"At the time, Jobs was still smarter than Gates. Still is. Just different games. Gates went for world domination, and got all the headaches an emperor hates. Jobs went for market domination, and is still leading in pretty much every area they care to develop in.
Except the PC market. According to Gartner's January 13 press release, the top five companies in PC sales worldwide in Q4 2009 were HP, Acer, Dell, Lenovo, and Toshiba.
The top five companies in PC sales the US in Q4 2009 were HP, Dell, Acer, Toshiba, and Apple."
This is really one of my points. Truth is, in computing, Apple doesn't really compete with HP, Dell, Lonovo, Acer, or Toshiba. They do their own thing, and it's the Apple experience. If they keep on, they are virtually immune to competition for their desktop business, and I think the Macbook business is also soundly locked up.
And while every other manufacturer is trying to out-netbook their competition, Apple may have nailed it with the iPad. I don't see a viable competitor yet - processors need to become super power-efficient, the OS needs to exploit that, and the interface will need be superb. Until then, Apple has re-defined the tablet into something fairly useful, and created a whole new market niche. I have a Lenovo X41 Tablet, and the shortcomings are glaring. I'm not buying an iPad, though, cause I am one of the few who won't be jumping on the bandwagon and paying even more money on content and connectivity. Just not worth it to me, and I AM a minority.
Or to put it another way, Apple has probably 7-10% of the U.S. personal computing market for the forseeable future, though they will have to exert themselves for that last 3%. As a friend once told me, he would be happy with .03% of the U.S. toothpaste market, and he got it. Apple has a great position - 'just 7%' that they pretty much have out to the horizon, or until Jobs retires for real. That's their weakness - their real product is Job's vision. Without him, they will struggle. But who know who runs Toshiba's PC business? Who cares?