Are Apple’s Best Days Behind It?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Another group of experts has made the case that Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) best days are behind it. ABI Research says that Apple’s share of the smartphone market worldwide will peak this year at 22% and stay at that level through 2018, as though any estimate could be accurate that many years out.

According to the research operation:

Smartphone shipments will account for 50% of all handset shipments by 2014 and become the largest handset segment in the world, according to the latest market forecasts by market intelligence firm ABI Research. By 2018, 2.4 billion handset shipments with smartphones will account for 69% of all handset shipments. LTE handsets will account for 35% of all handset shipments and 50% of smartphone shipments in 2018.

“Barring an unlikely collapse in Samsung’s business, even Apple will be chasing Samsung’s technology, software, and device leadership in 2013 through the foreseeable future,” says senior analyst Michael Morgan.

Shares of Apple are down fractionally in premarket trading, to $502.00 in a 52-week trading range of $419.55 to $705.07.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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