Smartphone number of the day: 48%

Apple, the little computer company that could, has in the span of three years transformed itself from the Michael Jordan of baseball into the Michael Jordan of Chicago Bulls basketball.

Right now, second best isn't even close.

Per Asymco, Apple is garnering an absolutely astounding 48% of the worldwide smartphone market profits. That's like government-sanctioned oil company oligopoly profits. That's not crushing it. That's hitting the game-winning home run in the World Series then fucking the wives of all the losing players then making them watch video of both, over and over, til next season starts -- which is gonna seem like a long long time.

I mean, shit. 48%! Are you fucking kidding me. When the leaders of the five families got together to carve out profits  of the strip club industry in north Jersey they were each too bashful to take home that kind of money. It'd be like, in the Bible, while the Jews were wandering the desert, God said, for the next 40 years it's gonna rain chicken soup and merengue.

48%! And they're only selling about 3% of the world's smartphones!

Steve Jobs, God bless him, was fired from Apple -- and, miraculously, came back. He was presumed to be very near to death -- and lives. Apple had to go hat in hand to Microsoft, to stay afloat, and now thrives.

Of course, Jobs believes this is in large part to his messianic abilities and to the technological-business Jedi force of his  beloved Apple. But, the man's not stupid. He knows just how quickly everything, all of it, can be taken away. Thus, he's going to be very cautious on how Apple spends its massive and growing cash hoard. Where he won't be cautious about spending, however, is in keeping the iPhone ahead of the competition.

And, don't kid yourself, the iPhone remains head and shoulders superior to all other smartphones on the market. (For you Apple haters, if it makes you feel better, while there are some features and services on competitive smartphones that are better, on an individual level, none -- not a one -- matches the iPhone in the aggregate).

So, what now for Apple then?

Well, Jobs will continue to pour money into building a superior product. He will continue to pour money into building out the iPhone/iOS ecosystem infrastructure: think: cloud services, iTunes in the cloud, improved distribution of videos, real-time, location-based social media for iPhone gaming, battery technology, screen technology and the like. Along with services that support the interaction between the device, the user and others: such as near field communications, improved FaceTime. Aquisitions, less important and too expensive.

And what of competing smartphone vendors? Ultimately, they will succeed in driving down Apple's profit share. But, understand this. It will be a long hard slog and take, I suspect, at least two years. Nokia has lost its way and can't make a dime on smartphones. Microsoft and Blackberry, however, have the ability to pour big money into improving their product and cutting their prices. Google is obviously committed to Android. Since the future of the web is the mobile web, they have to be. That said, no matter how much they spend on Android, all the various handset makers will fight one another and not make obscene profits. Android, in fact, will be the OS that puts the dagger into Nokia. High-volume, low-margin profits built on scale.

These are the smartphone wars. Anything could happen. There may be a Manhattan Project underway right now in Finland for all I know. But, right now, at least, I'm predicting that Apple will grow its market share to at least 5% in the next couple years and retain profits of about 50% of the industry total.

And in 2016, when Microsoft is on the ropes. Near death. And, in a desperate move, they beg and plead and bring Steve Ballmer back, Jobs will be big enough to make that first call. And offer Ballmer and company a loan to help see them through.