Apple Bought a Ton of AAPL Last Quarter

“Apple’s greatest acquisition ever.”

Plenty of Room Left Yet for Smartphone Growth

“Everybody has got a smartphone.” Really?

Apple Retail Stores Rack Up Record Revenue Per Customer

So much for Apple’s “very painful and expensive” retail mistake …
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iTunes Makes Big Bucks for a “Break-Even” Business

Maybe it’s time to upgrade that stool analogy.

iTunes Not Exactly Break-Even Anymore

Since folding its software offerings into iTunes, Apple’s operating margin on the iTunes business has changed. Dramatically.

The Whole Product

Apple and Samsung tower over the fortunes for software-only Microsoft or service-oriented Google and Amazon. Although all companies are growing, the value, as defined by the buyer, resides in the whole product.

— From Horace Dediu, writing about hardware and the “value chain evolution” in the tech industry

Nokia Halves Price of Lumia 900 “Hero Phone”

Nokia slashes the price of the Lumia 900, just three months after its release.

R&D Spending: Nokia Vs. Apple Shows Size Doesn't Matter

Some additional perspective on Nokia’s massive mobile R&D spend and a point of comparison for its market return. Extrapolating from Bernstein Research data that estimates Nokia spent $3.9 billion on mobile research and development, Asymco’s Horace Dediu has calculated Apple’s mobile R&D spend, and there’s an astonishingly wide gulf between the two.

With iPad Sales, Steve Schools the Street Again

In need of a chuckle? Take a look at Wall Street’s first-year iPad sales forecasts. They ranged from 1.1 million at their most conservative to 7 million at their most bullish, and averaged out at 3.3 million. Which is laughably short of the 14.8 million iPads Apple ended up selling in 2010.

Report Says iPhone Kicking Droid’s Posterior

A new study suggests that iPhone sales have spiked in the past few months, while Verizon has hit a wall with its Android-led counterattack. But with Verizon apparently poised to get the iPhone, the real threat here could be to the makers of Android phones.