Apple has gained PC market share in all but one quarter over the past eight years—that’s 31 out of 32 quarters.

But even that impressive run isn’t as important as the sustaining number that really does matter: profit share. Despite its small unit share (around 7% worldwide, higher in the US), Apple takes home about half of all PC industry profits, thanks to its significant ASP ($1,250 vs $417 industry-wide in 2014, trending down to $379 this year). Apple’s minority unit share in the mobile sector (13% to 15%) captured 90% of mobile profits this past quarter.

Small market share hasn’t killed the Mac, and it’s not hurting the iPhone—which enjoyed a much happier start than the Mac.

Law 4: Modularity Always Wins.

This is one of Clayton Christensen’s worries about Apple’s future. In the end, modularity always defeats integration:

“The transition from proprietary architecture to open modular architecture just happens over and over again. It happened in the personal computer. Although it didn’t kill Apple’s computer business, it relegated Apple to the status of a minor player. The iPod is a proprietary integrated product, although that is becoming quite modular. You can download your music from Amazon as easily as you can from iTunes. You also see modularity organized around the Android operating system activity that is growing much faster than the iPhone. So I worry that modularity will do its work on Apple.”

This was written in May 2012. Three years later, the iPod is all but gone. The music player that once generated more revenue than the Mac and paved the way for the iPhone by giving rise to the iTunes infrastructure has become an ingredient inside its successor. With 400 millionunits sold, Apple no longer even reports iPod sales. One could say integration won.

Christensen rightly points out that in the PC clone market, modularity allowed competitors to undercut one another by improving layer after layer, smarter graphic cards, better/faster/cheaper processing, storage, and peripheral modules. This led to the well-documented PC industry race to the bottom. But Christensen fails to note that the Mac stubbornly refused (and still refuses) to follow the Modularity Law. And, as Apple’s recent numbers show, the iPhone seems just as immune to modularity threats.

I have no trouble with the Law of Large Numbers, it only underlines Apple’s truly stupendous growth and, in the end, it always wins. No business can grow by 20%, or even 10%, forever.

But, for the other three, Market Share, Commoditization, and Modularity, how can we ignore the sea of contradicting facts? Even if we set Apple aside, there are so many “exceptions” to these rules that one wonders if these so-called Laws aren’t simply convenient wishful thinking, a kind of intellectual Muzak that fills an idea vacuum but has no substance.

As Apple continues to “break the law,” perhaps we’ll see a new body of scholarship that provides alternatives to the discredited refrains. As Rob Majteles tweeted: “Apple: where many, all?, management theories go to die?

You can read more of Monday Note’s coverage of technology and media here.

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