No, it’s not. Where did I ever say I was discussing Apple’s growth or worth? Market share is a way to look at popularity of a product. Apple’s products are bought by fewer than 20% of the product-buying public. They’re not very popular. That’s the point I’m making.
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There is nothing wrong with going for profits. It’s a great business model. I’m sure they could sell a lot mor MacBooks if they dropped the price, but then they wouldn’t make as much money.
As with a lot of new technology, the marketplace will decide which to use and which to ignore. USB, FireWire, and maybe a couple other storage protocols were all new once. It seems that USB won out. Even Apple provides USB ports on their devices. By flooding the market with the Tesla chargers, Musk hopes his device becomes the standard. He can afford to give away the charging technology if he doesn’t have to change his charger configuration.
But with chargers, we’re talking a HUGE infrastructure, one that was pointed to as the reason EV adoption will be difficult. And here the makers are creating barriers, instead of seeing a means to accelerate adoption. I see no trend for Tesla to become the standard. Any other company adopted it?
I’m going to try to explain myself one more time, and then I’ll give up. Tesla wants EVs to become popular. Profitability is on the back burner, at least for now, else they would not have given up their patent rights.
When the discussion is about the goal of making EVs popular it is fitting to look at a popularity metric in our discussions.
Tesla, in giving up its patent rights, did the opposite of Apple, which locked down its computers so that no one could clone them. The result was that their computers became unpopular, and are still unpopular, which is the opposite of the goal Tesla has for EVs.
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Thank you for the information.
No it isn’t. Market Share is only a relative term. The Mac is 50 times more popular NOW then it was when it had 84% of the market. They are selling 50 times more Macs NOW then back then.
Your analysis is like saying the Benz lost more market share then when they started rolling cars off the production line in 1888. Back then they were the only game in town (100% market share). Sales were less then 100/year. Today they’re in the millions with less then 1% market share.
The only time market share has any meaning is when market volume is unchanged (or very little change). Market volume of cars and computers from when they started to now is hundreds of times higher now.
The last buggy-whip company in the world had 100 % of the market. But total sales shrunk by 99%. I wouldn’t call that a good indicator of how well a company is doing.
I think we’re butting heads over the definition of “popularity.” I tend to side with Webster - “commonly liked or approved/widely accepted.” I even drop the other definition which specifically requires that it be liked by the majority even though that would fit as well.
Apple is indeed selling more computers now than it used to. There are also more people buying computers now than were buying them back then. And the majority of the people who are buying computers now are not buying Apple products.
Tesla’s goal is for the majority and in fact the entirety of the car-buying public to buy EVs instead of fossil-fuel cars. Therefore the fact that Apple is selling more computers now while having plummeted in market share is not relevant when considered in the context of Tesla’s goal.
Apple would need to be selling its computers to everyone who buys computers in order to be doing with computers what Tesla wants to bring about with EVs. And Tesla’s opening up its patents so that other companies can more easily produce EVs is a big step toward that goal - not everyone will buy a Tesla, but maybe in the future everyone will buy an EV from someone, which is what they’re aiming at.
Had Apple opened up its architecture back in the 80’s/90’s like IBM did, it’s quite likely that their system would be considerably more popular as a percentage of computers bought today. They didn’t, and now PCs unquestionably rule the market.
Were Tesla to vigorously enforce its patents it’s quite likely that the public would continue buying internal combustion cars for many more years/decades than it is likely to do with the patents opened up.
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That’s right…but he didn’t say TESLA’s. Just more EV’s.
As I have repeatedly said all along.
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Apple’s problem back then wasn’t the lack of openness. The biggest blunder they made was the Powerbook. Over Half were shipped DOA. And there was a chance the batteries could catch on fire which made them recall the entire line. This cost them MILLIONS.
Also without Jobs there the company wasn’t that innovative. Jobs brought a lot of innovation to the company,
Oh I dunno about that. I tend to fall on the side that says Woz brought the innovation. Jobs brought the marketing genius. Both were needed, but Jobs was a salesman, not an inventor.
No question the Powerbook hurt them a lot, but I also remember being in computer clubs (both in person and on Fidonet) where a whole lot of us, myself included, would have gone with MacOS if we could build our own hardware. We couldn’t, so we went with the - vastly inferior at the time - Windows OS and stayed in DOS as much as possible because we could build our own boxes that were more powerful for less money. And we got a mouse with two buttons, and sometimes even three! 
At any rate, it was the lack of openness back then that made a lot of people gravitate to the lower cost, more powerful alternative, and thanks in part to inertia, they never left.
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…which has to be concerning to TSLA shareholders.
Nikolai Tesla was a genius, who invented things that we still use today. He also died poor. With various patents set to expire, and stock at unfathomable P/E ratios…I’m starting to wonder if naming the company “Tesla” was more prophetic than intended! Time will tell…
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Yeah…my mom worked for IBM at the time, and it (sharing the platform) looked like lunacy at the time…spend all that R+D and let any old Jamoke make a knock-off! Little did I know that establishing a computing “Lingua Franca” would benefit the design, if not IBM itself. (In my defense, I was about 8.)
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The last buggy-whip mfr is still extant. Plenty of horses (and more than a few weirdos) still require whipping, and some company exists to fill that market. Where would harness racing be without the whip?
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Then again, IBM used open architecture for the IBM-PC, and that led to market dominance. The IBM-PC is still the largest seller, IIRC. It’s called Lenovo now.
But How many buggy whips are sold today…and what’s the market share. I suspect some 150 years ago there were far more buggy whip companies and more were sold then today. Fewer companies today with far less whips sold. Companies might have a larger Market Share, but their sales volume is now where near what it was 150 years ago.
Again, the point is that Musk wants to switch everybody over from IC to EV cars. Total number purchased is irrelevant, only market share (of EV cars, not Tesla cars) is important.
If everyone stops buying cars entirely, except for me, and I buy an EV, then Musk has achieved his goal just as certainly as if everyone who currently owns a car buys an EV at their next car purchase. The goal is 100% market share, not X-number-of-cars-sold.
Musk’s sales targets for the 3 (they were 500,000 in, what, 2 years) will be hard to meet.
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SHUT UP! I’m in shock! (and not from an EV). I just read that my little Rural Electric Cooperative (the power company that brings me electricity) is going to install 6 "new electric vehicle charging stations throughout the area."
"The venture has been deemed a pilot project which will provide charging of vehicles at no cost for three years, but a spokesperson said there are no intentions to charge for using the stations even after the initial three years. “At this time, there is no plan to make them pay-to-charge stations. These stations are not even equipped with the technology to make it possible."
"Several electric vehicle models will soon be on the market, he said, and the coop plans to capitalize on the fact most charging takes place at home. "
“It should not be a far-fetched idea for us to, basically, regain or investment in this down the road,” a representative told those attending the meeting. "
“Each station can charge two vehicles at a time. It takes about four hours to completely charge a vehicle, but the intent is to allow people to charge for a limit of two hours, enough to get them to their next destination.”
I never thought I’d be reading this so soon. The times, they are achang’n! However, charging times are still much, much, too long.
Oh, I guess for now these EVs will be primarily CVs (coal powered vehicles) because our coop still buys the majority of our electricity from coal-fired power plants. 
CSA