If we could go back to Sept 2010, what was Mr Market thinking. Presumably he was seeing saturation, slowing growth and thinking it was too late. Maybe worried about the sustainability of a technology company and not appreciating the consumer brand and switching barriers.

Sept. 2010 was not that far removed from Nokia, Motorola, and Blackberry all having--and then losing (or, in the case of Blackberry, being in the process of losing)--dominant positions in the mobile phone market. And at the time, there was a tremendous amount of competition in the nascent smartphone market (which was only about 3 years old at the time). The iPhone was launched in 2007. Android phones came on the market in 2008. Samsung, LG, Motorola, Microsoft, Nokia, HTC, Sony, Blackberry/RIM, etc. were all competing with Apple for market share. Many of them were already embroiled in patent litigation against each other or would be soon: en.wikipedia.org - Smartphone patent wars. Oh yeah, and Steve Jobs was dying from cancer.

For sure, Apple was having great success at the time. But it was not at all clear that Apple would become--and remain--the world's most profitable smartphone manufacturer by far (capturing most of the industry's profits worldwide). Kudos to iluvbabyb for buying shares in 2010 and holding on!