While we kinda saw this one coming, it's good to hear from Larry Ellison's mouth.

"While most hardware businesses are low-margin, companies like Apple and Cisco enjoy very high-margins because they do a good job of designing their hardware and software to work together," Ellison said. "If a company designs both hardware and software, it can build much better systems than if they only design the software. That's why Apple's iPhone is so much better than Microsoft phones."

Oracle will stay in the hardware business, Ellison says, Summer Lemon INFOWORLD

Note he particularly pays hommage to Apple.  With the ability to design both the hardware and the software, companies can and have created better products.  Better in all senses too... from quality to performance to "feel."