This graph has been making the rounds this afternoon, under the headline “Apple trumps competition in profit.” But that’s not the most interesting takeaway from the graph. RIM, found just below Apple, has increased in profit share over the past four years. Let’s note that this has come as they’ve lost marketshare to Android and iPhones over that same period. With a 25% reduction in their volume, how have their profits gone up? It’s not the new devices they’re releasing, the last Blackberry that was a ‘hit’ was the original Bold, which went on sale in early 2008. Ever since, the top-level blackberries have flopped - the Storm 2, the Torch, et al. But the low end Blackberry Curve is selling in the millions. And although the curve has a new, swoopy case, and a trick touchpad to replace the rolling ball, the underlying architecture and OS are the same ones launched with the first Curve, back in 2007. The costs for the development and the chips have long been amortized through the sales of hundreds of millions of devices. The list price of a Curve is somewhere near $400, and nearly all of that is profit. This is genius.
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