Isn't that a comparison of hardware revenues vs Google Android ad revenues? And isn't that exactly Google's play—keep the market from being dominated by a single hardware company that could cut them out from those revenues? ('Course, Amazon has forked it to do basically the same thing, in some regards, so while it might work as an anti-Apple-hegemony move, the openness may have been too much, even from a business persepective.)
"Android" revenue as a whole to be compared against Apple's hardware revenues would need to include Samsung, HTC, etc. And then I'm sure Apple's margins would still be higher due to their excellent supply chain, but it's not like they aren't spending any money making all that hardware.
Remember how Microsoft makes >75% of the money and "wins" in the web server market with IIS? Or the majority of profits in the server OS market with Windows Server? Didn't think so, because there's no blog roll pushing that on the blogosphere and then given traction on HN.
Wasn't he and Gruber making a lot of predictions and analysis that Android would never overtake the iPhone in sales? When that did happen,iPhone on Verizon was surely going to kill Android's ascendancy. When that failed to stop Android, they moved to the next metric that favors Apple, profit share.
It's like, before he writes some articles, he thinks.. okay here are some new numbers, how do I make Apple look good and Android/others look bad with these numbers? The only problem is that some people on HN give the Apple fan blogs too much traction on HN. Hell, Paul Thurrott's http://winsupersite.com is even hellbanned on HN from being submitted for the crime of being a Microsoft watcher site for which the punishment here is flagging to death.
>It might be hard to see the Android section of the chart so I expanded it below at 400% the original:
http://www.asymco.com/2012/05/15/android-revenues-in-perspec...