@Tigertank
The tides are changing and China's manufacturing power has grown 10-fold in the past decade meaning the ability to manufacture good quality products that replicate Apple products' functionality (even if slightly under-par in some aspects), is more relevant now than in decades past.
Take the iPad in comparison to the cheap Android tablets coming out of China. Just a year ago even the best Android tablets from China were cheap resistive screen models with underpowered CPUs and incomplete firmware. A year later, and new Android tablets such as the AG3 from http://www.androidgold.com are sporting capacitive screens, Cortex A8 1GHz CPUs, and at prices that are certainly going to put pressure on Apples's bottom line.
Add to that, the inevitable decay in Steve Job's health and me thinks the future of Apple may be due for another downswing in profits.
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