Financial on phone companies?

[Santilli]

One of the tools to use if your getting a good value on your purchase is what are the profits and financial statements of the companies you are buying products from?

My view is I want the lowest profit company, in that area of product, that is still well designed.

So, does anyone have figures on Appl, Samsung, Google, Verizon, Sprint, etc. so we can get some idea of which company is going to make the most money off our business?
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[Mercutio]

Another aspect of that is that a company that most competitive on that basis may be so because it's not offering advantage in other areas. Sprint is priced lower than Verizon because it can't offer nearly the coverage, for example. I don't think anyone here would consider buying an AMD CPU right now even if does offer 85% of the performance for 75% of the price compared to Intel.

 

[Tannin]

Nope You want the highest-profit company, because all the others are likely to go broke and leave you with an orphan.

 

[Tea]

Actually you want a middle-rating company. You don't want an Apple (because they will rip you off blind) and you don't want a Sony ('cause they are losing money for the very good reason that they are no bloody good at what they do). You want a good, moderately profitable company, like Lenovo.

 

[Tannin]

Better yet is the loss-making subsidiary of a profitable parent, the sort of company which has high standards and deep pockets to maintain them with. Think of the example of Samsung hard drives: clearly superior to all the other brands for many years, but remarkably low priced. While it lasted, it was wonderful!

 

[LunarMist]

Meh. There is a lot more to viable financials than profit, such as how much money is being invested into R&D, future projects, etc.
A telco is primarily a service from the consumer perspective, so you don't have too much to lose compared to buying a 1.3 million dollar piece of equipment from a company that goes belly up.
Figuring out with much certainty how a company will perform in terms of quality of products/services can be challenging. Mergers and acquisitions/divestments can throw a monkey wrench into even well-run, profitable companies.