‘Significant Contribution’

Horace Dediu applies his “Cook Doctrine” to the idea of an Apple car:

So what does being significant in the car business mean? Does it mean becoming the next Tesla? The next BYD or the next VW? How quickly?

Fortunately, we have something to compare an Apple entry to. Apple has made a “significant” market entry in phones and others have made entries in cars. If we contrast the rate of growth of Tesla, EVs, and Hybrids to the rate of growth of iPhones in their respective US markets, we obtain a test of significance. […]

Within a similar time frame, the range for entrant company share capture spanned between 0.15% (Tesla as percent of US car market) and 35% (Apple iPhone percent of US phone market).

The differences are thus measured with two orders of magnitude (>100×). Put another way, if Tesla’s car entry was equivalent to Apple’s iPhone entry they would have delivered about 5.5 million cars rather than the 50.5k they delivered in 2015.

Speaking of Apple making cars, did anyone notice the doors on the prototype Apple retail store that Charlie Rose toured with Angela Ahrendts on 60 Minutes?

Update: Those new-style wide doors are already in place at Apple’s brand-new store at the Mall of the Emirates.

★ Tuesday, 5 January 2016