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How is Apple still in business?

I guess the answer to why Apple haven’t yet gone bust is that android spans the market from very cheap to very expensive whereas IOS is found only on what nowadays are very expensive devices. And the $500-$1000 phones are sold mostly in the 1st World.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

What about 35% of everything any developer writes for iOS? It’s a lot of money!

LSZH, LSZF, Switzerland

It is in the Post-Jobs decline:
http://financials.morningstar.com/ratios/r.html?t=AAPL

Apple never should have been called Apple, it should have been called Jobs, Inc.
It started failing the minute he died. No more realistic paths to incredibly futuristic visions, from what I see, just manifestations of his existing visions.
Probably one of the best salesmen ever, which is why his visions were successful.

Apple is floating on social status at this point. The social image of Android is that it is for geeks and nerds, while Apple is for the elite.
That alone will keep it afloat for a while… it is a part of culture, people want it to succeed and stay. It gives them identity and value. One of the metrics of “I’m better than you”. An integral part of the human condition. It’s a symbol of pride.

Last Edited by AF at 20 Sep 10:55

Because they make more than just phones?To be precise, in the 3rd quarter of FY17 54.72% of its sales were iPhone.

Last Edited by Dave_Phillips at 20 Sep 11:14
Fly safely
Various UK. Operate throughout Europe and Middle East, United Kingdom

Apple also manages to take existing “niche” technology and make it mainstream better than anyone (presently). Other than “social status” vaporware, to use two post-Jobs cases ask yourself who got fingerprint ID & facial ID in the mainstream. Fingerprint ID was a 50 mln (not even) market prior to 2013, it is a 1bn market now.

What this graph doesn’t show is the total volume of the smartphone market. This has gone up by almost a factor of ten over those years. Apple sold 20 million phones in 2009 and over 200 Million in 2016. Who cares about market shares with such figures?

EDDS - Stuttgart

Apple makes other things, not just smartphones.

Maybe we will see an iJet some day?

EKRK, Denmark

This may have changed, but I remember seeing a similar graph a couple of years ago side by side with share of profits. Apple had a 20% share of the number of handsets, but 75%+ of the profits.

EGTF, LFTF

AF wrote:

Apple is floating on social status at this point. The social image of Android is that it is for geeks and nerds, while Apple is for the elite.

There was a good cartoon about it several years ago, though it may no longer reflect the status quo:

LKBU (near Prague), Czech Republic

Peter wrote:

I guess the answer to why Apple haven’t yet gone bust is that android spans the market from very cheap to very expensive whereas IOS is found only on what nowadays are very expensive devices. And the $500-$1000 phones are sold mostly in the 1st World.

Also the smartphone market has grown at such a fast rate that Apple’s revenue from smartphones has continued to grow at quite some rate. That graph you show is very misleading because it doesn’t show how rapidly the smartphone market has grown. 13.8% of the 2017 smartphone market is probably bigger than 100% of the 2009 smartphone market.

Apple’s devices are also all premium products sold for high margins. Most Android devices are sold at the lowest price point possible with wafer thin profit margins. Premium Android phone makers have comparable market shares to Apple.

The other thing of note is that app developers for iOS tend to make more money than app developers for Android: with iOS being a premium product owned generally by people with some spending power, they are more ready to buy apps.

Andreas IOM
110 Posts
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