There was a piece on a BBC show ("Click", a technology magazine-type program, if you're interested) which suggested that people are abandoning Apple's smart devices in droves. I don't know enough about the current state of the exact market to speculate, but I was kinda surprised. If people are flocking to Samsung, and staying with Samsung, then that's a very ominous sign on Apple's horizon.....
Some research also says much, much higher. https://blog.pagefair.com/2013/the-rise-of-adblocking/ https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-p...y-AdBlock-Plus-or-similar-ad-blocking-plugins I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the first report though, as that is a company which monitors data for it's clients. So basically people who are already worried about ad-block causing damage. Second one has links to quite a few different reports and statistics from different sources. I'm not sure which numbers are correct, but it would certainly be nice to have some source to "less than 2%, less than 1% according to some research". However, my point was more about how ad block is growing, not how much it's used today. I do not think that you will find a single report that declares that the amount of people using ad block has declined in the past few years. And yes, I certainly agree that it's the more tech-savvy people who block ads, and most of those reports reveal it too. Now let me know if you meet a person under 20 in the western world that isn't tech savvy.
Regardless of adblocker, if people choose to avoid and not click on them then there is less revenue. Google as a company dominate in so many ways that people don't think about, they were bound to be more 'valuable' because even people who don't own any technology will have had to use google for something at some point.
Update: As Apple's stock keeps dropping, Alphabet's stock market value again exceeds that of Apple. http://fortune.com/2016/05/12/google-exceeds-apple-stock-market/ It may not be for long though.
From personal experience alone, I would also say that's true. While Apple did used to dominate the smartphone market, Samsung and probably more importantly, the Android platform is now the biggest. Apple aren't dead, but they need to act soon if they want to continue to be the dominant force that they once was.