I agree. Very silly article, when iPhone's market share worldwide is threatening to drop to single digits in Q3 and when Apple has dropped to less than 50% of the tablet market share (a market many pundits thought they would dominate forever) and clearly heading rapidly to 20%
Yes, Apple's mobile business is clearly heading the same way as their Mac business did - niche devices with a small market share. By next year we are going to see apps debuting first on Android before iOS, and having better versions there, e.g Facebook Home. The downwards momentum is pretty strong for Apple at the minute.
The only way Apple is like Microsoft is that they both make lots of money, but their share price will remain stagnant for the next 10 years.
"Apple has a roadmap of do's and don'ts to follow"???
Ugh. The danger Apple faces isn't failing to defend the stickiness of their platform. That just doesn't work. Microsoft tries desperately during the 90s to make sure Windows remained sticky, and they identified two threats to that stickiness: the World Wide Web and Java. This was the era of "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics. Microsoft pushed "Best Viewed in IE4" badges on Web sites, and tried to add Windows-only libraries to Java until Sun won a lawsuit against Microsoft that ground that to a halt.
Defending stickiness is NOT a long-term growth strategy. It's a short-term time-buying strategy. If you have to actively defend it, then market trends are making your platform irrelevant. The forces that make it irrelevant will reward (new) players who adapt, and wipe out those that try to oppose it. The forces that finally felled Windows are: fast ubiquitous 3G/4G Internet, touch screen phones and tablets (iPads, for the most part), and consumer appetite for using technology to access web services such as Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and Instagram and Pandora, more than to run Windows-specific applications. Ironically, one of Microsoft's technologies, XHR, helped make this possible (Microsoft may have originally wanted XHR to be Windows-specific, but they didn't stop anyone else from implementing it, thus seeding Windows' future doom). The shift to using technology to access Web services (from anywhere) with connected, always-on portable devices is what will decimate Windows and PCs in consumer markets. PCs will still be relevant on the content creation side for the foreseeable future.
For Apple, the threats to "iDevice" stickiness will be streaming media. The iPod (and later iPad) owes much of its popularity to the popularity of iTunes sourced content (which have grown from just songs to movies, TV, and books). If Spotify or Netflix (or Google Play or Amazon Instant MP3/Video) start to eat into that, that will be an early warning sign that Apple had better get on the winning side of that trend. Inflection points for new technology can flip perceptions and consumer market share in as little as two Christmases. If Apple is smart, they'll offer the best streaming music and/or video service before anyone else does. If you think about it, on demand streaming music (personal radio) is something that would even make iCloud irrelevant for media storage, because your music is already on a server. Higher wireless data caps and/or even better music compression could be a tipping point for this.
There might be other trends that'll make smartphones passé. Wearable computing is one of them (smart watch or Google Glass). Advanced natural language human interfaces (talking to your device as fluently as talking to another person), are all longer-term bets about the next big thing that'll replace the smartphone/tablet as the trending way to access data and services.
Apple shouldn't follow Microsoft's do's and don'ts, and I don't think they will. It's not in their DNA. Apple has to do two core thing right to stay on top:
1. See where maturing technologies are coming together in the future to form great new products and services
2. Don't be afraid to cannibalize your own markets.
I agree. Very silly article, when iPhone's market share worldwide is threatening to drop to single digits in Q3 and when Apple has dropped to less than 50% of the tablet market share (a market many pundits thought they would dominate forever) and clearly heading rapidly to 20%
Yes, Apple's mobile business is clearly heading the same way as their Mac business did - niche devices with a small market share. By next year we are going to see apps debuting first on Android before iOS, and having better versions there, e.g Facebook Home. The downwards momentum is pretty strong for Apple at the minute.
The only way Apple is like Microsoft is that they both make lots of money, but their share price will remain stagnant for the next 10 years.
That can happen, but only if developers go full-retarded. Why?
Apple provides the best tools to develop;
iOS is by far the best as a platform;
iOS devices are, in average, one billion times more capable/better than the average Android device;
iOS has the best users;
Apple is building a huge set of awesome services for the future, services that will become unmatched.
How can you argue with this?
Having said all that, Facebook Home sucks and is a huge disappointment to everyone, even Facebook. Compare that to the iOS app.
Recent research shows the Android platform already has more download potential for developers and revenue is I think less but also catching up. The revenue element is obviously most important, but that will very likely exceed the iOS platform by next year.
Nice editorial, worth reading, but I do not agree with it.
Apple is losing market share worldwide and sales (numbers) are not growing at the pace of others. Yes, you may say that's because others make cheaper devices and some OEMs are on crisis and the market (worldwide) is far from saturated, but the fact is that even Apple's profits are down, so...
The conclusion is that they reached the maximum of the current business model, and that's a great business model. However, for iOS to be dominant, the leader, they need something else.
For me, it seems obvious that another premium high end line, with a bigger screen and software to take advantage of it, and even a cheaper line (250€) that offers something that the others don't (put an a5 chip, 2 year old components but just give it the same camera as the iphone 5, so it gives something that the competition can't offer at that price) are a fast, secure and solid way to create a platform that will dominate for years to come.
I want that, because for the first time the ones dominating are the ones that truly innovate.
How come all the demands for "innovation" end up with - 1) make cheap crap, 2) make larger screen? You really think these are so original and brilliant that nobody at Apple hasn't thought of?
Recent research shows the Android platform already has more download potential for developers and revenue is I think less but also catching up. The revenue element is obviously most important, but that will very likely exceed the iOS platform by next year.
Eric Schmidt already said that. Last year. And the year before that.
How come all the demands for "innovation" end up with - 1) make cheap crap, 2) make larger screen? You really think these are so original and brilliant that nobody at Apple hasn't thought of?
LOL. I have noticed the bar for innovation is usually lowered so that any gimmicky, spec-sheet-lengthening, kitchen-sink feature that Android handset makers put in there can be praised as "innovation" and then raised so that any feature or improvement Apple puts into its products is a sign of a "failure to blow us away."
Recent research shows the Android platform already has more download potential for developers and revenue is I think less but also catching up. The revenue element is obviously most important, but that will very likely exceed the iOS platform by next year.
Ah, the old Android expression is back once again: Soon. Soooooon. Sooooooooooooon Android will be profitable. Sooooooooooooooooooooooooon Android will not be fragmented. Soooooooooooooooooooooooooon Android will be the bestest in all the land.
That can happen, but only if developers go full-retarded. Why?
Apple provides the best tools to develop;
iOS is by far the best as a platform;
iOS devices are, in average, one billion times more capable/better than the average Android device;
iOS has the best users;
Apple is building a huge set of awesome services for the future, services that will become unmatched.
How can you argue with this?
Having said all that, Facebook Home sucks and is a huge disappointment to everyone, even Facebook. Compare that to the iOS app.
And why do you believe any of your (completely insane) assertions? Development tools are rapidly equalizing across platforms (if they haven't already: see Xamarin, rhomobile, etc). Android devices have clearly better hardware specs than iPhones, and Google has a huge set of awesome services right this moment, and building them out. iOS has the best users? How is this? You like iOS, good, and if Apple keeps improving their OS they will remain competitive, but they have no huge advantage.
Ah, the old Android expression is back once again: Soon. Soooooon. Sooooooooooooon Android will be profitable. Sooooooooooooooooooooooooon Android will not be fragmented. Soooooooooooooooooooooooooon Android will be the bestest in all the land.
If you look at how fast Samsung profit is ramping up, I think you can safely conclude that Android IS profitable.
If you look at how fast Samsung profit is ramping up, I think you can safely conclude that Android IS profitable.
No. No you can't. You can say that Samsung is profitable and you can say that Samsung make a profit using Android, but you can't say Android is profitable.
No. No you can't. You can say that Samsung is profitable and you can say that Samsung make a profit using Android, but you can't say Android is profitable.
Good point. "Android" doesn't make money for anyone, in and of itself. The only way it makes money for Google is if it generates ad revenue; otherwise, it's just a free operating system for whatever gadget company wants to use it.
It was a product with clear value to a large audience, a concept cleverly captured in a photo posted to Reddit comparing 2003 to 2013.
Judging from the devices, I'm pretty sure that should be 1993, not 2003.
--
As for the comparison to Windows and DOS, my first thought always goes back to the way that PCs took over partly because they went with hardcoded graphic sizes at first... while other OSes were trying to be totally hardware and size independent.
The hardcoded VGA/SVGA graphics looked much better at first than the resolution independent setups, even though the latter made more sense for the long haul.
No. No you can't. You can say that Samsung is profitable and you can say that Samsung make a profit using Android, but you can't say Android is profitable.
??? What does this even mean? People are making money with the help of Android (where "people" includes such a diverse group as Samsung with the hardware, Google with advertising, Microsoft with IP licensing, Rovio with "Angry Birds", etc, etc). Since Android is free, by definition you will never be able to say that Android per se is profitable, but it is not meant to be -- its point is to create an alternative to proprietary OSes (iOS, Windows, Symbian, BlackBerry), which it has done to the extent of dominating in unit sales at least, and making a lot of money for a lot of people (see the second sentence above) while providing a lot of people who could never afford Apple hardware with a quite nice phone/PDA/pocket computer. Even if you believe that Android is technically inferior to iOS (I have no opinion -- usability-wise for me I like some things on iOS and other things on Android, and other things still on Windows phone), I don't see how you can deny its obvious success in its mission.
Not necessarily. Selling a more affordable iPhone might have similar if not greater margins than their current model of selling older iPhones as their cheap offering.
I agree. Very silly article, when iPhone's market share worldwide is threatening to drop to single digits in Q3 and when Apple has dropped to less than 50% of the tablet market share (a market many pundits thought they would dominate forever) and clearly heading rapidly to 20%
Yes, Apple's mobile business is clearly heading the same way as their Mac business did - niche devices with a small market share. By next year we are going to see apps debuting first on Android before iOS, and having better versions there, e.g Facebook Home. The downwards momentum is pretty strong for Apple at the minute.
The only way Apple is like Microsoft is that they both make lots of money, but their share price will remain stagnant for the next 10 years.
Heavens forbid Apple keep making lots of money. I thought the goal was market share even though that doesn't pay the bills.
Recent research shows the Android platform already has more download potential for developers and revenue is I think less but also catching up. The revenue element is obviously most important, but that will very likely exceed the iOS platform by next year.
Ah. Good old projections. In 2009, net books were predicted to rule the PC world. In 2006, windows mobile and blackberry were projected to dominate smart phones for the foreseeable future.
Comments
It compared iOS with Windows dominance. Nothing about the business, nor road, nor boring stuff.
You know when someone keeps repeating things over and over, they not trying to convince someone else but themselves of it.
thank your for your second post, mrs.dilger.
I agree. Very silly article, when iPhone's market share worldwide is threatening to drop to single digits in Q3 and when Apple has dropped to less than 50% of the tablet market share (a market many pundits thought they would dominate forever) and clearly heading rapidly to 20%
Yes, Apple's mobile business is clearly heading the same way as their Mac business did - niche devices with a small market share. By next year we are going to see apps debuting first on Android before iOS, and having better versions there, e.g Facebook Home. The downwards momentum is pretty strong for Apple at the minute.
The only way Apple is like Microsoft is that they both make lots of money, but their share price will remain stagnant for the next 10 years.
"Fated to go the way of Windows"???
"Apple has a roadmap of do's and don'ts to follow"???
Ugh. The danger Apple faces isn't failing to defend the stickiness of their platform. That just doesn't work. Microsoft tries desperately during the 90s to make sure Windows remained sticky, and they identified two threats to that stickiness: the World Wide Web and Java. This was the era of "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics. Microsoft pushed "Best Viewed in IE4" badges on Web sites, and tried to add Windows-only libraries to Java until Sun won a lawsuit against Microsoft that ground that to a halt.
Defending stickiness is NOT a long-term growth strategy. It's a short-term time-buying strategy. If you have to actively defend it, then market trends are making your platform irrelevant. The forces that make it irrelevant will reward (new) players who adapt, and wipe out those that try to oppose it. The forces that finally felled Windows are: fast ubiquitous 3G/4G Internet, touch screen phones and tablets (iPads, for the most part), and consumer appetite for using technology to access web services such as Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and Instagram and Pandora, more than to run Windows-specific applications. Ironically, one of Microsoft's technologies, XHR, helped make this possible (Microsoft may have originally wanted XHR to be Windows-specific, but they didn't stop anyone else from implementing it, thus seeding Windows' future doom). The shift to using technology to access Web services (from anywhere) with connected, always-on portable devices is what will decimate Windows and PCs in consumer markets. PCs will still be relevant on the content creation side for the foreseeable future.
For Apple, the threats to "iDevice" stickiness will be streaming media. The iPod (and later iPad) owes much of its popularity to the popularity of iTunes sourced content (which have grown from just songs to movies, TV, and books). If Spotify or Netflix (or Google Play or Amazon Instant MP3/Video) start to eat into that, that will be an early warning sign that Apple had better get on the winning side of that trend. Inflection points for new technology can flip perceptions and consumer market share in as little as two Christmases. If Apple is smart, they'll offer the best streaming music and/or video service before anyone else does. If you think about it, on demand streaming music (personal radio) is something that would even make iCloud irrelevant for media storage, because your music is already on a server. Higher wireless data caps and/or even better music compression could be a tipping point for this.
There might be other trends that'll make smartphones passé. Wearable computing is one of them (smart watch or Google Glass). Advanced natural language human interfaces (talking to your device as fluently as talking to another person), are all longer-term bets about the next big thing that'll replace the smartphone/tablet as the trending way to access data and services.
Apple shouldn't follow Microsoft's do's and don'ts, and I don't think they will. It's not in their DNA. Apple has to do two core thing right to stay on top:
1. See where maturing technologies are coming together in the future to form great new products and services
2. Don't be afraid to cannibalize your own markets.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fredD
I agree. Very silly article, when iPhone's market share worldwide is threatening to drop to single digits in Q3 and when Apple has dropped to less than 50% of the tablet market share (a market many pundits thought they would dominate forever) and clearly heading rapidly to 20%
Yes, Apple's mobile business is clearly heading the same way as their Mac business did - niche devices with a small market share. By next year we are going to see apps debuting first on Android before iOS, and having better versions there, e.g Facebook Home. The downwards momentum is pretty strong for Apple at the minute.
The only way Apple is like Microsoft is that they both make lots of money, but their share price will remain stagnant for the next 10 years.
That can happen, but only if developers go full-retarded. Why?
Apple provides the best tools to develop;
iOS is by far the best as a platform;
iOS devices are, in average, one billion times more capable/better than the average Android device;
iOS has the best users;
Apple is building a huge set of awesome services for the future, services that will become unmatched.
How can you argue with this?
Having said all that, Facebook Home sucks and is a huge disappointment to everyone, even Facebook. Compare that to the iOS app.
Recent research shows the Android platform already has more download potential for developers and revenue is I think less but also catching up. The revenue element is obviously most important, but that will very likely exceed the iOS platform by next year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pedromartins
Nice editorial, worth reading, but I do not agree with it.
Apple is losing market share worldwide and sales (numbers) are not growing at the pace of others. Yes, you may say that's because others make cheaper devices and some OEMs are on crisis and the market (worldwide) is far from saturated, but the fact is that even Apple's profits are down, so...
The conclusion is that they reached the maximum of the current business model, and that's a great business model. However, for iOS to be dominant, the leader, they need something else.
For me, it seems obvious that another premium high end line, with a bigger screen and software to take advantage of it, and even a cheaper line (250€) that offers something that the others don't (put an a5 chip, 2 year old components but just give it the same camera as the iphone 5, so it gives something that the competition can't offer at that price) are a fast, secure and solid way to create a platform that will dominate for years to come.
I want that, because for the first time the ones dominating are the ones that truly innovate.
How come all the demands for "innovation" end up with - 1) make cheap crap, 2) make larger screen? You really think these are so original and brilliant that nobody at Apple hasn't thought of?
Quote:
Originally Posted by fredD
Recent research shows the Android platform already has more download potential for developers and revenue is I think less but also catching up. The revenue element is obviously most important, but that will very likely exceed the iOS platform by next year.
Eric Schmidt already said that. Last year. And the year before that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Plagen
How come all the demands for "innovation" end up with - 1) make cheap crap, 2) make larger screen? You really think these are so original and brilliant that nobody at Apple hasn't thought of?
LOL. I have noticed the bar for innovation is usually lowered so that any gimmicky, spec-sheet-lengthening, kitchen-sink feature that Android handset makers put in there can be praised as "innovation" and then raised so that any feature or improvement Apple puts into its products is a sign of a "failure to blow us away."
Ah, the old Android expression is back once again: Soon. Soooooon. Sooooooooooooon Android will be profitable. Sooooooooooooooooooooooooon Android will not be fragmented. Soooooooooooooooooooooooooon Android will be the bestest in all the land.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pedromartins
That can happen, but only if developers go full-retarded. Why?
Apple provides the best tools to develop;
iOS is by far the best as a platform;
iOS devices are, in average, one billion times more capable/better than the average Android device;
iOS has the best users;
Apple is building a huge set of awesome services for the future, services that will become unmatched.
How can you argue with this?
Having said all that, Facebook Home sucks and is a huge disappointment to everyone, even Facebook. Compare that to the iOS app.
And why do you believe any of your (completely insane) assertions? Development tools are rapidly equalizing across platforms (if they haven't already: see Xamarin, rhomobile, etc). Android devices have clearly better hardware specs than iPhones, and Google has a huge set of awesome services right this moment, and building them out. iOS has the best users? How is this? You like iOS, good, and if Apple keeps improving their OS they will remain competitive, but they have no huge advantage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
Ah, the old Android expression is back once again: Soon. Soooooon. Sooooooooooooon Android will be profitable. Sooooooooooooooooooooooooon Android will not be fragmented. Soooooooooooooooooooooooooon Android will be the bestest in all the land.
If you look at how fast Samsung profit is ramping up, I think you can safely conclude that Android IS profitable.
No. No you can't. You can say that Samsung is profitable and you can say that Samsung make a profit using Android, but you can't say Android is profitable.
I read it as "iOS is the new loser".
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
No. No you can't. You can say that Samsung is profitable and you can say that Samsung make a profit using Android, but you can't say Android is profitable.
Good point. "Android" doesn't make money for anyone, in and of itself. The only way it makes money for Google is if it generates ad revenue; otherwise, it's just a free operating system for whatever gadget company wants to use it.
That was my first impression, too. lol
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
It was a product with clear value to a large audience, a concept cleverly captured in a photo posted to Reddit comparing 2003 to 2013.
Judging from the devices, I'm pretty sure that should be 1993, not 2003.
--
As for the comparison to Windows and DOS, my first thought always goes back to the way that PCs took over partly because they went with hardcoded graphic sizes at first... while other OSes were trying to be totally hardware and size independent.
The hardcoded VGA/SVGA graphics looked much better at first than the resolution independent setups, even though the latter made more sense for the long haul.
iOS reminds me of that aspect of PCs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
No. No you can't. You can say that Samsung is profitable and you can say that Samsung make a profit using Android, but you can't say Android is profitable.
??? What does this even mean? People are making money with the help of Android (where "people" includes such a diverse group as Samsung with the hardware, Google with advertising, Microsoft with IP licensing, Rovio with "Angry Birds", etc, etc). Since Android is free, by definition you will never be able to say that Android per se is profitable, but it is not meant to be -- its point is to create an alternative to proprietary OSes (iOS, Windows, Symbian, BlackBerry), which it has done to the extent of dominating in unit sales at least, and making a lot of money for a lot of people (see the second sentence above) while providing a lot of people who could never afford Apple hardware with a quite nice phone/PDA/pocket computer. Even if you believe that Android is technically inferior to iOS (I have no opinion -- usability-wise for me I like some things on iOS and other things on Android, and other things still on Windows phone), I don't see how you can deny its obvious success in its mission.
Apple doesn't do cheap.
Like how Android is winning?
Heavens forbid Apple keep making lots of money. I thought the goal was market share even though that doesn't pay the bills.
Ah. Good old projections. In 2009, net books were predicted to rule the PC world. In 2006, windows mobile and blackberry were projected to dominate smart phones for the foreseeable future.
Samsung is profitable. Android is not. No one else has made money selling androids.