All three of those products launched with custom hardware made by partnered manufacturers.

At iPhone launch, I seem to remember Apple still having quite a bit of the flash ram market tied up from their exclusive iPod contracts - Apple basically helped finance new factories to be spun up in return for exclusive access to their production.

The Apple Watch had the S1 system on package, which included an Apple custom CPU. There were a number of miniaturization techniques and custom parts Apple used which I remember competitors lagging on being able to replicate due to the broader market tendency to integrate off the shelf products (but I don't have more part examples or timelines).

Since they try to stay secretive about upcoming products, competitors may only get hints about what Apple is doing through your typical industrial espionage channels until the product comes out. That creates quite a bit of lag then you are starting a new product design cycle based on a product your competitor just hit the market with.

I think we can’t overestimate how lucky Apple got with the success of the iPhone. It really wasn’t a guaranteed hit by any means, and despite the success of the iPod it was launched by a much more modest company than today’s Apple.

Samsung literally makes flash memory and was one of the primary competitors of the iPhone along with its Microsoft Windows Mobile/Phone and/or Android products of that era.

Are you saying that iPhone competitors couldn’t have made similar investments in factories and couldn’t have secured flash chips? These were all mega-corporations like Microsoft, Samsung, LG, and Nokia.

Android had been in negotiations with companies like Samsung and LG in 2005 before Google acquired them. In a very slightly alternate universe, Android could have been acquired by a powerhouse phone OEM like Samsung rather than Google, who I would argue squandered Android’s potential. To this very day Google struggles to make competitive hardware with their platform.

The iPhone launched as one of the most expensive smartphones on the market. The iPhone launched from a company with zero experience in selling cellular devices and a very small list of cellular networks who would even work with them.

Their competitors had ample opportunity to respond, but simply could not execute. In a very very slightly alternate universe, something like the Nokia/Microsoft partnership would have obliterated Apple.

The Apple Watch had no hardware advantage in the sense that it had no special capabilities above competitors. Yes, Apple custom-designed the SoC, but it wasn’t considered ahead of its competition. The LG G Watch and Moto 360 were available contemporaneous or earlier than the Apple Watch and the Apple Watch had no specific advantage in terms of performance, battery life, etc.

What made the Apple Watch a lot different from the iPhone was the ecosystem that Apple had built up to this point, Apple’s focus on watches as a fashion purchase and failure of competitors to recognize the same, and Apple’s arguably-illegal restriction of competing smartwatch devices on their dominant mobile platform (which the EU is forcing them to open up on now).

How do you know Gemini is losing money on inference?

> How do you know Gemini is losing money on inference?

It's not. People make this claim with zero evidence.

But Google made around $20B profit on Google search in 2025 Q4, and that includes AI search.

Until the day comes that they properly break out the financials you, nor the other poster have any idea as to what the numbers are.

And if AI was making lots of money they’d break it out and proudly display it in their financials on its own.

They can't break it out because it is embedded in other services.

But to quote:

> Overall, we’re seeing our AI investments and infrastructure drive revenue and growth across the board.

and

> Revenue from AI solutions built by our partners increased nearly 300% year-over-year, and commitments from our top 15 software partners grew more than 16X year-over-year.

https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/a...

Revenue != Profit

Operating margin has been declining since approximately 3/2025 at Alphabet.

You think Google has no ability to tell us whether a traditional search makes more revenue than an AI Summary search? I think we would be naive to assume they don't know that.

No they choose not to break it out because under accounting principles you can get away with it.

Lmao don’t talk about subjects you clearly are not an expert in.

The only real metric one can use to gauge new investment is the marginal ROIC. Which is very noisy to say the least.

Ok..

So as I said: Google made around $20B in profit on 2025 Q4 which includes AI search.

Both revenue and profit grew with the introduction of AI search.

So where exactly is this big loss you speak so confidently of?

I did not comment on whether it was a loss or profit position.

“Until the day comes that they properly break out the financials you, nor the other poster have any idea as to what the numbers are.”

Until one of the private firms goes public nobody has a clean view of what the financials of a model business look like.

Yep lol. Every investor and portfolio manager in the world is begging for a signal to say the returns really are coming on all this capex spend.

They're talking about free inference like Android and Google Home devices. No one is paying subscription fees for these and they're running their inference in the cloud. Apple Intelligence, for the most part, is running on the device.

Isn't some of Gemini's functionality on Android on-device?

Yes it is

Is there any evidence of any company making money in inference?

Apples advantage was that they did everything in house and had the marketing and distribution capabilities. And now you’ve got the ecosystem lock in.

In hindsight it’s obvious why they pulled it off - nobody else could do it. They all had pieces missing.