Starting with the iPod (yes, I don't think the early Macs counted), Apple has had a string of hardware successes, from the iPhone to the AirPods, banking billions on the process. The biggest bankroller being the iPhone.
But could services become bigger than the iPhone? And if that happened, would it spook investors?
Must read: Best of the best gadgets of 2020[1]
Zendure SuperBase 500[2] SEE FULL GALLERY[3]
1 - 5 of 14
NEXT [4] PREV [5]There's an interesting piece over on Forbes by research firm Trefis[6] that looks at this exact possibility. The article looks at whether services could be bigger than the iPhone by 2024. Look at the data as it stands, scribble a quick chart, draw a few lines on it, and it all seems inevitable.
But things are never that simple.
The piece an interesting read, and draws some very intelligent conclusions from the data. The landscape is changing rapidly, and the article seems to have been updated a few times to reflect this.
The article does a good job of highlighting some of the threats facing Apple's service growth, from its lucrative search deal with Google, to lawsuits and app store commission cuts.
A lot has happened in the last 12 months! But it's also important to view 2020 as not normal, and as things come to a new normal, the patterns of 2020 may not be present in 2021 and beyond. People being bored and stuck at home will eventually become a thing of the past, and this move to a new normal may mean less of a reliance on buying content from Apple.
But I think that there are other factors that could come into