MacDailyNews Take: No, thank Jobs.
Paczkowski reports, “Needham analyst Charlie Wolf says that’s impossible, because the smartphone market lacks the necessary conditions for a winner-take-all outcome. For one thing, the smartphone market doesn’t yet have a so-called killer app, a modern day Lotus 1-2-3 that would tip it towards a single platform. For another, there’s little applications lock-in. Most smartphone apps have very little learning curve and are far too inexpensive to tie their users to any one platform.”
MacDailyNews Take: Google Android offers the same messy, inconsistent Windows PC “experience,” but without any cost savings, real or perceived. Windows only thrived back in the mid-90s because PCs (and Macs) were so expensive; the upfront cost advantage roped in a lot of people, who were, frankly, ignorant followers who did what their similarly-ignorant co-workers and friends told them to do. Microsoft still coasts along on that momentum today.
The fact is: Apple’s iPhone 3G 3Gs costs just $99 and the 3GS 4 goes for only $199 in the U.S. with a 2-year plan. I’d call any Android device the “Poor Man’s iPhone,” but you have to spend just as much, if not more, to partake in an increasingly fragmented and inferior platform. There’s no real reason to choose Android, people settle for Android. “I’d have bought an iPhone if Verizon offered them.” Just look what’s happening in any country where iPhone is offered on multiple carriers. It’s a bloodbath.
Apple offers consistency to developers of both software and hardware. Just look at the vibrant thrid-party accessories market for iPhone vs. the Zune-like handful of oddball items for Android. If you make a case or a vehicle mount, does it pay to make 14 different Android devices that number under 1 million each, or to make one or two for what’s rapidly approaching 100 million iPhone/iPod touch devices? As Apple’s iPhone expands onto more and more carriers, Android’s only real selling point (“I’m stuck on Verizon or some other carrier that doesn’t offer the iPhone”) evaporates. – SteveJack, MacDailyNews, December 23, 2009
Paczkowski continues, “So if the smartphone market isn’t going to evolve into a winner-take-all situation with Android the winner, how will it evolve?
“We believe that Google’s land grab strategy should enable Android to end up with a 40%+ share and that the iPhone’s share could reach 25% as Apple (AAPL) signs up additional carriers,” says Wolf. “Nokia’s (NOK) share is likely to fall from 39% currently to 20%, although over time it could fall even further. BlackBerry’s share should also fall to around 10% while Windows Mobile share should remain around 5%. “
Full article here.
Cody WIllard writes for MarketWatch, “Can you imagine what would happen to Apple’s marketshare if the second-to-the-latest iPhone were offered even at pre-pay virtual network operators like 7-11 and Circle K and so on so that even those folks looking for a free, pre-paid, no-commitment plan could walk out of their bodega with an iPhone for $49? $29? Models at least two generations old could be free?”
“The downside of course, is that taking a marketshare-at-almost-any-cost approach at Apple would hurt earnings estimates for the next couple years and the stock would likely struggle for that time period,” WIllard writes. “But could you imagine the margin leverage that Apple would enjoy in just two brief years from now when their marketshare would very likely be north of 30% for the entire billion-plus unit global cell phone market? 300 million iPhones sold in 2015? Half a billion iPhones in use by 2015?”
WIllard writes, “Assuming Apple’s much more likely scenario of continuing its current policy of taking big money payments to give exclusive rights and still take the market share its going to take, I figure Apple’s a $1000 stock by 2015 anyway. But if they were to go crazy for marketshare and even risk positive cash flows and even dig into some of that $40 billion checking account balance they’ve got, I think the stock might still be at $300 in 2013…on its way to $1500 by 2015.”
Read more in the full article here.