FTA: "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get."
I wonder what the maximum penetration was for Windows OSes on phones.
"...my 85-year-old uncle probably will never own an iPod, and I hope we'll get him to own a Zune."
This is called market segmentation, it’s one of the hardest things to get right in a business, and I think Apple have done a pretty good job of it. Every decision in a business has an opportunity cost, you can’t make products that will meet the needs of everybody in a market, and you can’t try to sell products to everybody in a market. It’s hard because segmenting your market is essentially deciding that you don’t want to sell to some customers, but it’s more important to look at what each customer is worth rather than how many you can get in total.
I guess apple is totally okay with being a minority of the market then since they're doubling down on proprietary sensors and apps that only work in their own ecosystem.
they can ignore the 85% if they want. The 85% of the market will ignore them back in turn.
If Microsoft had the other 85%, they'd be in a good position.
People forget that they effectively do have most of that 85%. Every Android installation kicks back some money to Microsoft in the form of patent royalties.
None of the 85% of Android manufacturers are in a good position fighting over scraps and Google still pays Apple over $2 billion a year to be the default search engine on iOS.
Apple has 15%, not 45%. So it's 5-8x, not 22x. And the original quote appears to be about all phones, not just smartphones, so the factor would in fact be even lower.
It was partially accurate. Statistically no one bought an unsubsidized phone for $600. Apple lowered the price to $300 within 6 months and then went for the standardized subsidized model the next year.
Though, I also found the word "squircle†" amusing, and still use it when the opportunity arises. The Zune was the first time I'd heard it used outside of math nerds trying to out-nerd each other.
