Mike Elgan writing over at Computer World.
Perhaps I don’t totally agree with all of his observations, but I love the fourth one. This seems to have a great deal of resonance with the profit versus market share theory that Apple applies to its products.
For example, among others John Gruber at Daring Fireball cites a report that Apple made US$1.6 billion in the third quarter of this year versus Nokia’s $1.1 billion. Apple it should be recalled has 2.5% of the total handset market while Nokia has something like 35%.
Apple also makes a lot more money than many companies (Dell for example) who have a much larger market share. In other words Apple does very nicely thank you with its apparently tiny market share in computers and mobile phones. The only areas in which it does dominate are music and portable music players – another area where they saw an opportunity and like Elgan says made a “surgical strike” with great design.
