M.G.Siegler draws an analogy between Apple and Big Oil:

With this latest quarter, Apple surpassed ExxonMobil in 2008, Royal Dutch Shell in 2008, and Gazprom in 2011 for the most profitable quarter in the history of business. The unifying theme? All oil & gas companies. All operating in a world before the recent collapse of oil prices.

The downside of explosive single product growth is dependence on that revenue. In a sense, Apple is painted in a corner, dependent on iPhone sales to maintain their growth.

In fact, Apple now has the best problem in the world: having unearthed the best business in history, the iPhone, there are seemingly few places left to dig for gold — or, perhaps more appropriately, oil.

If I was a betting man, I’d bet on Apple here. Time and again, they’ve proven adept at reinventing themselves, at catching the next wave before anyone even realized it was a wave or, perhaps more appropriately, before anyone recognized how large a wave it would be.

Read Siegler’s piece. It’s well written, thoughtful, and full of interesting links.