There’s no profit in selling Android phones. There’s even less profit in supporting Android phones. The carriers are better off when they sell you a new phone. The Sales Kiddie working in your carrier’s store is likely getting SPIFs by selling a you a new Android device.
All of this nonsense jacks up Android sales numbers.
Meanwhile, the poor iPhone users soldier along with their overpriced devices.
There’s no direct profit from hardware sales of Android devices. The profits are expected “post-sales”, like with advertising and apps sales. Google does very well in the advertising side of smartphones.
However, when it comes to earnings from Android device sales, Microsoft gets a billion+ from the royalties collected from each device sold.
The carriers do not make much from Android device sales, but they do expect earnings from the cell service being sold to the device owners. If there weren’t enough earnings from selling cell service, then the carriers would not be in that business.
Android sales are high, simply because the devices are as good as the iPhones and even better, and in the last few years, Android phones have been setting the pace for new features and latest-and-greatest hardware. Apple has been trailing the Android market when it comes to “new” features, and in fact, Apple is behind by about 2-3 years when it comes to adding features to iPhones. Apple is not the tech leader anymore when it comes to smartphones.
After smartphones got good enough to keep for 3-5 years, then, most sales will be to those that need/feel-like they need to upgrade or keep up with the latest tech.
Android sales are huge because people feel they can get all or most of what they need from a less expensive device. Why pay $600 or more, when a $100 smartphone will do just fine. In fact, I got my wife a $285 Android smartphone, with the latest technology available in December 2016, and at that time, that phone had technology that Apple is just now integrating into their iPhone 8/8s and iPhone X. In fact, that $285 phone came with 6 GB of main memory, and 128 GB storage, and a 5.7 high resolution screen and the Snapdragon 821 processor, which is still considered latest technology processor (only the 835 is newer). Apple’s expensive iP8 and iPX come with less main memory and less storage, and its screens are no better than what my wife’s phone already had from about a year ago. And, she still has no clue about what to do with the many features that she has available on her phone. It’s overkill, just like most smartphone tech.