it just encourages them!
Apple v. Google Ping!
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Posted on 07/20/2010 6:25:31 PM PDT by Mind-numbed Robot
Apple's Biggest Fear By: David Sterman Staff Writer StreetAuthority Published: July 13, 2010
In the land of consumer technology, it's hard to stay as the king of the hill. Two decades ago, Sony (NYSE: SNE) ruled the roost, with its hot-selling Walkmans and Trinitron TVs. About a decade ago, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) looked poised to dominate the global cell phone market, and more recently, Motorola's (NYSE: MOT) RAZR set that company up for a long-term run as a consumer favorite. All those companies can now be seen in Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) rear-view mirror.
With each passing year, Apple's brand only seems to get stronger. Forget about this month's iPhone antenna glitch, which has pushed shares down from their peak. Those kinds of issues are just noise, and will soon be forgotten. But on a much broader level, there's real reason for concern. Just as Apple is celebrating a successful rollout of the iPad and the latest version of the iPhone, a key competitor is set to steal Apple's thunder.
(Excerpt) Read more at topstockanalysts.com ...
I wouldn't bet on it.
You might want to look at this early. It may draw some interest.
Articles like this are usually looked back at and laughed at.
Er... Riiiighhtt!!!!
Android is going to do to cell phones and appliances what Windows has done to PCs. A one sorta size fits nobody and everybody sorta background system you can’t escape from.
Hackers will be in hog heaven. Instead of viruses that just kills your PC, you will have viruses that kill your phone, your fridge, your air conditioner and everything else it is connected to.
Anyone who thinks that’s a good idea, by all means sign up!
I’ll pass.
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Android or Apple as one size fits all. I am a fan of both, but Apple is the inflexible option.
How many times have the markets leaders changed? Many if not all companies loose the market lead when they think nobody can beat them.
My BB works everywhere I go.
With silver mines,
Recruiting grounds,
A general of real genius,
He thought himself invulnerable:
In one battle
He lost all three.
(Auden)
You got it very close to accurate, but you’re missing the result. An army of hardware makers with google’s OS is a lot like the Mac/PC competition. Apple just can’t stand to open up on hardware. It killed their PC market share to about 5-10% for good.
I see them easily doing that in this market as well. In fact, I’m positive they’ve peaked and will settle to 5-15% in a few years.
Everyone seems to assume that Apple wants to take over and dominate everything in the computer world. They sneer that Apple only holds a 15% share of the market.
I don’t think it bothers them at all.
I think that the people who run Apple are happy with things just the way they are, making the products they make and satisfying their customers their way.
That's what is so great about capitalism. Success breeds competition and the more competition, the better it is for the consumer. We consumers should all rejoice and reap the benefits of the rapidly evolving (and cheaper) technologies.
Of course that need not spell doom for the Apples and Microsofts of the world. Those holding stock in those companies are wise to hold on to them for years to come as while they may no longer rule the industry, they will continue to generate massive profits to the shareholders.
It doesn’t bother them, maybe. I doubt that’s true, but ok.
What I’m sure they don’t want is to become a small niche in the phone market at 10% or so. They’ll have to move onto another product market entirely then.
Depends what you mean by "beat them." Apple's worst years were when they focused on market share to the detriment of the customer experience. Apple is the computer, cell phone, and media player company with the largest market cap, highest profits, and happiest customers in the business; as long as it can maintain two of the three (I don't give a whit about market cap) and make enough profits to keep its R&D going, market share is irrelevant.
I remember when it was Apple vs. IBM, then it was Apple vs. Microsoft (a little bizarre—a hardware company vs. a software house, but there it was), now it’s Apple vs. Google (in cell phones??!).
Somehow I missed the analyses of Apple vs. Tower Records when Apple became the 5th largest music retailer and Tower collapsed, or dire warnings that Apple’s share of the music retail business isn’t keeping up with Walmart or Best Buy. I think the folks spreading Apple FUD don’t want to draw attention to that: no other tech company has a content retail arm to rake in money, so pointing it out makes whatever narrow comparison is being drawn to Apple’s disadvantage ring hollow.
I suppose forever is too long to expect one to be a leader but Apple has been different than most in that they are continually doing things cuter and better than the others while plowing new ground and creating new markets. Sometimes they are behind the curve and reinvent an old product and sometimes they are ahead of the curve in the direction they take products.
I think there are still about four or five more steps down the road that Jobs has already mapped out. I look for them to get into the “cloud” business and make money off of it in more ways than just advertising. Were I a cable TV company, a dish network or a software creator selling apps, especially MS, I would keep my eyes peeled on Apple.
Personally, I think Apple will sell ONE BILLION iPads when all is said and one. I posted that several months ago and many laughed at me, but they have already sold something like 3 million and the product is still early in its first generation.
I got hands-on with an iPad two weekends ago and it was without a doubt the most amazing consumer product I have ever seen. Imagine what the second and third generations of this product will be like! Not to mention the iPhone.
It is also speculated that Apple will soon put iTunes in the cloud, which basically means that everybody's music library will be accessible anywhere at any time. Not only that but they will be able to sample new music for free, recommended based on their personal tastes. If this takes off, terrestrial radio will be all but dead.
That all being the case, eventually some other company will find a way to out-Apple Apple and we will see another company achieve dominance in the consumer electronics field.
At any rate, it is quite a ride Apple has given us over the past 10 years. One of the few bright spots in what has been a terrible economy.
See # 16. I was writing it before you posted or I would have included you.
Actually, the reason why the current market leaders often have trouble staying at the head of the pack is the problem of the installed base. The installed base technology often become this weight around the market leader’s neck.
The installed base paradox is this: a company needs to be able to spin up a new product group at the same time they’re supporting the existing products and fulfilling contracts for same. The more successful the company was with the previous products, the more there is holding them back.
Internally, management often has to find a way of pulling their most experienced people off the existing product to have them do the New Thing, without making it seem to the people left on the existing product that they’re chopped liver. Companies have to walk a fine line on this. If they have a bunch of people with a hot new idea and they don’t go forward on it, it has happened that people just up, leave and atart a new company to pursue the idea.
Been there, done that, got the t-shirts.
In short, it is often darned difficult. Companies who are short on balace sheet cash often don’t make it, as margins are often compressed on the existing products.
And heaven help you if there is an internal struggle about using existing software vs. Writing a new system. Often companies don’t have a software base that allows them to keep an existing “customer interface experience” or the old interface doesn’t work well with the new widget, but the customers want to keep it.
Blackberry smart phones have this problem in spades right now.
For Motorola, they would never have made it out of the grave to ship the Droid X if not for the Android project from Google being done outside and providing a path of least resistance.
Of the smartphone companies out there, I expect Apple and Droids to take a big bite out of the Blackberry market share.
Ten years ago I was hearing all kinds of doom and gloom messages about Apple. I bought a lot of stock between $12 an $20. It has not only risen, but has split a number of times. Profits enabled me to buy the gadgets I use, including my iPad 3G which is a dream machine.
The naysayers will of course do their thing - but to all appearances Jobs was perfectly accurate in saying that what Apple wants to do is to delight and surprise the public with great products. And deliver a great user experience.They have been fabulously successful executing that formula. The Apple Store is a central part of that, and "everyone knew" that it was a fool's errand for Jobs to try to do it because others had failed at it. And in Jobs' telling, Apple almost got off on the wrong foot with its original design for the stores. Fortunately, he had hired a good consultant who had told him not to look at it as "getting into retail" so much as "developing a new product" - something that Apple knew how to do, in its own way.
The consequence was that the store wasn't just built, stacked with stuff, and opened to the public. Instead it was actually prototyped and studied. The first prototype was organized by product, mirroring Apple's own organization - but at the last moment before taking it to the public, they realized their mistake and redesigned it to please the customer.The Apple store gives Apple a quality of contact with the customer and the customer's experience which other tech companies have not had. The contrast between an Apple Store and a customer service phone line answered by foreigners could hardly be more stark.
By market share, the Mac is not so much - but by dollar volume it is dominant. Apple gets its products produced efficiently - but Apple doesn't do "commodity." And is less inclined to treat customers as a commodity.
If computers seem to be becoming commodities, Apple will cherry pick the top of the market - and also find other markets and treat them the same way. Always seeking to redefine the market to create their profitable niche in it.Apple has been able to redefine the cell phone as a veritable computer - and not a clunky one but a tiny Mac. Thereby being able to make big bucks selling a phone linked to a phone company whose coverage has been mercilessly criticized. And even selling a phone with, apparently, a compromised antenna. Still they fly off the shelves. Maybe Google will in fact become the most numerous cell phone - and still not make profits on phones the way Apple does. Already Google's forray into phone hardware has been cancelled . . .
Apple markets itself to a very loyal niche market in some products. My brother in law would buy a rock if it had the Apple logo on it.
They are very good at marketing their products, but such branding doesn’t last forever. I don’t think Android will be the thing that knocks them down, but rather when they are no longer viewed as “young”.
Huh? Apple hardware and software are built on open standards. The only thing I can think of that isn't an open standard, or doesn't work with open standards, is the iTunes DRM.
The author confuses open/closed ecosystems with open standards. History has shown us that an open ecosystem works well on commodity computers. People expect them to be complicated, to have compatibility problems. But consumers prefer their consumer electronics to just work -- and that's what Apple is good at doing, using a closed ecosystem to help make it happen. Nokia, Motorola and others are also pretty good at making consumer electronics using their own closed ecosystems. The author seems to think that moving the open PC model to consumer electronics is a good idea, but forgets the baggage it will bring.
This post could have been made monthly since 1984, and it would have been acceptable then as now, it was wrong then and it is wrong now, and will be in the future. But it is fun to predict the end of Apple at least once a month.
Who knows, sooner or later you are bound to be right. Right!
I sometimes think of a restaurant (Apple) compared to an open market (the rest). At Apple you get everything all put together for you with the appealing presentation, aromas and taste. The rest you buy the ingredients and go home and prepare them yourself. Others are like fast food - quick and cheap.
I don’t think I am hungary but maybe I am. :-)
I didn’t say they’d died off, just that they’d be a small player. In the PC world, I was right. It’ll happen here too.
Yep I noticed after I posted. I don't see Apple wanting to move into the cash register market. I see them moving into a different commodity market, the consumer market which, unless they let someone beat them to it, will be involved in every household item that uses electronics and some that haven't been dreamed up yet.
The business model is to monolithic to adapt to the rapid changes that tiny super computers can bring to products that haven't even been thought of yet. Probably why apple Computer changed their name to Apple.
The iPad lets your 70 year old mother/sister /grandmother have access to a world they have shunned for years, ever since the famous C< was introduced.
That’s the big thing that a lot of people miss about OS X. It is using a lot of RFC’s and open specs. The source code for the kernel is available. A great deal of the Un*x s/w behind the scenes on OS X is from the GNU/FSF distro’s, only cleaned up and distributed via Apple.
I can download a ton of software from GNU/FSF and build it at a terminal prompt on OS X.
I can’t do that on Windows.
“Android is going to do to cell phones and appliances what Windows has done to PCs.”
The irony being that Windows isn’t doing too hot, and Mac sales are on fire.
In the even less tech-savvy and appliance-like world of cell phones and pads, I’d say the Windows model won’t work.
That’s one of the major criticism of Droid phones. “A task manager on a CELLPHONE?” lol
“In the PC world, I was right.”
Really? How do you explain skyrocketing Mac sales and profits?
Apple is doing a whole lot of things right.
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