> One of the fun parts about markets in general and the tech market in particular is wildly successful today doesn’t necessarily mean anything tomorrow. 18 months ago nobody though anything would knock iPhone off the top of the mountain, now the numbers make it pretty clear iPhone is no longer on the top of the mountain.
I was frankly astonished that an Apple product would ever be "on the top of the mountain" in terms of marketshare. Unless they are defining a whole new market, they are always a smaller player, at the high-end of price/quality, and seem happy there. Even when they start out as the Big Player marketshare-wise, they eventually must yield to the mass-market low-end players, in terms of number of units sold.
That is a riskier position to play, for sure.
They’re still on top with the iPod, never really figured out why, they weren’t first the market, and there’s a lot of stuff about them that keeps me away from them (the iTunes interface and relative price being high on the list), but they’re still sitting pretty on top of that heap. Markets can be really hard to analyze, I’m just as unsure why iPhone lost it’s top seat. And I have no idea what the next 18 months holds for the pad market.
But I do know developers looking to make software for these platforms will be paying close attention to market share, trying to get the biggest possible audience for their product.