You're articulating an investment thesis that has been fairly popular the last 20 years: That other tech companies are protected by impregnable moats, while App

You're articulating an investment thesis that has been fairly popular the last 20 years: That other tech companies are protected by impregnable moats, while Apple is perennially one botched product away from going out of business. But it seems to me that the company is in reality demonstrating far greater resilience and versatility than the cliches would have it. Consider "picked a market": In 2005, I was joking that my job (macOS Engineer) was "writing firmware for iPod docks", because back then Apple was perceived as a Music player manufacturer that built computers as a hobby. Then, for a good decade, everybody decided Apple was a phone manufacturer. The increasing share of iPhone revenue was seen as an alarming sign. The last couple of years, iPhone revenue share decreased slightly, and that was seen as an alarming sign as well... go figure. Now (after having done a casual drive by on the fitness tracker and mid-range watch industry), Macs are getting talked about again. You see this as a desperate lunge for survival. I beg to differ. As a more specific argument, competing against the open market was a disadvantage for Apple when they were low volume, in the PowerPC days. But at this point, I believe they have sufficient volume to maintain custom components. The rest of the industry still has greater volume, but they have to live on lower margins, and are lacking some of the synergies working for Apple, so it's not a given to me that Apple is truly at a disadvantage. However, at the level of semiconductor manufacturing as opposed to design, the considerations are somewhat different (no clear long run advantages for anyone, no clear benefits to vertical integration, open market wins in the end), which is, I think, why Apple is still outsourcing that step.