Jean-Louis Gassée, writing for Monday Note:

Consider the world’s two largest car companies, Toyota and Volkswagen, both of which hover around $200B in revenue. Toyota just reported a higher than usual 10% net profit versus Apple’s 22.8%. The Financial Times recently pegged the VW brand’s Operating Margin at about 2%. (We’ll see how the German auto giant, which was ever so close to taking the industry’s Ichiban ranking from Toyota, extracts itself from its current engine management software troubles.)

Yes, the car industry is large (around $2T, that’s two thousand billions), but it grows slowly. In 2015 it saw 2% annual growth — and that was considered a good year.

The question isn’t how Apple could make money with cars but: Why should it bother?

Jean-Louis goes on to answer his own question, walking through some history (the iPod emerged from a similarly over-commoditized, saturated market), then exploring some of the factors that govern the existing car universe.

So much room for improvement/expansion, and right in Apple’s sweet spot. Great read.