Nexus 7 and Android Convertibles Drive Massive Asus Profit 232
rtfa-troll writes "The collapse of the PC market has had much discussion on Slashdot with a common opinion that, now that Apple is the largest personal computer manufacturer, a loss of sales combined with Apple's iPad will completely eliminate most of them. Now Asustek's most recent results show that there may be a way out for those that can move away from their standard markets. Concentrating on Android tablet devices, the Google Nexus 7, with a help from ASUS transformer tablets has driven the company to massive $230 million profits. Asus gross revenue also climbed 9 percent to around $3.8 billion. We have discussed related issues recently: Where companies like HTC have lost their focus on open Android devices and suffered from devastating collapses, ASUS has managed to differentiate it's tablets by providing the most open tablet experience possible via with Google's Nexus program and branding."
economics 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
Build stuff people want to buy, make a profit
Re:Innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
a 'great' era to get all excited about.. or not.
1. they're all locked down in some way compared with the existing x86 desktop.
2. they're simplified to the point of uselessness for anyone who knows what they're doing (the vendors' competition).
3. the result of 1 and 2 is that they're consumer-hostile devices disguised as 'convenience' network-dependent platforms rather than empowering tools one can own and retain control over (ie trust). I see little of interest here for the same reasons I don't care about my cable box.
So far I've seen little innovation other than rehashes/dumbed down versions of existing software, just with ads or with 'subscription' hooks and simplified interfaces. The closest thing we have to open is android and even that's riddled with binary only drivers and userland. bleh..
oh and spare me the 'all users want is convenience so you should just learn to deal with it' posts.. just don't bother. I've heard it all before. There's no reason why they can't have their convenience along with the power to tinker if they choose to. It's just too bad that today's users don't understand that gaining advantage with powerful tools requires a learning curve. It's also too bad that I along with tomorrow's crop of 8 to 14yos won't have the opportunity to really learn to command tomorrow's computer technology without a licensed sandbox.
And rightly so (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:economics 201 (Score:0, Insightful)
Build stuff people want to buy, make a profit
Build stuff people want to buy, dominate the market, acieve a monopoly, make a way more profit
Re:Desktop Android (Score:0, Insightful)
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
The collapse of the PC market has had much discussion on Slashdot with a common opinion that, now that Apple is the largest personal computer manufacturer, a loss of sales combined with Apple's iPad will completely eliminate most of them.
The PC Market was collapsing? Apple is now the biggest PC manufacturer? We will all now use iPads instead a Desktop-PC? ... ... ... WHAT THE...
Re:economics 101 (Score:4, Insightful)
Especially if you can build at a profit something the contractor is willing to sell at a loss. That's a great market.
Re:Largest personal computer manufacture? (Score:2, Insightful)
You can count them as shipped laptops/desktops, but a laptop for example is essentially the same as a tablet. The difference is that for a tablet a keyboard etc are accessories, whereas in laptops they are built in. The same goes with mobile phones. They are all personal computers, which today are packed with more power and features than the PC's of the past. The field is being miniaturized and diversified, as the concept of personal computer detaches from the rigid paradigm and moves towards the network mimicking its features; thus becoming less physical.
Re:Innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people do have similar concerns about their DVD players, as region locking renders most of them useless. Ones that have configuration options exposed can play multiple regions. In this case it's the manufacturers telling you how you can use your media rather than your device, but the concept is similar.
Re:Desktop Android (Score:4, Insightful)
because i don't do anything very complex
As many people don't do with their laptops. There's a reason the GP didn't say 100% of laptop sales in his post. You're obviously not one of the 30%
Re:Openness? I do not think so (Score:3, Insightful)
How does the vendor's storefront have anything to do with the openness of their product?
Re:"As PC sales collapse" (Score:3, Insightful)
Who the fuck wrote this summary (Score:5, Insightful)
"...a common opinion that, now that Apple is the largest personal computer manufacturer, a loss of sales combined with Apple's iPad will completely eliminate most of them."
How on earth can someone describe the opinion that Apple's tablet is going to "completely eliminate" most PC manufacturers as "common"? (!?!)
Only someone who ignores reality completely could come to such a misguided conclusion... let me guess.. big Apple fan?
News flash: nearly 90 million PCs sold in Q3. 8 times the number of tablets sold. The PC is already commonplace and suffers from it's own success in that they have become so reliable and so capable that upgrades and replacements just aren't that common. The tablet is brand new and new models with compelling improvements come out every few months. Yet still we see massively more PCs sold than tablets.
A single manufacturer of tablets is going to completely eliminate the PC industry?
Sorry, no.
Re:Innovation (Score:4, Insightful)
the major driver for PC sales in the past has been obsolescence. Something new popped up that you absolutely wanted but your machine couldn't handle it. Most of the time this involved replacing CPU, Graphics card, Mainboard and possibly RAM. Basically a totally new machine.
Last year I bought an i7 based system with 16gb RAM, SSD and a Geforce 580. I also use this machine for development and have to run an awful lot on it. It is BORED stiff most of the time. CPUs have been fast enough for some time. Graphic cards don't need replacing as often since PC gaming is still held back by the current console generation. Unless of course you want to drive multiple screens at monster resolutions...
A NORMAL user who does some text processing, web browsing, Youtube and stuff can easily live with a 5 year old machine. Windows 8 might be a reason to upgrade.
So what now? Utility? Form factor? I am SERIOUSLY considering to get one of those Windows 8(not RT) Transformers once all the inevitable kinks got ironed out. And I WILL ditch my laptop for it. Because a tablet/laptop hybrid is exactly what I'm interested in. I've got a Transformer Prime which is a brilliant little machine. But now, after living with Android for the last 3 years I'm coming more and more to the conclusion that it simply sucks. Especially web browsing is atrocious. Also for some things I'd need a little bit more available performance. I don't know if the Prime is underpowered(I'm under the impression it is one of the fastes Android things out there) or if Android is the limiting factor. And I suspect it is the latter.
tl;dr:
Nobody replaces PCs at the rate they used to. And if they get replaced then it is rather for form factor than more power.
Re:Innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree with the sentiment mostly, DEMANDing security is not in the spirit of that quote. Freedom comes with responsibility, not security. You really cannot have freedom in a perfectly safe system, that is precisely why the quote talks about trading one for the other. The very power and flexibility that lets you experiment also lets you do stupid things that compromise security. Rather than demanding things, I think it's high time we accept that personal education and personal responsibility are the only way to provide both freedom and the safety that a walled garden claims to provide.
Re:Innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people didn't worry about committing their work to closed document formats in the nineties too, and people are still paying for it.
Re:Largest personal computer manufacture? (Score:4, Insightful)
PHB: We need to add features X, Y and Z to our legacy inventory system
IT guy: The code is a giant pile of garbage, it would be cheaper and faster to rewrite the whole thing.
PHB: Ok, give it a try
(Six months pass)
PHB: How's the new inventory control system?
IT Guy: Going great- we just need some more time to get it functional
(Six months pass)
PHB: How's the new inventory control system? We really could use it
IT Guy: Almost done. We just need to make sure it supports the latest standards
(Six months pass)
PHB: Need that inventory control system guys...
IT Guy: Well, the standards have been in a bit of flux and when you're trying to put out really modern code you need to deal with that. By the way, we need a lot beefier server to handle the load, ok? It's a bit slow right now
(Six months pass)
PHB: Um, hello?
IT Guy: Really, it's almost done. It's going to be amazing! We're in the process of rearchtecting the main DB module to support Foobar 2.6 right now since Foobar 2.5 wasn't quite ready for prime time.
(Six months pass)
PHB: Look guys, we have to have this *now*. The legacy code can't run much longer without maintenance.
IT Guy: Well, here's my notice- I found a great new job programming cool Ruby code with a startup. I've put some comments in the code that should let you figure out what it does. It should build fine provided you only use the exact environment I specify and the front end works on a beta version of Chrome I downloaded. Go ahead and ship!