According to Asymco, in the three years since Apple launched the original iPhone, the company owns about half the profits of all cell phone makers.

Apple in particular is capturing about half of the available profits with three percent of the units. It dwarfs all the other vendors, more than double the nearest (Nokia). All that in three years and with the added burdens of only three models, a recession and limited distribution.

Android is aligned with the losers. Will Android help them to profitability?

Eric Savitz in Barron’s Online:

The price of the Research In Motion BlackBerry Torch has been cut in half - to $99.99 - on Amazon.com and some other sites, less than a week after the new phone went on sale at $199.99. Early reports from the Street suggest sales of the new phone have been tepid at best. The $99.99 price is with a two-year contract with AT&T.

To be fair to my schadenfreude nature, Apple also cut the price of the original iPhone to spur demand, but not half price and not a week after launch.

Chinese news reports that Apple’s iPad is coming to China.

The iPad introduced by China Unicom will use the 3G micro sim card, which is also used in the iPhone 4. The card will hit the markets in September, together with the launch of iPhone 4.

Maybe the Chinese don’t know about antennagate.

Google’s been playing footloose and fancy free with Java patents and copyrights. Now, Oracle owns Java and decided to sue Google. Joel West in Seeking Alpha:

Google is being dragged kicking and screaming into the world of patents. Welcome, Larry and Sergei, to the mess that is our 21st century intellectual property system.

Oh, the irony.

Google’s founders had a vision of a world where superior efficiency and scale provided unchallenged market position and competitive advantage. CEO Eric Schmidt joined after being at two companies that lost such a game: Sun and Novell (NOVL). (Am I the only one who sees an irony in Schmidt being beaten over the head with a club he helped make?)

Funny.

Early reports in MobileCrunch show that Verizon’s Droid 2 is generating many reports of—here it comes—antenna problems. Greg Kumparak:

The signal on one of the two units we received is all over the board, dipping from full signal down to nearly none whilst sitting in the same spot (and no, we’re not holding it wrong). Engadget’s review says that four out of four of their units show endlessly fluctuating bar counts, and our buddy Rich Brome of Phonescoop says he’s having bad luck with his, as well. Thats 6 review units, all showing signs of signal woes.

Et tu, Droid 2. Where is the outrage?

Michael Gartenberg talks about the schadenfreude of antennagate in Macworld. I had to look it up:

schadenfreude |ˈ sh ädənˌfroidə| (also Scha•den•freu•de)
noun
pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune

In other words, it’s how we Mac users sometimes feel when Windows PC users have problems. Or, put another way, how Apple haters felt when antennagate hit the iPhone 4.

Apple’s age of innocence in the mass media is over. Every move that Apple makes is going to be analyzed. Every word an Apple executive utters (or e-mails late at night) is going to be scrutinized. Every potential flaw, problem or mishap is going to be put under a microscope and examined from every possible angle. It may not be fair. It may not be right. But that’s the way it’s going to be from now on.

Welcome to internet life in the 21st century.

Videos of two TV commercials from Dodge (the car company). One that PETA hates, one that mocks PETA.

1. Dodge TV commercial with monkey.
2. Dodge TV commercial with invisible monkey.

Priceless.

Better than the Apple Store Genius Bar, it’s Apple’s new Friend Bar. Video from ONN:

Building on the success of their Genius Bars, today Apple Stores across the country unveiled the Friend Bar where obsessive Apple users can come to discuss Mac products…

And, in news of the future:

The company also announced that next year it will roll out the iStore, a miniature version of an Apple Store which customers can set up in their own home.

So you can stand in line all day in the comfort of your home. Only $6,000.

Someone needs to tell Adobe that the iPhone and iPad are for media consumption, not media creation. Photoshop Express for iPad and iPhone takes over where Photoshop Mobile left off:

Take the editing* and sharing ease of Photoshop.com wherever you go. Adobe Photoshop Express software is more than a mobile photo editor, it lets you upload, view and share your photos.

*Editing support and features vary by mobile device.

Uh huh.

Why did HP’s board really ditch CEO Mark Hurd? Sex? No. Expense account? Nope. From Eric Schonfeld on a survey published in TechCrunch:

Steve Jobs has a 98 percent approval rating among Apple employees, Cisco CEO John Chambers has an 81 percent approval rating, and Hurd’s tennis partner and defender, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, has a 78 percent approval rating.  Even Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz (56%) and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (52%) are more loved by their employees than Hurd.

HP’s employees hated the guy.

Every now and then an analyst or investment group tells Apple to give back to shareholders some of the company’s tens of billions of cash. Jennifer Valentino-DeVries in The Wall Street Journal:

As of June 26, Apple had cash plus short- and long-term securities worth $45.8 billion, up $4.1 billion in three months. What does the company plan to do with that cash?

Sanford Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi:

We think Apple’s cash policy — or lack thereof — is an important shareholder issue and one that we believe needs to be better addressed by Apple’s board.

What should Apple do with the nearly $46-billion cash hoarde? Sit on it. It’s not like shareholders haven’t been rewarded already.

Dr. Atakan Peker, co-inventor of Liquidmetal, says the product may show up in future Apple products. Duh. From Cult of Mac.

It is hard to predict what will come, when you leave such a technology to the imagination and creativity of Apple product development and innovation. I won’t be surprised with some very interesting products in the future.

Apple has an exclusive agreement with Liquidmetal Technologies to use the product in consumer electronics. I bet Apple has figured out a way to reduce costs of the exotic material.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger used the N word to a caller on her radio show. Not once, but several times.

I articulated the N-word all the way out — more than one time, and that was wrong. I’ll say it again — that was wrong.

She used the N word to a caller to suggest how often she’s heard it, and it shouldn’t automatically be cause for offense. When the caller objected, Schlessinger replied:

Oh, then I guess you don’t watch HBO or listen to any black comedians.

Fair enough. Why is it that the N word is acceptable for some, but not others? And isn’t that a form of language racism?

From AP:

Shoots of marsh grass and bushes of mangrove trees already are starting to grow back in the bay where just months ago photographers shot startling images of dying pelicans coated in oil from the massive Gulf oil spill.

In other words, nature finds a way, and the doom-and-gloom crowd were wrong?

Whether it is a triumph of cleanup work, the marshes’ resiliency or both, scientists have reported regrowth of grasses, black mangrove trees and roseau cane, a lush, tall cane found in the brackish waters around the mouth of the Mississippi River.

What about all the pre-oiled shrimp and fish showing up in Gulf Coast restaurants? What about all the oil in the Gulf? Where did it all go?

Who should we believe about this mess?