tjwolf

Bell Northern Research is not any kind of descendent of Bell Labs.  They’ve got nothing to do with one another.  Bell Labs was the research division of the US’ Bell Telephone Company - aka AT&T or Ma Bell.   Bell Northern Research was the research arm of Canada’s Northern Telecom - aka Northern Electric or Bell Canada.

Apple’s core clientele are middle to upper income folks.  These folks are looking to simplify, not further clutter their living rooms.  That’s why, I think, Apple TV was never going to be a big seller.  It’s not  about it’s price - it’s about clutter and wiring.  As much as I’ve ridiculed Gene Munster for his years’ long prediction of an impending actual Apple TV set, I think that would be the only way Apple could have succeeded in the living room.  Apple should have sourced some 65”+ OLE panels from LG, added a thin & sexy frame to it, and built a user friendly UI on top.  Add some HomePod like built-in speakers & Homkit hub capability (maybe even throw in a wi-fi router a la AirPort) and Apple would have had a huge success.

I don't think Katy Huberty's logic is quite right here: she says that it makes sense for Apple to build a car because the *mobility* industry is a $10T dollars, so Apple only needs a 2% market share to have a business the size of iPhone.  But Apple wouldn't bet building a "mobility" widget, they'd be building a "car" and the car industry isn't anywhere near $10T in size - i.e. Apple would need a significantly larger share of the car market in order to get another iPhone business.

The second problem with her logic is that, by her own reckoning, Apple succeeds because it vertically integrates.  It was particularly successful with the iPhone in that regard, because its competition (Google/Android) did not.  But if it enters the car business, it'll already find a car manufacturer that's very established and very vertically integrated - Tesla.  So Apple's vertical integration, that helped it so much in the iPhone market, will just table-stakes when competing with Tesla.  And, as another poster already commented, we don't even know whether Apple can vertically integrate manufacturing, which Tesla has managed.

My personal feeling is that Apple is several years too late in trying to take on Tesla.  If it wants to overcome that company's head start, it needs to either tightly partner with or purchase outright an existing car manufacturer and then use its massive financial resources to upgrade that partner to a level of efficiency  equal or greater than what Tesla has achieved.

The article waits until the second-to-last sentence to point out that the service is only being offered to customers *in some* regions of the US.  Kinda annoying.  That region is likely only northern states as StarLink has previously said so.

The SIM-free version is still $30 more expensive :-(