IMO, it's about volume & margins Apple, for a long time were a high margins, low volume company. Excellent products that people are willing to pay extra for. I

IMO, it's about volume & margins Apple, for a long time were a high margins, low volume company. Excellent products that people are willing to pay extra for. It's what they called "differentiation" (as opposed to penetration) when I was at uni. Macs work like this. I'm willing to pay a lot for a mac, more than twice what I'd pay for a Windows machine because I want a mac specifically. Most people don't though. They want to pay less for a computer or they want something Apple don't make. With ipods, iphones & ipads, Apple created or re-invented markets. They also learned to produce more cheaply. The upshot was that they go to keep their margins as high as always but got market leadership too, even dominance. That's an anomaly though. In a free market a company is not going to be able to keep such high margins and high market share forever. Apple are impressive, but its probably inevitable that one or the other will give. Just like no company can maintain a startup rate of growth forever. IMO, that at the heart of everything.