An Apple a day

I’m a big fan of Apple products. I’m writing this on a 6-year-old MacAir that still works like a charm. I have or have had all the other gadgets over the years. They are innovative, reliably and they interact (in most cases) with each other to provide a seamless experience.

But the oft-asked question is: has Apple peaked? There are supposedly 1 billion iPhones out there. That’s a lot. Maybe the market is saturated. On the other hand: that’s 1 billion phones. That’s one heck of an installed base. Facebook can claim more “users” but ultimately, switching off Facebook is a lot easier to do than trading in your hardware device.

Chart source: Statistica

So Apple has this incredible installed base with, as we like to say in the industry, stickiness.

Apparently, the tepid response by analysts right now is: they have a good chance.

Can iCloud, Music and the App Store grow quickly enough? Services are where it’s at: Lower margins, annuity-style revenue and lots of chances for upsell and cross-sell.

My personal experience with iCloud as a proxy is this: They can do better. Dropbox and Box are moving much more quickly and nimbly. Apple should have the home court advantage, built-in features that make the laptop and iCloud seamless. But they are not there.

Still I wouldn’t count them out just yet.


The author is long on Apple, with total ownership of 0.871 shares. At Tuesday’s capitalization of $858 billion for Apple, the author’s ownership amounts to 0.0000000001693881818 percent of the company.