iPhone market share is relatively stable; Android gains are mainly at the expensive of RIM/Microsoft.
> I believe within eight quarters their profit will fall from $40x billion to $25 billion annually, and they'll lose 1/3 of their existing market share while margins also keep falling.
Do you have any facts to support your opinion? Or is it just a gut feeling you have? Apple isn't going to stand still for 8 quarters. I just bought an iPad Mini for the wife yesterday, the Apple store was very crowded as usual doing $1m+ in sales a day. Its amazing how people make these predictions and always forget about China.
> "I would wager that within two years..."
> "My opinion is that Apple is about to get hammered..."
From elsewhere on this post:
> "Android is going to take 85%+ of the global smart phone market..."
> "The iPhone's market share will stop growing this year..."
> "I don't think it will hold up..."
I like that you are so confident about the future and I'm quite interested to know how you make these predictions?
I have a particular talent for spotting negative positions in stocks and trends in general. I'm not trying to prove that I do, take my word for whatever it's worth to you. In equities I've derived it from the Graham-Dodd-Buffett approach. I've found it exceptionally easy to spot when to short stocks by reversing the Graham Dodd approach (it works for spotting undervalued equities, and it works equally for spotting overvalued equities, I just happen to be good at that side of it).
On the technology side, if you understand Apple's business model, and you understand how technology markets work toward consolidation around standards, and then you apply the context of what Android is and its vendors / support / ecosystem (and whether it's of high enough quality to be good enough for that 80% to 90% of consumers, to rule ala Windows) - the rest is obvious, it lays out a momentum line that can't be stopped.
There are exceptionally painful consequences to Apple losing market share that very few are pricing into things. The mistake I see often is linear thinking on market share to profits; eg if Apple is making $30 billion on 20% market share, said people then think Apple could make $15 billion on 10% market share (when in fact there are numerous destructive penalties for falling below thresholds in the market, regarding developers / apps, music, media, consumer perception, negotiating position with suppliers, stock price falling and losing key employees and on and on).
So, can you give us links to some of your predictions 3 years ago in order to assess your accuracy?
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/08/apple-lifts-curtain-on-...
"Samsung, by comparison, revealed that it has sold 21.25 million smartphones in the US between June 2010 and June 2012, along with 1.4 million tablets. (Keep in mind that the smartphone number only included devices at issue in the trial, not Samsung's full lineup.) But even when you only look at Apple's data from those same quarters, the differences are stark—the company sold almost 63 million iPhones, 34 million iPads, and 25.3 million iPod touches during the same period. Even the weakest link of the iOS family—the iPod touch—is selling faster than a large chunk of Samsung's portfolio."
"Looks Like Samsung Pretty Much Lied About US Sales To The Public" http://www.macgasm.net/2012/08/10/looks-like-samsung-pretty-...
"Confidential Apple, Samsung sales figures outed in court filing" http://www.zdnet.com/confidential-apple-samsung-sales-figure...
Microsoft earns a lot more selling Windows and Windows server and surrounding products than all of the Linux vendors make supporting Linux combined (Redhat makes a mere $100m a year in profit for example).
Does that inherently imply anything about Linux? No.
What you're talking about is today (regarding Apple's profits). What I'm interested in is the trend of Android taking most of the market and what that'll mean in five years for Apple and the Android vendors. What it'll mean is: much like PC sales, Android sales will be dominated by 2 or 3 primary companies, with dozens of other vendors attempting to compete.
My opinion is that Apple is about to get hammered as the iPhone's market share collides with Android and loses. I believe within eight quarters their profit will fall from $40x billion to $25 billion annually, and they'll lose 1/3 of their existing market share while margins also keep falling.