Astonishing statistic

Apple sold more smartphones than Samsung in 2023.

Maybe that’s not big news to anyone under the age of 30 (or even 40). But for an old guy like me, it’s astonishing. I got involved in the computer business in 1981. That was the last time Apple sold more of anything than any other company. They sold more Apple IIs than Radio Shack or Commodore. It was also the year IBM introduced the IBM PC. After that, Apple was always the company that only sold products it designed. Everyone wanted to believe that it could not survive being different.

It became an item of pride that the rest of the computer industry dissed Apple. The nadir was when Michael Dell said that he would “shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders” in 1997. Now it’s not just that Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the technology industry (and any industry) but it has a bigger share of the smartphone market than anyone else and is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice for monopolizing the market it created.

I think that’s worth noting. If there’s one thing you can say about the technology business, it’s that it constantly changes in ways that no one every predicts accurately.