“We have always built and destroyed monopolies. Companies often start out good but slowly turn, for lack of a better word, evil. The twin dark stars of profit and market share bring even the kindest companies into a collision course with failure,” Matt Burns writes for TechCrunch. “I’d say Apple is headed down that road.”
“A dive at wireless carrier’s financials shows that the iPhone accounted for a whopping 59% of smartphone sales in the U.S. last quarter.,” Burns writes. “The iPhone 4S downright crushed a league of new Android flagship handsets. Android is faltering at the hands of the iPhone. Apple is on pace per some analysts to be the first trillion dollar company in history and will do so on the back of a trivial amount of products and services.”
MacDailyNews Take: It isn’t the amount of products and services that matters, it’s the impact and quality of said products and services.
Burns writes, “Apple’s success is made possible by keeping things simple… There isn’t a better universal smartphone on the market. This isn’t open for discussion and the numbers prove it. Smartphones are now outselling less expensive feature phones with the iPhone as the number one seller. That states above all else that consumers overwhelmingly prefer Apple’s take on mobile phones. And for good reason. I’m downright fed up with Android. Others must be with me. I’m ready to jump ship to the iPhone after being an Android user since the original Droid. Updates aren’t regular or useful and the vast fragmentation in hardware causes apps to be very inconsistent in quality. The only thing holding me back is Android’s workflow allowed by homescreen widgets. But the average consumer doesn’t care about workflow nonsense. They want a phone that works and they’re choosing the iPhone. And the iPad.”
“As dominating as the iPhone is to the mobile phone market, the iPad is even more so to the tablet market,” Burns writes. “It’s hard to imagine a future without Apple. Per a study released today, 33% of American households already own an Apple product. The iOS behemoth will not be stopped. Android’s needless fragmentation and constant infighting will ensure that. The iPad will slowly morph into the de facto personal computing device. There will still be alternatives. Android and Windows will not completely go away, but Apple’s massive cash reserves will allow it to sway markets and assert unquestionable power. Apple could, if it really wanted, cut the price of the iPad in half and absorb the losses.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In the United States of America, it is not illegal to build a monopoly (it is, in fact, the ultimate goal). It’s only illegal to abuse a monopoly position. Ask Microsoft about the distinction.
Apple, which, by the way, does not have a monopoly position in any market, deserves their tremendous success and their patented innovations deserve to be protected from theft. If they ever do attain a monopoly position in any market and abuse it, Apple certainly would deserve punishment. Unless that happens, go, Apple, go!
Related article:
Apple’s iPhone alone now the most profitable business on the planet; makes more money than ExxonMobil – April 25, 2012
Report: 6 of top 10 enterprise devices using Good Technology are iOS, 97% of tablets are iPad – April 26, 2012
Google’s Android on the decline as Apple iPhone takes 59% share of U.S. top three carriers – April 25, 2012
Apple now selling 645,000 iOS and OS X devices per day – April 25, 2012
Apple bulldozes Street with blowout $39.2 billion revenue; shares rocket in after-hours trading – April 24, 2012
78% of all smartphones sold by AT&T last quarter were Apple iPhones – April 24, 2012
Google’s Android is losing momentum – March 29, 2012
Nielsen: Apple’s U.S. iPhone market share surges as Android stalls – March 29, 2012
Apple’s thermonuclear war on Android – March 29, 2012
2011 best-selling smartphones in USA: Apple iPhone models take top 3 spots – February 23, 2012
Aftershocks from Android market share dive rumble through mobile market – January 31, 2012
ABI: Apple iPhone tops smartphone market as Android suffers its first decline in share – January 27, 2012
Apple overtakes Samsung to take world’s largest smartphone vendor crown – January 27, 2012
These charts will make the Fandroids want to puke – January 26, 2012
AT&T sold 7.6 million iPhones and fewer than 1.8 million Android phones in Q411 – January 26, 2012
Apple’s iOS passes Google’s Android to take U.S. smartphone market share crown – January 25, 2012
Analyst: Verizon’s record iPhone sales signal waning demand for Google Android phones – January 24, 2012
To MDN
AMEN!
Is APPL The Victim Or The Crime?
More FOS journalism. Apple don’t have a monopoly. They never did, they never will.
Its an Apple world.. We just live in it.
The negative articles just keep coming! Who’s paying these clowns?
So, now Apple is Doomed … Doomed to “slowly turn, for lack of a better word, evil”.
Still, that’s a step up from Doomed to a Vanishing Market Share.
What, oh what will these writers do when Apple has Total Rule? – Form a bloody resistance movement? !!!
The woodshed for these clowns.
“Who’s paying these clowns?”
Most likely Microsoft and Google, which makes the dire warnings of Apple becoming an evil monopoly pretty hilariously ironic.
He just had to throw in the sales minded nonsense at the end didn’t he?
The workflow widgets was a bit embarrassing as well. Sounds like someone who spends more time and money setting up different ways to stay organized than actually doing things.
That’s an Android user for you!
Hey, that reminds me of me when I was in sales.
I hated sales, and sucked at it. But, I had the neatest desk and the most perfectly arranged files in the business. I would do anything to stay at the office and hang with the “guys.” LOL
Com’on. Haven’t ya heard? WAKE UP!
Do they wake up every morning and try to dream up some negative thing about Apple? Anything Apple is sure to get attention, especially negative stuff.
One of the worst impediments to human progress is the proclivity to accept assumptions unsupported by evidence.
Is that evil in a general sense, or downright Google-style?
Well it is very much an Apple world. People will eventually be converted. And even if their are Android users I bet they own an iPod or have at least 1 Apple product.
Apple has a monopoly on iOS apps and they need to be careful with that power.
Care to explain why you think Apple has a monopoly on iOS apps?
I think you’re mistaken monopoly with ownership. Apple owns iOS and the AppStore from which apps are purchased/downloaded.
A monopoly is having a vast majority share of a particular market. Microsoft with desktop operating systems, Google with search/online advertising.
The difference between that and ownership, is that without Microsoft there is still a desktop operating system market and without Google there is still online advertising.
Without Apple, there is no iOS, no AppStore, and no iOS apps. That’s ownership, not a monopoly. A company cannot have a monopoly over its own products, and services, they own and control all those things.
Apple has a near monopoly with digital music, digital music players and tablet computers, and near monopsony on flash memory.
Writing requires scheduled delivery of creative word count. Sadly, and with alarming precedent, literary content supersedes comprehension for compensation.
Microsoft bought it’s way out of a breakup by campaign contributions to the Republican Party and Bush Campaign in Y2K. Bush replaced the lawyers and settled after Clinton’s DoJ had nailed Microsoft to the wall.
One more steaming pile courtesy of the Rethugnican Party- appointed by the 5 Republican Supremes that overruled a State Supreme Court without standing.
+1
truth!
I keep telling u people. It’s the goofy widgets that people like and buy Androids for.
No clue why there can’t be any on iOS, or why we can’t have more than 20 items in a folder. Now there are 600,000 apps in the apps store and we can only have 20 items in a folder.
Maybe Android is an option after all.
Great satire, keep up the good work.
Windows Phone 8 will prevent the Apple monopoly!!!
/s ‘)
Anyone check out the entry level geeks who think they are 1337 hackers because they have androids and obviously still think a phone is what makes you cool having a circle jerk in the comments?
No wonder iPhone users get laid more!
MDN: law isn’t your strong suit. Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 are very clear. Review them.
Attempting to make the artificial distinction of “building” a monopoly versus “abusing” monopoly power is a rather pathetic use of semantics. Apple knows it can’t buy out the competition, which is why it sits on so much cash. It also intentionally marks up the price of its products beyond what is necessary to meet its market goals so that it doesn’t drive every other company immediately out of business. If it undercut the price of the competition, then it knows it would be under (legitimate) congressional investigation for dumping product on the market for the primary purpose of killing competitors. It is good that the Sherman Antitrust act exists, and I wish it was used earlier & more often — then MSFT wouldn’t have been allowed to kill so many good independent software firms in the past.
But more to the point: what would MDN poke fun at if there were no other major computer companies on the market? For MDN to even justify its commentary, it needs competitors even more than Apple does.
“Ask Microsoft about the distinction.”? I doubt they have ever learned the distinction!
Consider the source – TechCrunch, owned by AOL (yes, they still exist).
Actually, the death of Android is just about the only thing that can save Windows Phone. WP would automatically become the go-to destination for the delusional ranks of diehard Apple haters.
decline of android? are you kidding me.
uhmm……no.