. 61 percent of women indicated they were at least a part of the decision-making process for buying gadgets, so even if they aren’t doing the spending, women very well could be a driving force behind it.

There’s plenty of important women working in the CE field, too. IntoMobile‘s own Kelly Hodgkins is a prime example and she can corroborate portions of this study.

“Just in the last few years, many of my non-technical friends are now rocking an iPhone, iPad or Android device. I also get lots of questions about which camera to buy and which eReader is the best. I can see more and more ladies now stepping up their interest in devices and most are not swayed by pastel products,” Hodgkins said. “They may grab a purple case, but they are looking for devices that fit in their palms and their purses, not ones that look pretty in pink.”

[via TechCrunch]

“While short term performance may not meet the results as expected, we have gained further experience and advancement in the areas of brand management and product innovation,” CEO Peter Chou stated in a press release. “These fundamental strengths and the groundwork we have laid will take us into 2012 with a renewed focus and determination.”

His message seems to echo the same one given by the company’s CFO: HTC shit the bed.

The handset manufacturer posted its first profit decline in two years this morning and expects revenue to drop even further during first quarter. Revenue for the fourth quarter dropped 2.5 percent from Q4 2010 and by over 25 percent from Q3 2011 to $3.44 billion.

HTC was arguably the top Android smartphone vendor in 2010, pumping out the first 4G Android phone along with many other successful devices with great combinations of solid hardware and software. But in 2011, the spotlight that once engulfed HTC was very dim at best. 2011 was Samsung’s year to shine: it had much thinner Android hardware and did an overall better job than anyone at stealing a bit of Apple’s thunder, albeit not a whole lot. Samsung also had a stronger focus on Android handsets, while HTC flip-flopped between Android and Windows Phone in 2011.

[via SlashGear]

“Smart phone shipments overtaking those of client PCs should be seen as a significant milestone,” VP and Principal Analyst of Canalys, Chris Jones, commented. “In the space of a few years, smart phones have grown from being a niche product segment at the high-end of the mobile phone market to becoming a truly mass-market proposition.”

The 488 million smartphone shipments are up 63 percent from the 299.7 million in 2010. PC shipments grew too, but by 15 percent. Even with tablet growth at a staggering 274 percent in 2011, the PC still couldn’t keep up with the enormous demand for iOS and Android handsets. However, Canalys interestingly predicts slowed smartphone growth in 2012 “as vendors exercise greater cost control and discipline, and put more focus on profitability.” The rise in $299 Android phones seems to support the latter suggestion, but only time can tell.

Whatever happens in 2012, it’s clear that the future of computing is changing.

[via Engadget]

Once consumers realized Nokia made a winner in the Lumia 800 overseas, an imminent American counterpart only made sense for Nokia to fulfill the requests. The Lumia 900 has a larger 4.3-inch display (the 800′s display spans 3.7 inches) and is the first 4G LTE Windows Phone device. Inside there’s a 1.4GHz single-core processor, but don’t underestimate how fast this handset really is in combination with the OS. An 8MP camera is located on the rear and a 1MP camera is on the front.

IntoMobile’s Marin Perez got a hands-on with the Nokia Lumia 900 at CES 2012 and found it to be quite impressive. It’s a tad large, but Android users should be more than accustomed to phones similar in size to dinner plates. If the phone seems attractive and you by slim chance happen to live near a Microsoft retail store, head on over and reserve one.

[via The Verge]

Nokia and Samsung still hold their respective positions as the top phone manufacturers by a long shot. Last quarter, Nokia shipped 113.5 million mobile phones and Samsung shipped 97.6 million. After that, shipments drop significantly to Apple’s 37 million. Comparably, that doesn’t seem like a lot, but keep in mind Apple only ships iPhones. That’s it. Samsung and Nokia ship all sorts of smartphones and basic dumbphones. Looking at it from that perspective, it’s quite astonishing.

Coming in after Apple is LG with only 17.7 units shipped and ZTE with 17.1. The grand total of mobile phones shipped in Q4 factoring in all other manufacturers as well? 427.4 million. That’s a year-over-year change of 6.1 percent, which was overall a bit lower than expected.

“The introduction of high-growth products such as the iPhone 4S, which shipped in the fourth quarter, bolstered smartphone growth. Yet overall market growth fell to its lowest point since 3Q09 when the global economic recession was in full bloom,” said senior research analyst at IDC, Kevin Restivo.

[via IDC]