An American analyst claims today that Apple has monopoly power on the smartphone market thanks to the iPhone terminals that it sells all over the world. According to this analyst, the Apple company sets the selling prices for its iPhone terminals, and this gives it powers similar to those of a company that holds a monopoly in a certain field.
Moreover, he claims that Apple has an "anti-fragile monopoly" on the smartphone market, being able to be successful regardless of market conditions. Having such power, the Apple company cannot be dethroned from its position on the market, no matter how its competitors attack it, being able to adapt better than Google, Facebook, Amazon, or Microsoft.
Basically, the analyst presents the Apple company as "too big to fail", i.e. much too big to suffer failures big enough to go bankrupt. In this idea, the Apple company has enough products and services to ensure its existence even if at certain moments it could launch products that are not successful.
The analyst's statements come to counter those of others who claim that Apple is in a fragile position on the smartphone market, even though it collected 79% of the entire industry's profit. However, Apple does not have a monopoly on the smartphone market since it is surpassed in sales by Samsung, but it has a better strategy to sell its products and make more profit.
"One characteristic of monopolies is pricing power. iPhone's ASP of almost $700 last quarter has rebounded to an all-time high despite currency pressure and could further rise with the iPhone 8," he writes.Although Apple is viewed as less powerful than its large cap tech brethren, it exhibits superior pricing power."
