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Comment by ergo98 | Hacker News Reader

Another terrible asymco entrant. Interesting how the author pushes one philosophy for processors (the inevitable superiority of a licensed model) but if you've read their many pro-Apple screeds, exactly the opposite conclusion is pursued relative to Android.

Quite humorous really.

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It's worse than that. Asymco has this "modular"/"integrated" split, which they refer to in this post as well, though reversed from their usual position as you note, but they happily admit that Nokia and RIM are "integrated" but in trouble while downplaying HTC and Samsung's success (and Motorola's miraculous reversal) on the "modular" side. They leave these inconsistencies dangling as long as they can massage the data enough to conclude that Apple is great and so are the people who buy Apple products. It's blatantly pandering sophistry masquerading as overwrought analysis.

Supporting a given business model in one industry doesn't mean that you must support the same business models in all industries, regardless of the different market conditions, in order to be consistent. That would be blind fundamentalism, not analysis.

ARM's business model is well matched to their market (mobile phone designers). Apple is selling to a different market (mobile phone users) with different requirements and dynamics, and so a different business model is appropriate.

I read it as the inevitable superiority of customized components over off-the-shelf components.

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