News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on iPhone Future.

Re:iPhone Future by cageface on Sunday June 12, 2016 @07:53PM (#11890937)
the iPhone will surely not go the way of the iPod. Apple’s “pocket computer” is more likely to follow the trajectory of the Macintosh: It will continue to take a significant but slowly growing share of the market, while pocketing a large share of the profits.

Apple's market share continues to slide, as his own graph shows. If he expects Apple's market share to grow he should explain why. So far all the indicators point the other way.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:iPhone Future by flyinglizard on Sunday June 12, 2016 @08:20PM (#11891017)
I think that a definitive conclusion on Apple's stand in the market calls for more elaborate analysis of the data. For example, if the majority of the growth in the overall mobile market is attributed to low cost smartphones, it'd be likely for Apple to miss on that.

AFAIK, Apple doesn't lose customers, it just doesn't gain as many as the overall market - and it still outpeforms the other mobile makers on revenues/profit by a huge margin.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:iPhone Future by jsjohnst on Sunday June 12, 2016 @08:22PM (#11891021)
Are we looking at the same article?

1) he shows no graph depicting anything to do with market share, let alone one showing it sliding. There's two graphs, one showing a dip in sales volume, another showing a dip in overall smartphone buying.

2) he did explain why he thought that, near the end of the article

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:iPhone Future by lern_too_spel on Sunday June 12, 2016 @09:17PM (#11891183)
And it was a horrible explanation. MacBooks are functionally superior to Netbooks. That is not the same for iPhones. Phones from other manufacturers that cost significantly less do significantly more than iPhones do. That is why sales volume is shrinking in a growing market.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:iPhone Future by cageface on Sunday June 12, 2016 @09:15PM (#11891175)
iPhone sales are slowing, Android sales are not:

http://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/02/meeker-2016-internet-tre...

So market share is declining.

The reasons he gives for Apple's market share to increase are not new. They have been losing ground despite the conditions he describes. If we wants to argue that Apple is going to reverse this trend he needs to give new reasons.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:iPhone Future by gek0gk0 on Sunday June 12, 2016 @09:33PM (#11891239)
To date, this has been offset by the fact that iOS devices have much longer average lives than Android devices, and are routinely resold one or more times.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:iPhone Future by jsjohnst on Monday June 13, 2016 @06:15AM (#11892735)
Apple was a very successful company selling Macs, with their low market share, I personally feel the same can be said with iOS too. Apple has proven you don't need majority market share to still have a controlling position in the market.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:iPhone Future by cageface on Monday June 13, 2016 @10:11AM (#11894002)
That may be but that's not the claim made in the original article. He claimed that iOS market share would increase, which hasn't been the case for a while now, so it demands some justification.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:iPhone Future by jsjohnst on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @01:17AM (#11899943)
He did offer justification. While I may not agree with it completely (and it sounds like you don't either), our disagreement doesn't negate his own personal opinion.
[ Parent | on HN ]