The Apple Trichotomy

I submitted this in order to comment on it.

The standard economic analysis would say that Apple's "profit share" simply represents opportunity, and is bait for competition. The guy with the biggest share of the profits attracts the most vociferous competitors. Unless there are barriers to entry, of course.

Apple under Jobs' leadership was very good at creating new profit centres, staying one step ahead of this competition. But that kind of innovation - creating new markets, essentially - is seldom a sustainable competitive advantage. And frankly I don't think they'll be able to sustain it for much longer, without Jobs.

There certainly isn't any new kind of company strategy here. The idea of "maximizing profit share" isn't something that can be picked up and willed into action. Good execution in a growing market - or creating a market - should maximize profit share, but markets mature. Reliably creating new markets is much harder than creating new products; and eventually, the competition will create products that reduce that profit share.