LOL! My set of analysts? There are about two or three out of over FORTY analysts who are consistently negative and CONSISTENTLY WRONG. These same anal-cysts are always the same two or three. . . and yet to have ever been right. These anal-cysts are hoping that one day, just by the odds, they'll be right.
Your position, as indicated by your loaded adjectives, is as usual negative on Apple.
On the contrary, AAPL grew 1200% before the iPhone appeared. Then you anti-Apple Hate Brigade members were saying it was all built on the iPod.
The facts still stands that Apple still claims 94% of ALL of the profits in the Mobile phone market with only 14% of the market share. Samsung has 9% of those profits and is dropping like a stone. Yes, that totals more than 100%, but that is because all of the rest of the mobile cell phone makers are posting losses in their race to the bottom of the barrel of commodity products that just don't sell well in price competition with each other.
For certain, Apple does make most of the smartphone earnings. That’s because of the high margins that Apple charges.
Once the sales start to fade, and Apple has to lower the prices, Apple won’t be looking so good; not to analysts and not to you either.
Apple might have had good growth from the iPod, but not as dramatically as they did after the iPhone took off. The iPod is not as important to Apple anymore, but the iPhone is. Once that starts becoming “just another phone”, there goes the high valuation and there goes the earnings and there goes the high-profits and there goes the majority of the Apple hype. BUT!!!! The Apple-cult will remain, moaning the passing of the good times, and hoping for another round of Apple magic via some miracle and ‘innovative new device’ Hey, I’ve got an idea for Apple: there is a device out on the market known as the Surface 2-in-1 device, and another known as the Surface Book. Apple should reinvent the Surface devices, and call then the “UnderTheSurface” or Underneath devices. ;)