iPhone holds most of its value and market share to 2018
As sales growth slows and prices fall, Apple is expected to keep skimming the cream. FORTUNE -- The heyday of smartphone sales is over, according to an IDC report issued this week. The U.S.-based market research firm expects growth in worldwide smartphone shipments, which approached 40% last year, to slow to less than 20% in 2014 and then within a few years to shrink to single digits: 8.3% in 2017 and 6.2% in 2018. For a company like Apple ( AAPL ), which depends on smartphone sales for more than half of its revenue and whose share of shipments has fallen below 15%, that's bad news , right? Not necessarily. Although IDC predicts that smartphone growth over the next four years will mostly be in price-conscious developing markets, and that sales growth in Apple's strongholds -- the U.S. and Europe -- has already slowed to single digits, there is a silver lining for Apple. It's represented by the red line in the attached IDC graphic. Apple's...