The Mac remained profitable through that entire period.
The internet with it's land grab mentality has taught us to focus too much on market share, not enough on profit.
Android already has larger market share of the phone market but Apple rakes in the lions share of the profit. Off a single digit marketshare (iphone as a % of the phone market) Apple makes more than half the profits in the industry (http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/31/fourth-quarter-mobile-phone...).
When I wonder which model is sustainable, the questions I have are about the companies struggling to make profit from massive marketshare, not the one making good money from modest sales. I'm not saying Apple are nailed on, just that the whole industry is very very uncertain and there are questions and issues across the board.
Picking up a couple of specific points:
As for a 2+ year old design doing well against newer models. The iPhone 4 (15 months old) is the biggest selling phone in North America. The second biggest selling phone? The 27 month old iPhone 3GS. This is less of a fashion market than a lot of people make out. Plus if you're looking for precedents, I'm not clear where we see one for HTC, Samsung or LG doing anything particularly innovative in this sector. Good phones yes, market changing, I don't see it.
The Mac as a "ghetto" with limited software availability? Do you have a Mac? The Mac has for years had a far more active independent developer community that Windows ever did. For c. $30 (less now in the AppStore era or if you shop around) you could pick up high quality bits of software to do just about anything. When I got my first Mac 6 years ago (Windows user for 20 years before that) I was staggered by the ecosystem. Windows always ruled the corporate software sector but the Mac was never a ghetto.
The internet with it's land grab mentality has taught us to focus too much on market share, not enough on profit.
Android already has larger market share of the phone market but Apple rakes in the lions share of the profit. Off a single digit marketshare (iphone as a % of the phone market) Apple makes more than half the profits in the industry (http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/31/fourth-quarter-mobile-phone...).
When I wonder which model is sustainable, the questions I have are about the companies struggling to make profit from massive marketshare, not the one making good money from modest sales. I'm not saying Apple are nailed on, just that the whole industry is very very uncertain and there are questions and issues across the board.
Picking up a couple of specific points:
As for a 2+ year old design doing well against newer models. The iPhone 4 (15 months old) is the biggest selling phone in North America. The second biggest selling phone? The 27 month old iPhone 3GS. This is less of a fashion market than a lot of people make out. Plus if you're looking for precedents, I'm not clear where we see one for HTC, Samsung or LG doing anything particularly innovative in this sector. Good phones yes, market changing, I don't see it.
The Mac as a "ghetto" with limited software availability? Do you have a Mac? The Mac has for years had a far more active independent developer community that Windows ever did. For c. $30 (less now in the AppStore era or if you shop around) you could pick up high quality bits of software to do just about anything. When I got my first Mac 6 years ago (Windows user for 20 years before that) I was staggered by the ecosystem. Windows always ruled the corporate software sector but the Mac was never a ghetto.