"What happens when the pie stops growing in 3 years?"
The whole point is that Apple's pie has a lot more than 3 years of growth left. We are talking about this arbitrary thing called "the smartphone market" but Apple doesn't really compete in "the smartphone market". Apple competes in a tiny corner of "the smartphone market" called "the $450+ smartphone market".
I remember when Apple competed in a space called "the $300+ music player market". And how it "felt pretty much like PC vs Mac again" when cheap mp3 players were taking market share. And then Apple brought out a $250 music player and then a $200 music player and then a $100 music player etc. Now Apple found a bigger market to play in then music players but I'm saying that I doubt there's a bigger market to play in then pocket computers with wireless broadband [1]. And Apple can keep having amazing success in that market by doing both (1) what they did in 2007 (make a much better pocket computer with wireless internet than what was currently in stores), and (2) what they did in the portable music player market (by continually addressing a larger share of that pie).
What's called the iphone in 5-10 years may look radically different, maybe it's Siri on steroids, maybe it's brain control, maybe it's holograms and haptics, maybe it's Kinect, maybe it's aug reality ala Glass, maybe it's smellovision... But what's essential about that product is that it will replace the functions of the current smartphone.
If you're asking me if Apple can keep growing at it's current rate the answer is clearly that they can't long term (law of large numbers). I do think Apple will enter other markets -- luxury watches, tv/console gaming, search and cloud services are the obvious areas. I don't think they will make as much money in all of those put together as they will in the pocket computers with wireless broadband category though.
[1] There are bigger markets of course (cars, houses, health care, education, etc) and there will be bigger new markets (girl robots lol?) but none of them play to Apple's strengths.
Around 17%.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/11/apple-grabs-17-of-smart...
"What % is that today?"
Somewhere between 14% (most recent quarter, this thread's article) and 24% (last year's launch quarter).
http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=470976
"What happens when the pie stops growing in 3 years?"
The whole point is that Apple's pie has a lot more than 3 years of growth left. We are talking about this arbitrary thing called "the smartphone market" but Apple doesn't really compete in "the smartphone market". Apple competes in a tiny corner of "the smartphone market" called "the $450+ smartphone market".
I remember when Apple competed in a space called "the $300+ music player market". And how it "felt pretty much like PC vs Mac again" when cheap mp3 players were taking market share. And then Apple brought out a $250 music player and then a $200 music player and then a $100 music player etc. Now Apple found a bigger market to play in then music players but I'm saying that I doubt there's a bigger market to play in then pocket computers with wireless broadband [1]. And Apple can keep having amazing success in that market by doing both (1) what they did in 2007 (make a much better pocket computer with wireless internet than what was currently in stores), and (2) what they did in the portable music player market (by continually addressing a larger share of that pie).
What's called the iphone in 5-10 years may look radically different, maybe it's Siri on steroids, maybe it's brain control, maybe it's holograms and haptics, maybe it's Kinect, maybe it's aug reality ala Glass, maybe it's smellovision... But what's essential about that product is that it will replace the functions of the current smartphone.
If you're asking me if Apple can keep growing at it's current rate the answer is clearly that they can't long term (law of large numbers). I do think Apple will enter other markets -- luxury watches, tv/console gaming, search and cloud services are the obvious areas. I don't think they will make as much money in all of those put together as they will in the pocket computers with wireless broadband category though.
[1] There are bigger markets of course (cars, houses, health care, education, etc) and there will be bigger new markets (girl robots lol?) but none of them play to Apple's strengths.