“You can say that a company that can no longer innovate or at least earn decent revenue and profits may have jumped the shark. You might apply that term to Sears and perhaps HP, companies well past their prime,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “Radio Shack jumped the shark years ago, but took a while for the ever-changing management to realize that basic fact and take steps to put the company out of its misery.”
“Today’s argument against Apple is that the company is far too dominated by iPhone sales, which make up the largest part share of revenue. In the last quarter, the iPhone accounted for roughly 70% of Apple’s revenues, and 85% of its profits,” Steinberg writes. “The theory has it that iPhone sales must be reaching the saturation point any day now, so what does Apple do to keep the growth curve? Apple Watch? That’s still a largely untested market, and the potential isn’t certain, though I suppose that’s not a view that’s especially unusual. Maybe we’ll all have a better picture of that potential if Apple rushes to release early sales figures after the rollout weekend. As of now, Apple Watch sales will not even be listed as a separate category in Apple’s financials.
“I suppose some critics might use that as a reason to dismiss the possibility for its success, that Apple knew it wasn’t going to be a sales superstar, so they hedged their bets. But stellar sales could change the reporting scheme real fast,” Steinberg writes. “Regardless of what happens to Apple Watch, it’s clear the iPhone hasn’t reached its potential. Depending on whose figures you trust, iOS is in the teens in terms of worldwide market share, give or take a few points, compared to Android. Apple may not play in the cheaper markets, but as more and more people aspire to something better, iPhone will get its share. So even if the iPhone remains Apple’s top-selling product by a huge margin, the end isn’t near.”
Much more in the full article here.
Apple naysayers are fish out of water to begin with.
If any tech company has “jumped the shark,” it’s Microsoft. Where were all the naysayers 15 years ago, predicting doom and gloom for Microsoft, because they relied too much on Windows? Oh, that’s right; they were too busy predicting doom and gloom for Apple. Some things never change for the hopeless morons of the world… 😉
Speculation aside; Apple delivers!
Apple naysayers are usually foaming idiots and wouldn’t know a shark if it bit them on the arse.
Which begs the question: Would the Fonz wear an Apple Watch? WWFD?
No, it doesn’t.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
Thank you. I think you’ll find this site useful:
http://begthequestion.info/cards/
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Certainly he would have an iPhone.
2007 iPhone & the Anal-csts:
BLOOMBERG: “The iPhone’s impact will be minimal. It will only appeal to “a few gadget freaks.” Nokia and Motorola haven’t a care in the world.”
PC MAGAZINE: The iPhone is deeply flawed. Apple will sell lots at first and then sales will plummet.
“Apple’s days as the clear leader in smartphones appears to be coming to an end.”
Henry Blodgett, Business Insider, 15 Nov 2011
In 2010 VentureBeat claimed “tablets will fail”.
Huh, not a very good track record but oh yeah I’m sure they got it right this time. /s
It’s so much easier to tell the people that are actually doing, how to run their business, than it is to do it.
I have been charting analyst accuracy for more than 7 years. There is a very vocal dozen, or so, that are habitually WRONG. I don’t need to tell you who they are, other than to say they all sound alike singing “Apple is Doomed”.
Based on their cumulative track record its evident none could manage a lemonade stand.
Well said!
Almost no one would believe Nokia could ever fall because those cellphones were everywhere. Absolutely huge market share. They were in all the blockbuster movies. Nokia had some of the best cellphone hardware available. However, it seems as they overstretched themselves by trying to gobble up every level of the cellphone business possible. In order to do that they probably had to take huge losses as the low end of the the cellphone business to gain market share. The high-end cellphone business shifted to smartphones and that was the end of Nokia. Antiquated software was just too much to overcome and sales evaporated where it really mattered. It’s a sad story really.
It always reminds of Princess Leia telling one of the Empire commanders that the tighter they try to squeeze, that much more will slip through their fingers. (or something to that effect). Nokia bit off more than it could chew and eventually barfed up everything.
Nokia, Blackberry, Motorola, HTC, Sony, the whole lot of them failed to recognize the importance of Apple’s touch screen interface, the importance of a full fledged web browser, and maybe most importantly – the app ecosystem with seamless software upgrades. All of them were suffering from “keyboard” induced tunnel vision. The only one that got it, Samsung, needed 3 years and a hefty dose of stolen Apple IP to get a competing product to market.
To predict the future, you need an imagination. Analysts don’t have one. They can only crunch numbers based on past patterns. New innovations flummox them because there’s nothing from the past to base it on.
Regardless of how I feel about this author, or how right he is. The term Jump The Shark has jumped the shark…
“Jump the Shark,” is getting long in the tooth.
Incisively stated
I’ve never been fonz of that phrase.
The Apple Bear Bullshitters slipped and fell in their own bullshit years ago. It’s always amusing to watch them raise their heads from the excrement and make a desperate cry into the darkness of their insight once again. Oops, still wrong. Still smells.