Apple is in a Class By Itself

Apple is in a class by itself, both financially and in terms of its leadership of the technology industry. Consider that Apple represents a 3.8 percent weighting in the Standard & Poors 500 Index. 


In the fourth quarter of 2011, S&P 500 firms grew earnings 6.6 percent. But remove only Apple from the index and S&P 500 and the index grew at only a 2.8 percent rate. In other words, Apple performs so much better than most other firms that it distorts perceptions of the market. 


In the product area, though many firms "compete" against Apple, few can approach it. In very real terms, there is not yet so much a "tablet" market as there is an "iPad" market, as Apple holds a 62-percent share of unit sales.


In smart phones, the story is not so much unit shipments as profit. In the third quarter of 2011 Apple earned about 61 percent of total smart phone profits, globally, all by itself. 


Although soaring sales of Amazon’s Kindle Fire and other low-priced tablets trimmed Apple Inc.’s media tablet market share in the fourth-quarter, it was Apple’s own newly introduced iPhone 4S that proved to be the strongest competitor for the iPad during the final three months of 2011.