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by assimpleaspossi 284 days ago
Yes. A lot of people, and obviously some "news" reporters, need to learn the difference between market share and stock price. And that as a market grows one company cannot maintain the same market share as competitors join in over time.
2 comments

"Tesla is on track toward a second year of sales decline." - from the article

Consecutive years of sales declines is a situation where it does not matter if the market is growing or shrinking, it's bad for a company. The only way to grow if absolute sales go down is to raise margins on each individual unit.

"But with weakening sales and a host of competitors, Tesla has had to cut prices in recent years, squeezing its margins and worrying investors."

Hmmmm, I guess maybe the author of the article understands this better than you think?

> as a market grows one company cannot maintain the same market share as competitors join in over time.

Why not? Look at Apple's smartphone market share in the US. It's been fairly constant at 60% for the last 15 years.

I would say the smartphone market would be more stable in terms of market share by its nature. The only way that it would shift significantly is if there were a mass exodus of users from one platform to the other. But the vast majority of people are perfectly happy staying with whatever they have. Likewise, many new smartphone users who aren't locked into a platform yet get locked into whatever platform people around them are using.

In the vehicle market, there's a lot more competition space than just two or three brands. And just because someone is around, say, Ford drivers. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to go out and buy a Ford for themselves. Rather, they're going to buy whatever they find appealing.

Taken to the extreme for example, say Apple had 100% of the market. If a competitor entered the market and gained 1% share,then Apple's market share will have decreased.

In Tesla's case, a number of competitors have entered the market. It would be impossible to maintain whatever market share they had no matter how good the product is or how well their stock price is doing.