What you're saying makes zero sense. There is no downward trajectory at this point. What you're implying is wrong.
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Apple Quietly Sells Its 500 Millionth iPhone
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What you're saying makes zero sense. There is no downward trajectory at this point. What you're implying is wrong.
I don't see that anyone mentioned "winning", but Apple are going to be justifiably proud of selling HALF A BILLION iPhones, and why should they not celebrate that? The fact that they have been modest about it and not shouted it from the rooftops, kinda backs that up. Let someone put you in an aircraft hangar (or maybe a few) that contained that quantity of iPhones, and then you'd grasp the magnitude of what has been celebrated. We see "million" this, and "billion" that, bandied about in the world... but when you SEE the quantity with your own eyes, I am certain your opinion would substantially change!
If you made steak pies, and had just sold your 500,000,000th pie, tell me you'd not be happy about that? Of course you would
You shouldn't sell yourself so short. Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Naivete' has nothing to do with it. If you think a painting or sculpture is art, it is.
Your car quote is funny because using marketing to convince the truly naive that car companies value design and engineering is one of the gimmicks they have been using since Fred Flintstone was paddling his car with his feet. {true story}
Buy what you like. Not what someone tells you to like.
Otherwise, you're just one of the naive masses you denegrate.
Please include my whole post in your quote, it's better context.
I don't see any company creating anything different from iOS. For example, swipe to scroll, paging, all the standard features in iOS. There's no other company creating anything different from this.
No surprise here! When you make a quality premium product, you will sell lots of that product.
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Correct. You don't *see* them.
Again, Sales are the very very last indicator. By the time you see the innovation on sale, it's 3-5 years too late to keep up.
There is always another Sony or RIM or Apple. Innovating, genius-driven, off of everyone's radars.
Swipe to scroll is not what changes the world. And Apple's "innovations" now are of that magnitude.
You didn't read the comic.
It's not just rate of sales that matters, but rate of change of that rate. Or even the rate of change of the rate of change.
See what I mean?
Put it another way. You are a fish that is swimming at 50 feet per second away from a shark.
You can self-congratulate over the fact that your distance from the shark is increasing.
Or you can quietly remind yourself that sharks can swim at 100 feet per second.
Yes, surely they are facing such an insurmountable challenge from the vast array of SamSmug devices with their beauuuuuuutiful candy-stuffed user interfaces, and precision-machined... bendy plastic
Absolutely the best products!
Apple doesn't need to toot its own horn here. The products do that just fine.
None of that changes the fact that there is no downward trajectory.
Look at the Ballmer quote above.
At the time, he would have told you that Microsoft was not on a downward trajectory because their smartphone sales were going up every year.
Do you understand why Ballmer was wrong?
That's why you are wrong now.
Just because your sales are going up, it does not mean that you are on an upward trajectory.
From reading this forum for the past couple of years I have learned that sales numbers, percentages, etc are meaningless unless they favor Apple. There is always some justification that it's irrelevant for anyone else but it's always a strong statement when it favors Apple. Nokia sold a billion phones, its irrelevant. Over a billion Windows computers currently in use, irrelevant, people are forced to use Windows and everyone would really rather have a Mac. A few billion copies of Windows sold in its lifetime, again, irrelevant. Apple sells 500 million iPhones, its all sales of the same model, even though there have been 7 versions of it since it's inception.
I think I'm starting to understand the logic now.
"Zune" ...
Say that, ponder over it, then keep saying that word, OUT LOUD, every night... now tell me that name wasn't utterly hilariously stupidly meaningless?
Lol.... "Zune"...
Say that, ponder over it, then keep saying that word, OUT LOUD, every night... now tell me that name wasn't utterly hilariously stupidly meaningless?
Lol.... "Zune"...
Just because your trajectory may eventually stop going up, does not change the fact that the trajectory is currently up.Even if it goes up and only up until the end of time, it does not mean that you didn't utterly lose and become irrelevant.
Sandisk and Sony both sold a heck of a lot of MP3 players. As did Creative and the other trailblazers in the space.
But it doesn't mean that any of them were ever, ever on a trajectory to be market leaders. Even when their sales numbers were increasing rapidly.
Sales trajectory != Company trajectory
Do you understand now?
Do you understand that you are simply shifting the goalposts and meanings of words to mean something different than what was actually said? And you have provided no evidence that your revised point is true.
Your initial post was a response to a post about iPhone sales numbers. You said that Apple chose not to recognize iPhone sales numbers because they are on a downward trajectory. That is simply wrong.
Now you have shifted from the trajectory of iPhone sales to a "company trajectory". The company is seeing continued growth in revenue and profits. Again, an upward trajectory. Just because that growth is slowing, does not change the fact that it is still growing.
That word, Trajectory. I do not think it means what you think it means.
You are pretending that trajectories are linear, meaning that selling more this quarter than last quarter automatically implies an upward trajectory.
Here is a little primer that will help expand your understanding of the concept that you're so passionately arguing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajectory
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nope, you just dont get apple. while the sales are great, theyre about making the best phone they can. remember: they had expected a very small part of the market when releasing the iphone. not the massive success and majority of the industry's profits that followed...
Products that have been obsoleted/crushed by the competition often continue on an upward sales trajectory for a couple years. See Innovator's Dilemma and BlackBerry/RIM revenue financials for up to three years after the iPhone was introduced.
But since Apple only sold half a billion iPhones, not several billion, this is obviously a predictor of Apple's imminent demise. (Again...
Wow. Again, none of that changes the fact that the trajectory is currently upward! Maybe it will curve downward in the future, but it hasn't yet.
Products that have been obsoleted/crushed by the competition often continue on an upward sales trajectory for a couple years. See Innovator's Dilemma and BlackBerry/RIM revenue financials for up to three years after the iPhone was introduced.
But since Apple only sold half a billion iPhones, not several billion, this is obviously a predictor of Apple's imminent demise. (Again...
Yep. I agree with all of that.
Hmmm...you are implying that the rate of acceleration relative to past sales is decreasing, correct? The problem with that assertion is that sales numbers don't agree with it, in fact they show the opposite. Both the absolute and relative acceleration in sales of iPhones each year is increasing, not slowing down. As another poster pointed out, don't look at the smartphone market, at the entire mobile phone market, and there is your true measure.
Your other assertion, and correct me if I am wrong, has to do with innovating, and coming up with the next big thing. You then seems to isolate Apple as a Phone company. Apple is a personal electronics company. Comparing them to Nokia and BB is inherently flawed. Apple is not nearly as reliant on the iPhone as Nokia or BB are. They are much more diversified, and a company jam packed with examples of innovative and revolutionary product category creation. The Apple I revolutionised personal computing for the mainstream consumer. The Macintosh did the same. The iPod did the same for portable music players. The iPhone for mobile phones. The iPad for mobile computing. This not to mention several other landmark hardware and software products, like the PowerBook, the Macbook Air, Mac OS, iOS, iTunes, the App Store, being the only company designing its own hardware and software together - resulting in, for example, optimised proprietory mobile silicon that outperforms all same generation devices both in real world performance and raw benchmarks.
I would like for you to name a company that has led the way in innovation in the tech industry as often and in as many categories as Apple has done and continues to do. Name a company that has inspired an equal number of imitation and "me too" products from its competitors such as Windows, Android, Zune, virtually every flagship smartphone since 2008, virtually every mainstream tablet since 2010, the "Ultrabook", the modern all-in-one desktop, etc.
I wouldn't worry about Apple lacking in the innovation department, but I also wouldn't expect them to release a revolutionary new product category every couple of years. I think if you take a step back and look at the iPhone, and take the original up against the 5s, objectively you would be pretty impressed with the advancements made, both on the hardware and software front.
Also would challenge you to name another company as unafraid of canabalizing its own products or making its own hardware or software obsolete for the sake of progress as Apple. Two major software/hardware architecture changes, first to PowerPC then to Intel. Making the iPhone the very best iPod you could buy. Making the iPad good enough to replace a laptop for a large section of the consumer demographic.
Nothing you are saying seems to be connected to any hard data points or have any historically factual basis. It seems as though you are basing your opinion not only on the Apple of the just past 4 years or so, and disregarding everything before that with little knowledge or insight into what Apple may or may not be working on for future products in both the smartphone and other personal electronics categories, but also on generalisations that there is an unknown dark horse that is going to condemn not only Apple, but the rest of the smartphone industry to rapid and irreversible decline.
You are certainly entitled to do that, but you should then expect sweeping statements of doom to be called out and challenged.
You didn't read what "trajectory" means yet.
I quit.
Dirtfarmer
PS as an aside, totally unrelated: did you ever install a tire on Ron White's Van?
are we throwing iphones now? as for trajectory goes, the iphone will eventually have a smooth landing in a tree.