(Image Source: Tech Mais)

BY BRANDON TWICHELL

Apple is in the news again: The latest numbers show the iPhone takes a whopping 50% of the cell phone market’s profits even though the iPhone itself makes up only 4% of total sales. Along with this, Apple announced it toppled the world’s largest technology company, Microsoft, by $4.1 billion in the latest quarterly revenue.

We’re analyzing apple with Bloomberg, CNN Money, the Financial Post, and Mac Daily News.

Bloomberg reports Apple’s profits are not surprising given that they have expanded in to almost every media market available.

“Now that they’ve entered books, magazines, newspapers, television shows, and we think eventually television subscriptions, they’re increasing their market by 20-fold"

A reporter for CNN Money says Apple has a strong advantage over the rest of mobile phone market in terms of profit, since it is selling the iPhones as fast as it can make them. The writer also points out that many of the other phones in the market are very similar to the iPhone, with the same looks and the convenience of an app store.

“Everybody else is playing catch-up while trying to match Apple's manufacturing efficiency and cost structure. To hold on to market share they either have to sell at razor-thin margins or give their product away in two-for-one deals.”

A reporter for the Financial Post says Apple has a harder time trying to reach Microsoft’s high profits because of production costs of the hardware, while Microsoft sells mainly software. However, Apple’s profits are on the rise, and Microsoft is trying to keep up.

“Though Microsoft has been seeing the dominance of Windows in worldwide market share begin to erode recently as the company has begun to push deeper into the mobile market to compete more directly with Apple’s iPhone.”

And MacDailyNews looks into a report as to where Apple might go from here.

"We anticipate continued strong sales trends for the iPhone 4 as Apple potentially launches the iPhone 4 at Verizon in Q1/11 and it transitions from single carrier to multi-“carrier relationships in other countries (for example Germany).”