That's a misleading chart, since it shows "cummulative sales". Here, complete numbers: http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2018/02/smartph...
You can see, total market grew by less than 200M as opposed to more than 500M last year. Definitely "decelerating".
You make a fair point and I'll concede my error in equating deceleration with decline. But I think most of my points still stand.
Decelerating doesn't mean that it's no longer growing. It means that growth is declining over time, so growth today is less rapid than growth a year ago.
That doesn't mean that growth will stop, though it might.
You make very good points except I think you are confused by what decelerating means. A market may be growing and at the same time be decelerating, as in it is growing albeit at a slower rate of growth each year or quarter.
Re:Intel Fights for Its Future
by ryanwaggoner on Monday March 12, 2018 @04:43AM
(#16566846)
Decelerating != declining. The claim is that the growth is slowing, not that it's not growing anymore.
> "Growth in a new product with lots of potential applications is a much better indicator of a company's potential to continuing earning returns in the future"
New opportunities in an existing market are equally as effective in spurring on growth. For example, there doesn't seem to be any reduction in appetite for servers, and Intel has been the market leader in this space for a while. Just because we've had server market for over half a century doesn't mean it's lacking in potential growth.
If it's accurate, the following graph is quite telling:
https://3s81si1s5ygj3mzby34dq6qf-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-...
Graph was part of the following article:
https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/12/01/booming-server-marke...
No, it is not decelerating, it's still growing [0]. Besides, demand from other low-power applications such as IoT will only lead to increased demand for low-power (mobile) chips.
> In 2017, Intel's revenue hit an all-time high, as it did the year before, and its stock is an all time high. This is not a company "fighting for its future."
" ... as Microsoft shows, revenue is a lagging indicator in the technology business." -- pg [1]
Given enough time, all investments will eventually mature. In other words, revenue is about the past -- reaping the rewards from mature (technology) investments. Growth is about the future -- future returns can only come from nascent (technology) investments.
Growth in a new product with lots of potential applications is a much better indicator of a company's potential to continuing earning returns in the future, before that product reaches maturity (and revenue attributable to that product starts to decline). Intel needs a new product category to future-proof its existence.
[0] http://www.asymco.com/2018/02/27/the-number/
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html
EDIT: as pointed out by several commenters below, I incorrectly internalized your use of "decelerate" to mean "decline" but I'll leave my comment as-is.