The end game is the culmination of Apple's strategies, not any specific date. We've all been betting the farm for quite some time now that all of the advantages of OSX and nifty products and digital hub strategies & positioning for the digital camera market & Switch adds etc would boost Apple's market share. Now we're no longer waiting for all these. They're all right here in front of us. So where's the beef? How much longer should we wait? You tell me.
Yes Apple is profitable in a downturn. Yes, Apple can remain profitable as a niche company, even just selling to its own established base. But if all the nifty strategies are going to do anything about market share (or creating new markets, like iPod), which is what this stock needs to take off, we should be seeing it happen now, not five years from now. As much as I would like to see this happening, I don't see it yet.
Frankly, we could have a more profitable discussion on this board if we could all agree ahead of time on what market indicators we would accept as signs that Apple is poised for major growth. Significant increases in market share would be one. Significant creation & exploitation of new markets would be another. (At the least we could hope for a rebounding consumer computer market with at least a stable Apple market share.) But these have to be real numbers, not some flaky, "maybe if" numbers. So far I just don't see hard numbers to substantiate such.
Dan |
