The exact number of people who now own an iPhone or iPad is unknown but you would expect it to be a pretty hefty proportion of the population. The truth of the matter is that people quite simply love Apple products.
Going hand in hand with the rise of iPhones and iPads has been the rise of new, unique, app based companies and the rise in other traditional businesses changing their business plan. Here are some existing and new businesses that, in economic terms, have been the genuine free riders of the Apple revolution.
The betting industry
Going hand in hand with the advancement of smart phones has been the rise of mobile gambling. Ten years ago the idea of betting from your phone would have seemed utopian. The idea of being able to bet on your phone, in-play, has become ever more prevalent in recent years with numerous companies allowing for instantaneous gambling from anywhere with a signal. While that is impressive, the fact that some apps, such as the Unibet iPhone app, allow one to watch upwards of 10,000 sporting events is simply incredible. Credit the gambling industry: they modernised fast and they modernised well whilst other sectors of the economy missed the boat.
Twitter has grown into a $24billion company since being founded in 2006. The first iPhone was released in 2007. In direct correlation to the iPhone sales were the active Twitter users. They currently have 255 million active users, of which, 78% use Twitter via the medium of mobile. Simply without iPhone and then Android, Twitter would have been dead in the water. Have you tried Twitter solely on your laptop? You won’t find it overly impressive. It’s not just Twitter though; Instagram was bought by Facebook for $1billion, whilst the founder of Snapchat turned down a $3billion offer from Facebook and a $4billion offer from Google. It is startling that the advent of one phone can create so much wealth.
The Game Industry
The beauty of the game industry and the rise of the iPhone, and more so the iPad, is that the manufacturers who had hegemony of the video game market had no foothold whatsoever in the App store. This meant that for a long time the market was near perfect in terms of wide-ranging competition. Small games flourished: Angry Birds has sold over two billion copies which is stupefying, 2013 game Flappy Birds caused a pandemic when the developer pulled it from the App store (phones with the game preinstalled were attracting bids of $90,000 on EBay). Has the iPhone and iPad saved the gaming industry? No, but they have certainly bolstered it.
When you sit back and think of all the companies that have grown rich through Apple, Android and the internet you start to see that this is the technological revolution, and it is only going to get better.
