“I’m certainly not the first to point out the mobile market looks a lot like the PC market of 30 years ago; some financial analysts have been using this as part of an argument predicting Apple’s imminent collapse,” Avi Greengart writes for Tech.pinions. “Just as Apple lost the PC wars to a horizontal solution, Apple will lose the smartphone wars the same way. Apple apologists have responded the phone market is different: there are carrier subsidies, lock-in effects, or what have you.”
“Financial analysts aren’t dumb. The parallels are real. The phone market is turning into the PC market, only with Google taking Microsoft’s place as the OS provider. The similarities are striking. Apple redefined the market with a proprietary OS, innovative UI, and vertically integrated hardware. While it took a few years to catch up, the competition responded with a similar UI on an OS widely licensed to OEMs,” Greengart writes. “In both PCs and phones, Apple targeted a narrow high end customer and lost the market share battle, while the competition aims wider and controls significantly higher market share. Apple monetizes its software by selling high margin hardware; OEM competitors fight each other to provide low margin commodities.”
“The problem with analysts using these comparisons to predict Apple’s decline is they ignore the fact Apple won the PC wars,” Greengart writes. “During the 1980s, Apple grew both revenues and profits. After a near death experience in the 1990s – more on this later – Apple reemerged as the most profitable PC vendor. If you count iPads along with Macs, it is now the largest PC vendor by unit sales, too.
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
Related article:
Apple Macintosh owns 45% of PC market profits – April 16, 2013
Apple Mac owns 90% market share for ‘premium’ PCs costing over $1,000 – February 1, 2010
