“Mobile phone markets have been treacherous ground for many players,” Michael Blair writes for Seeking Alpha. “The decline rates in market share ranged from 24% annually in the case of LG all the way to 62% year over year for Nokia. In each case, the vendor flirted with disaster and in the case of Palm eventually disappeared.”
“LG survived and is growing,” Blair writes, “BlackBerry is alive but a shadow of its former self; Siemens has left the playing field; Motorola was rescued by Google but continued to struggle; Palm was acquired by Hewlett-Packard and eventually disappeared from sight; Windows Phone almost disappeared but has been resurrected by Nokia now owned by Microsoft; and, Nokia had a near death experience but was saved by the Microsoft purchase of its handset business.”
“I believe Apple’s strategy to focus on margins and the “premium” end of the market while conceding market share to competitors is penny wise and pound foolish,” Blair writes. “A sub -10% share of the world smartphone market seems to be Apple’s destiny, eaten alive by Android and in danger of being pushed into a tiny corner of what is left by a resurgent Microsoft who is making sure that it expands device sales at no profit to expand the use of Microsoft software into every home and business possible.”
Blair writes, “I believe 2014 will be the tipping point from which Apple’s decline will follow. The Q1 results were spectacular and may not only be a record for Apple looking backwards but also an all time record for years to come.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: When we entered this one, Calendar smirked.
