"Samsung, Apple Walk Away With 90 Percent Of Smartphone Profits In Q1 2012, Says ABI Research"

…declares Jordan Crook on TechCrunch. Who doesn’t tell us what ABI Research is. Or anything that makes the headline make sense, for that matter.

“Combined, they took home 55 percent of global smartphone shipments in the first quarter of 2012. More importantly, they’re walking away with 90 percent of the market’s profits.”

Ennnnnnd scene!

Why isn’t Jordan interested in researching this information? Why is a press release good enough for him? I really want to know. Jordan doesn’t provide the actual numbers (to be fair, none of the copy-and-pasters of corporate PR messages disguised as studies did).

So yeah, perhaps the two companies combined for 90 percent — but what percentage did each individually claim?

It’s a significant number for Apple, to be sure. Estimates may have changed, but it’s probably costing Apple a little less than $200 to build an individual iPhone:

“It turns out that the latest, the iPhone 4S, costs Apple an estimated $188 in materials. If you add a typical $8 cost for manufacturing expenses, we have a $196 grand total.”

Of course, AT&T and Verizon pay much more for each iPhone, around $600-650. This is old data, but not that old — if the numbers have changed, it’s probably not by much. 

Whatever the actual numbers are, Apple is making a fat profit on every iPhone sold. And there’s no way Samsung is, not at that level. The bulk of Samsung sales don’t come from its premium offerings, but the rest of the crap that they manufacture. 

I am pretty sure that’s the case, anyway. I won’t say I know because I don’t have time to research — but someone else out there who gets paid to put this sort of information onto a popular tech blog should have the time.

Jordan.

I’d still dig seeing some real numbers. I wish Jordan and the other, erm… “writers” out there wanted to do something other than slap their names on someone else’s press release.