They can be 'successful' in any 'normal' measure. The problem is big public corporations always have to grow, they can completely shatter all expectations for

They can be 'successful' in any 'normal' measure. The problem is big public corporations always have to grow, they can completely shatter all expectations for profit then two years later earn a little bit less than they did before, by any normal measure of success, you'd take that, you'd say the company was a run away success and if this was you personally you'd understand that overall you'd done fantastic, but the market doesn't like that. It needs endless growth. The problem you have, the better you do, eventually you run out of customers, so the things you can do to keep growing mean 1) releasing new product lines, 2) adding subscription services 3) Getting current customers to upgrade / replace there devices. There is little incentive to make headphones that last longer, although I'm not sure we even have the battery tech at the moment anyway. I love my airpods, but it is somewhat annoying that headphones have now become an item you have to replace every few years, just like everything else now. The one saving grace in this market, which is the built-in protection in capitalism for this kind of thing, is the market is flooded with so many brands, so once this is technically solved, hopefully others will come to market without this problem, hopefully forcing apple to follow suit.