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Will Apple repeat the same mistakes from is past?
- Thread starter Almy
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Unfortuantely for your argument, they have not plateaued in the PC Market.
It should also be pointed out that the period Apple did plateau (and in fact, very nearly didn't survive) was because Jobs was out of the picture, and they were trying to diversify with a more "open" software model, licensing the OS to other manufacturers. That very nearly killed them. They didn't recover until the strategy was reversed.
The irony of this statement is that you can pretty much run any software you choose on a Mac. OS X, Windows, Linux... it all works.
I think we need some clarification on the question. What exactly was the mistake that Apple made? Plateauing doesn't necessarily mean that they're making a mistake. True, they control a very small percentage of the PC market, but they're printing money like nobody's business. Companies' goals are very simple - to generate profits. Some do it through high volume and small margins, others do it through large margins and small volume. (Some lucky bastards get to play in both, but Apple sits somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, where they have healthy volume and margins.) Apple doesn't and probably won't ever own a majority percentage of the PC market. But I don't necessarily think they need to. That war is over, Microsoft won. However, Apple can still exist just fine with their 5% (or whatever it is) global market share and still make a healthy profit. I'm sure they'd prefer MS's FY2009 net income of $14.6Bn over their own $5.7Bn but are you really going to complain about $5.7Bn????
When it comes to PCs, Apple made the early mistake of having a closed platform when the market was moving towards interoperability. Jobs (at the time) didn't have the vision or foresight to imagine the emergence of a vast network of applications, systems, networks, etc. all working together across multiple types of machines. The idea of tying hardware to software wasn't the real issue. The real problem was interoperability. If they had maintained their hardware-software link, but had also allowed their machines to play nice with PCs outside of their ecosystem, then Apple wouldn't have had the near-death experience they did.
Which brings me to the iPhone. Will Apple make the same mistake? Yes and no. The interoperability issue is fairly moot when it comes to smartphones, particularly because the majority of uses of phones are platform independent (email, voicemail, phone calls, etc.) or are cloud (cringe) based. And if it's not cloud based now, it will certainly be later. This means that users can buy an iPhone and not worry about it not working with other people's cellphones (carriers are another issue). The "mistake" will come from limited variety.
It's anybody's guess as to what platform prevails. Despite having waited in line for 3 hours for my original iPhone and my subsequent ownership of 2 other iPhones, my vote goes to Android. My reasoning is simply that Apple takes somewhat of a "one-size-fits-all" approach with the iPhone. Yes, they offer the option of different apps, but you can't argue with the fact that the Android route provides infinitely more customization options, both in hardware and in software. You simply cannot release a single product that appeals to all customers. It's just not going to happen. Which is why I predict that Android will win the market share game. That's not to say that the iPhone will disappear - far from it. Android "prevailing" simply means to me that the platform will exist on the majority of cellphones (smart + dumb) in the market. The fact that Android prevails will probably mean very little to Apple's bottom line. They're not in the business of dominating the mobile market. They're in the business of making money. They can make plenty of it by simple owning 5% of the worldwide cellphone market, which is a percentage I think they can easily achieve.
=|
But how would this be better for Apple? Your whole premise is that Apple is making a mistake that will hurt their future profitability. Do you honestly think that licensing iPhone OS to other manufacturers would be better for them in the long run? They are a hardware manufacturer, and their OS and the App Store are their major selling points. How would opening those up to other manufacturers improve their bottom line? They make $400 on every iPhone they sell; do you think that they're going to get anything approaching that from and iPhone clone?
You might prefer to be able to get a phone made by LG that ran iPhoneOS. That doesn't mean that it's a mistake for Apple not to make that possible for you.
Depends on what you mean by "won". Apple's personal computing sector is currently more profitable than the vast majority of big company sectors primarily in the Linux or Windows space (and the U.S. Justice dept. thinks that, for at least one company, some of that profit was gained illegally).
Choice sounds good for the consumer, till companies compete till they have insufficient profit to spend on R&D, and thus produce less interesting choices the next technology round. Lack of choice in a highly desirable product niche can lead to enough profit to keep a company innovating in R&D and creating even more desirable products for the future.
YMMV.