It’s this part of the year yet again: a stupid, boring New Year’s eve party straight ahead, and loads and loads of thoughts rotting in the brain of yours truly. As usual, this is the time for our “New Year’s eve” post series – what has happened in the industry this year?
If the Chinese zodiac would include Apples, 2009 clearly was yet another year of this particular fruit. For Apple, 2009 was perfect: sales grew, developers were somewhat happy and revenues were rising.
Of course, this is not only due to Apple’s brilliance, but also due to the competitors sleepyness. The small boys at Palm’s were the only other mobile company which “moved significance” – this allowed Apple to catch up and produce industry-standard features like tethering, video cameras or MMS.
Furthermore, I feel that iPhone sales are slowly but surely hitting a plafond: if someone wants an iBox, he very likely already has one. Apple can IMHO grow best by going low-end – but this is a market where Apple never was too good in.
If the competition heats up (and it might very well do), Apple could be left behind – the question for 2010 is how strong a customer magnet iTunes really is…
Nevertheless, there is little reason to be worried about Apple. Their computer and media sales businesses alone are able to keep them afloat – for them, the iPhone is not life-necessary, but just one business line of many…
P.S. If you are interested in other platforms, hit the links below – our sister sites contain similar editorials:
2009@TamsPalm – from a Palm head’s point of view
2009@TamsPPC – Microsoft, what were you doing?
2009@TamsS60 – will openness prevail?
2009@TamsBlackBerry – on the RIM of destruction due to boredom?
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