You don’t profit in a monopoly, you work harder: A lesson from Apple | Hacker News Reader

You don’t profit in a monopoly, you work harder: A lesson from Apple

paramaggarwal.com

"Every high school pass out knows this equation. To maximize profit, you can either maximize the profit per device sold or you can maximize the number of devices sold. Profit has the tendency to stay constant. If you reduce the profit per device, the number of devices sold will increase."

What? NO! You maximize profit by finding out where supply and demand meet to find the point where profit and units sold turn out the maximum profit.

And the rest of the article has little to do with maximizing profit and every thing to do with gaining market share.

I was trying to point out the balancing act between profit and quantity in my article. But your point is perfect. I missed it. Thanks.

Premise: Traditional economics is pricing things low when entering a market, and pricing things high in a captured market (a monopoly).

Argument: Apple does the opposite of this. e.g. Apple entered a new market with the iPhone, but priced high. Apple had a tablet monopoly with the iPad, but priced low.

Conclusion: Worship Steve Jobs as he upsets traditional economics.

Fallacy #1: The iPhone was not an entrance to a new market; PDAs, mp3 players, handheld internet, and cell phones had already began to converge into a single market, and Apple had already forayed in those markets. The iPhone was simply a premium and unique device in that market, and thus able to fetch a high price.

Fallacy #2: The iPad was not a monopoly. It was an entrance to a new market - particularly one that did not exist yet...tablets.

Your analysis of my article is brilliant. Thanks a lot. I hadn't realized how flawed my analysis was.

Sorry my post was sort of condescending/snarky. Your article was good food for thought.

Bad article. Gets a lot of stuff wrong or omits key facts, such as Apple's almost immediate huge price reduction on the iPhone. Or the subsidy model used on ATT. Without taking these things into effect, you can't do a reasonable analysis of what Apple did.

In 2010, Apple launched the iPad. There was nothing like it in the market. It was an instant success. A monopoly in the true sense of the word.

Translation: not at all a monopoly in any legally meaningful way.

Horrible article.

You are right. I got the meaning of monopoly horribly wrong in my article.

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