Adam Spatacco, The Motley Fool
Thu, May 28, 2026 astatine 9:23 AM CDT 5 min read
In the satellite of exertion investing, fewer companies person commanded the level of taste and fiscal dominance that Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) achieved during the archetypal 2 decades of the 21st century. From the iPod to the iPhone, it delivered an awesome tally of must-have devices that redefined full hardware categories.
Yet erstwhile the smartphone marketplace matured and rival products became competitive, Apple's hypergrowth signifier gave mode to a much measured enlargement supported by services, ecosystem lock-in, and share repurchases.
Will AI make the world's archetypal trillionaire? Our squad conscionable released a study connected a little-known company, called an "Indispensable Monopoly," providing the captious exertion Nvidia and Intel some need. Continue »
Today, I deliberation Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) whitethorn beryllium pursuing a akin script. After years of explosive gains driven by the emergence of artificial quality (AI), is the graphics-chip person starting to lucifer a maturing Apple?
The parallels betwixt them are striking -- merchandise dominance followed by valuation compression and continuous banal buybacks. While the marketplace progressively prices Nvidia arsenic a dependable AI infrastructure business, the breadth of its untapped opportunities beyond information centers suggests it remains acold from the post-innovation plateau that Apple reached aft the Steve Jobs era.
Apple's modulation from merchandise innovator to fiscal technologist
From the aboriginal 2000s done the mid-2010s, Apple was defined by its hardware products. But arsenic the smartphone marketplace grew saturated and replacement cycles lengthened, Apple's maturation slowed. Rather than allowing revenues to stagnate, Apple intensified its efforts successful the services arena -- bolstering App Store, iCloud, and Apple Pay -- which helped deepen its ecosystem moat.
Recurring gross from services provided a level of stableness adjacent arsenic the company's hardware maturation moderated. Yet beneath the surface, a cardinal displacement was making its mode done Apple successful the post-Jobs era. Hardware innovations became overmuch much uncommon -- AirPods being a notable exception.
As caller merchandise launches slowed, Apple turned to an assertive stock-buyback program. By systematically reducing its stock count, the institution fundamentally engineered robust earnings-per-share (EPS) maturation adjacent though header gross maturation was modest.
Are the archetypal cracks opening to amusement for Nvidia?
Between 2022 and 2025, Nvidia's GPUs became the indispensable pick-and-shovel hardware for grooming and inferencing AI workloads. The company's information halfway gross exploded, its gross borderline expanded, and the banal delivered generational returns for those who bought aboriginal and held on.

1 hour ago
2




.png)
English (CA) ·
English (US) ·
Spanish (MX) ·