Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Apple can easily afford to lose market share...
...as long as they're racking up a cool billion a month in net profit.
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Marketshare is a significant component of corporate profits. It's actually the silent killer... because once the erosion of marketshare is noticed it becomes too late to address it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
There are plenty of successful, influential, and *profitable* companies who live off niche products. There are also a lot of irrelevant money-losing niche vendors. "Niche product" is a not an insult the way "poorly run company" is.  |
Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Check the history of Palm Computing (if you're not familiar with it) for a case study of how the blind pursuit of market share can destroy a company.
Short version: they focused on high volume/low margin connected organizers while MS focused on corporate Pocket computers and cherry-picked the best (read:affluent) customers. At one point, Palm had 70% market share and zero profits while PocketPC had 30% unit share and 100% of the profits.
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You see Palm's story as a case study about blindly pursuing marketshare, I see it as a cautionary tale about resting on marketshare. By that I'm referring to the hubris that comes with market dominance. I've been a software developer for over 30 years and during the 2000's had the opportunity to get into "pocket computing" and had corporate interaction with the various players. Very interesting and exciting times.