Oftentimes the Macalope will not link to something because it seems like trolling. This time, however, he’s just not providing a link to it because it’s so dumb.
Writing for The Motley Fool, Daniel Kline asks “Are Strong iPhone Sales Actually a Weakness for Apple?” (tip o’ the antlers to Shawn King).
Eeeyup. He wrote that.
Apple may be incredibly successful, but the company’s fortunes could shift dramatically if anything disrupts the iPhone business.
Like … what? Kitten phones?
It’s not impossible for Apple to get disrupted, of course, but who’s going to do it?
Though there is no reason to believe the market for iPhone will disappear any time soon …
Never once does Kline acknowledge that if the market for the iPhone goes away, the market for Apple’s competitors’ phones will also be affected.
… the music industry likely believed at one point that people would always want a physical copy of the albums and songs they own.
Huh. Wonder which company did the most to disrupt the music industry. Huh. Who was that? Anyone remember?
No?
OH, WELL.
Sony probably also once felt the same way about the Walkman/Discman …
Apple.
… and Blockbuster Video was once a growth business that looked unstoppable.
Well, Netflix, but Apple had a hand in that, too.
If counting on one product line for 53.4% of your profit is a cause for alarm …
Then you’re a cartoonish reactionary.
Still if something majorly affected the iPhone business, Apple would be in a vastly different financial situation.
This is the crappiest Marvel What If? issue ever.
“The iPhone is 53 percent of Apple’s revenue. But what if it all went away tomorrow?! Because of the Scarlet Witch or time travel or something?!” Meanwhile, the chart that Kline helpfully provides shows that, yes, while the iPhone’s share of Apple’s revenues is growing, its share of revenue is growing more slowly than it once did. But let’s assume it’ll just keep going up until it passes 100 percent.
… the reality is Apple is unlikely to stumble that badly.
And you wait until the end of paragraph nine to tell us?! The Macalope almost never really at all had a heart attack!
Apple derives huge profits from the iPhone and that will likely continue for years to come, but it won’t continue forever. Deriving 68% of your profits from a single product line that will ultimately go the way of the record player is not a viable long-term strategy.
Gosh, if only Apple had some kind of experience with this unheard-of phenomenon, like with a previous product line, such as, say, the Mac or the iPoddddddd heyyyyy, wait a minute …
Yes, of course the Mac was some huge percentage of the company’s revenues before the iPod and then the iPod was more than 50 percent of Apple’s revenues in the first quarter of 2006. And what disrupted the iPod? The iPhone.
So, if the iPhone is going to get disrupted, it’s most likely to be by one company—and it’s not Samsung and it’s not Google. It’s Apple.
It’s really as if Kline sat down and thought “What is the most backward-ass thing I can write about Apple?” And then he did just that.