If you look at the sales figures, you are tempted to say that Google's Android OS is trouncing the iPhone. But there's a lot to be said about those figures and how they can be interpreted. Despite the ubiquity of Android handsets, there's that incredible amount of fragmentation -- I suppose Google would rather call it it diversity -- that can cause troubles for users of those products. The same problem afflicts Android powered tablets, but since sales are pathetic -- other than the Amazon Kindle Fire, which uses a tricked out version of Android -- it doesn't really matter.

Thanks to a link from one of our regular readers, I learned that Google has actually admitted to the problem, although they are predictably giving a positive spin on something that otherwise ought to be a huge negative. The link to an AOL Daily Finance report on the situation is posted over at our community forum, in case you want to check it out and comment further.

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Apple tends to release little more than bare-bones specs for most of their mobile products. Beyond basic dimensions, battery life, and supported multimedia formats, there's not a lot to find. That requires some heavy lifting by others to determine, and sometimes you wonder if they're looking at the wrong things.

First there's the inevitable teardown. You get a "bill of materials" (or BOM), a summary of the parts used and the estimated prices. Now knowing that Apple buys this part from Samsung, that part from Qualcomm, might appeal to you in an abstract sense, if you care about such things. That roughly half the parts in the iPad 3, in terms of estimated price, come from Samsung, is especially curious. After all, Apple has been suing Samsung for alleged patent violations to the ends of the planet.

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While this article is written ahead of Microsoft's investor conference call for their most recent financial quarter, they are confronting a wealth of problems that cast a huge shadow over the company's future prospects. Yes, they will continue to earn high profits from the sale of software and sales, but the PC market has changed, and it doesn't appear they fully grasp the consequences.

When Apple reports Mac sales next week, it will be clear that more and more people are avoiding new PCs and buying Macs instead, or possibly iPads. Market leaders Dell and HP are suffering from declining sales, and more and more companies are offering Macs and iPhones to employees to, in part, convey a sense of being contemporary. PCs are yesterday's news.

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In the scheme of things, the iPad, up until recently, was not considered to be an expensive product. The pundits had it that Apple would be charging up to $1,000 for the first version, and were totally flummoxed when Apple announced starting prices at just $499. Indeed, that price point formed the threshold for competing products, some of which actually required a data contract with a wireless carrier to match it. But, of course, the iPad, even the one with a 3G radio, doesn't require any contractual commitment.

Over time, as the competing tablets failed miserably in the marketplace, the prices largely became equivalent to Apple's, except, of course, that other electronics companies usually don't have the economies of scale and hence aren't making the same profit margins.

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