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Comment by systemvoltage | Hacker News Reader

Is it possible that its not 100% shortage problem but rather a problem with Apple's iPhone business? It has been a decline for a while now. They have nowhere as big of a market share and generally they've shifted towards services as a hedge.

Most discussions and news sites report shortage issues but I wonder if there is an underlying deeper reason.

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> It has been a decline for a while now.

What? Where did you get that information from? Their total units of sale is definitely not declining. And market share remains steady according to this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/216459/global-market-sha....

Oops, I meant to say deccelerated. But it appears to be worse - stagnant at 14%. So, I think the real reason they need to ask themselves - why? They've tried a few things with low cost iPhone SE models to gain market share but it has failed thus far. Perhaps it is the inertia of switching OS/GUI, or perhaps it is an indictment of how bad the iPhone UI has gotten. Or, that Android and other phone manufacturers are offering mutually exclusive things that iPhone simply cannot satisfy. It surely isn't the shortages.

Or perhaps we need to be asking ourselves: Why do we demand ever-increasing growth in order to declare that a company—hell, even a product or a segment within a company—is "healthy"?

Smartphones hit a saturation point a while back. At this point the only ways for Apple to grow marketshare are to a) lure away current Android customers, or b) convince first-time smartphone purchasers to go with iPhones at a higher rate.

Neither of those things are trivial, and not being able to do so for a little while should not be taken as an indication that something is wrong.

I agree, once alot of providers stopped offering subsidized prices for phones with contracts I feel like myself and others stopped buying a new iphone every 2 years. The larger models cost as much as a laptop and that is a really steep cost for the average American to deal with every 2 years.

The phones also started stagnating in additional utility for new models. Smaller and smaller portions of people gain anything going from one model to the next. A $500 iPhone SE has plenty of camera and processing power for people, and it is basically an iPhone 8.

It’s been growing every year. How’s that a decline??

No, it hasn't been growing. It has been stagnant and stuck at 14% for quite a while.

Shouldn't we question whetever comes out of the shareholder's meeting? The classic is 2017 BTC boom that deluded NVidia's shareholders, no one questioned it and then in 2018, Jensen speaks up in the shareholders mtg that we're now in a Bitcoin hangover. Obviously, they've accelerated since then, but the point remains.

It's important to play a devils advocate even if you're wrong. No one in this thread seems to be doing that.

I really have no horse in this race, just putting out contrarian views from the herd.

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