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.
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.
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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.