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iPhone Market Share Expected to Hit 68% in the United States by 2017
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People didn't seem to realise that at the time, though. Nobody believed that business users would ever want a phone without a physical keyboard.
RIM stock continued to rise, and in fact, almost tripled in price in the 18 months or so after the iPhone was announced.
Even RIM didn't seem to see the iPhone as a threat, and it was years before they seriously started working on a touch-screen based iPhone competitor. Android, on the other hand, did a pretty quick pivot from copying the blackberry UI to copying the iPhone UI.
palm's were always a niche techie item. not until the iphone did completely average, non-techie people start flocking to smart phones. why? because apple built one that was easy (stupid simple) to use. just like the MP3 market before it.
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except RIM refused to change -- they refused to introduce new items which would cannibalize existing products. apple has never had this problem.
And for something similar to happen to Apple, a game changer as significant as the iPhone would need to come out first. And then Apple would need to be slow to recognize it.
Where RIM screwed up is not so much thinking the touch screen would fail but they didn't have one in development in case it didn't fail. They were all in on its failure. There's a lot to learn from that.
Honestly, I am baffled that anyone who keeps track of statistics like this would draw the line that far into the future. At least they stopped short of 100% to prevent too much ridicule.
No way that 68% of the us has an iphone. These numbers and projections sound like apple kiss-a$$ Gene Munster.
I thought AT&T was actually proposing to introduce direct financing as opposed to 'subsidizing'. Basically is it not the same thing, except separated out, and not baked into the service plan. The carriers make more money this way, because they can offer plans that are slightly cheaper to make the consumer feel like they are getting their money's worth, but pay out the nose in interest on the financing of the devices, and actually end up paying the carriers more.
It is actually very clever, people are used to paying interest to finance high priced items, they'll probably be more complacent as long as the actual service plans are marginally cheaper.
In addition, if you finance the phone directly from the carrier, they will actually have a claim on it until it is fully paid off, and so may be able to legally justify not unlocking it until that last payment is made.
This whole no more subsidizing thing from the carriers in the US seems to be a play towards making even more money off the hardware.
Can't agree with you there. Before the iPhone, all of my friends and their circles were either importing Nokia n-series smartphones from Europe or loving the Blackberries in their many different guises. I was an outsider in the group having gone with a Windows CE Blackberry formfactor clone - playing java versions of Zelda and old school NES emulators...
I wasn't a proper techie nerd either, this was in San Diego in 2004-2006, I was a young assurance accountant, hanging out with beach bums and surfer dudes, a bunch of Swedes, etc. There was no inside time, it was all outdoors enjoying paradise
We are much more likely to be killed by an unexpected asteroid than we are seeing a market changing phone from Sony.
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I am more baffled by the 20 people in this thread who clearly don't understand the chart that keep making really strong assertions about its content. Amazing really.
Why? Would it be a good thing if everyone in the US used an iPhone? Like 1984 all over again? What happened to the be different aspect of Apple? I don't mean this personally, I'm just curious why anyone would want everyone to have the same thing.
Yeah, I just can't see that 68% of the U.S. is going to want an iPhone if it is three times the cost of a decent android. But then again, for a lot of people there really is no consumer item more used on a day-to-day basis than a smartphone. If you are going to use your phone fifty times a day for a few years, it probably makes sense for it to be the best phone it can be.
Hmm, by that logic maybe I should upgrade to the 5s.
How much longer can google buy market share? It's an awful business practice.
Ahhh, Analysts...
I'll ignore the debate over whether the mathematics is interesting, or even mathematics. (Although I can't help but feel it's like that idiot who said that "The Law of Large Numbers" predicted financial disaster for Apple if they didn't diversify their phone offerings, which showed a basic misunderstanding of what "The Law of Large Numbers" actually relates to, not to mention how it actually works.)
Here's how this plays out. Analyst makes ludicrous prediction about Apple's business. Apple misses this prediction in the timeframe specified (say they reach 65%). Analysts say "Apple isn't meeting expectations!" Apple stockprice falls enough points for all the people shorting to make some decent money.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
I'll ignore the debate over whether the mathematics is interesting, or even mathematics. (Although I can't help but feel it's like that idiot who said that "The Law of Large Numbers" predicted financial disaster for Apple if they didn't diversify their phone offerings, which showed a basic misunderstanding of what "The Law of Large Numbers" actually relates to, not to mention how it actually works.)
Here's how this plays out. Analyst makes ludicrous prediction about Apple's business. Apple misses this prediction in the timeframe specified (say they reach 65%). Analysts say "Apple isn't meeting expectations!" Apple stockprice falls enough points for all the people shorting to make some decent money.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
At first glance... yes... it appears that no one is safe and it can happen to anybody.
But if you look closer... people stopped buying Blackberries and started buying iPhones and Android phones instead. That was the Blackberry's demise. The Blackberry was essentially replaced by other devices and platforms.
I'm just having a hard time envisioning iPhones and Android phones being replaced by something else. Those platforms have a much stronger position in the market than Blackberry ever did... so it will be much harder for a new platform to uproot them.
Is this a no? Because if it is, and they are not losing money they can sell as many Nexus as they want without a problem.