Hacker News Reader

Comment by ezl | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't invest. That growth curve doesn't seem reasonable.

VC's: I don't really see there being an interest in this. What's the viral coefficient?

And yet the graph seems exact: According to the Telegraph, Apple's sales in 1982 were indeed $1b. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/steve-jobs/8810045/Ste...

They did note that home computer market had been growing by 250% per year, that is mostly what that exponential curve is based on.

I happened to be reading a transcript of a Bill Gates interview last night. [1] Interesting that he predicted the exponential growth and realized it at Microsoft too.

[1] http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/gates.htm#tc8

In fact that means they underestimated. Read more closely, the graph is their estimate of PC Market Total Revenue and they predict only 35% market share of that pie.

So they projected a 350M slice of a 1B market, and got a 1B slice of a... ??? market

It has been years since I heard anyone ask about viral coefficients.

Has there even been a market as big and as fast growing as PCs since then?

Completely off-the-cuff, but mobile?

Mobile is a much larger market and a much faster growing one..

I can't find the chart I'm looking for, but on any reasonable time scale that includes PC saturation vs. mobile saturation vs. smartphone saturation, the 'Smartphone' line is damn near vertical.

Here's a decent look:

http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/1/11/home-and-the-mo...

Even more impressive that Apple took a big piece of both.

You reminded me of these charts by Horace Dediu:

http://www.asymco.com/2012/01/17/the-rise-and-fall-of-person...

Unfortunately the images on that webpage seem to be broken. Here's a backup:

http://web.archive.org/web/20141113180306/http://www.asymco....

"Smart" device adoption

Reply on news.ycombinator.com