“I have been speaking with various vendors of tablets lately and more then once, the topic of Apple ‘iPodding’ them has come up,” Tim Bajarin writes for Tech.pinons. “iPodding basically refers to the fact that although Apple has had the iPod on the market for over 10 years now, they still have over 70% of the MP3 portable digital music player market. This fact is giving many of the tablet vendors nightmares. Although they see this tablet market as a very large one and believe there is room for multiple tablet vendors given the potential market size and potential world wide demand, they know very well that Apple has done a great job in cornering the MP3 player market with iPods and are afraid that Apple could do the same with tablets.”
“While all of them think that they can compete with Apple when it comes to hardware, and maybe even software, what they all pretty much know is that the secret to Apple success is that they have built their hardware and software around an integrated ecosystem based on a very powerful platform,” Bajarin writes. “And it is here where their confidence level lags and the ‘iPodding’ fears raise its head. And to be honest, this should really concern them.”
Bajarin writes, “Apple is in a most unique position in which they own the hardware, software and services and have built all of these around their eco-system platform. That means that when Apple engineers start designing a product, the center of its design is the platform. For most of Apple competitors, it is the reverse; the center of their design is the device itself, and then they look for apps and services that work with their device in hopes that this combination will attract new customers. In the end, this is Apple major advantage over their competitors and they can ride this platform in all kinds of directions… We will see this same concept repeated when they eventually release anything for the TV.”
Read more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
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“they know very well that Apple has done a great job in cornering the MP3 player market with iPods and are afraid that Apple could do the same with tablets.” Could? Really?
And how many years have these companies had to build an infrastructure which would work across PC’s/Tablets/Phones/MP3 players? Sure they’ve come out with a myriad of different music services and the like, but they’ve all been half-assed, and launched to be supposed Apple device killers, then discontinued almost immediately. To catch up with Apple, whilst having good offerings is important, as important would have been to play the long game, be a consistent and long term alternative, build your service to accommodate new products. As it is, people would be stupid to jump on board any new service by any of these so called competitors because they have no idea if they’ll be around in 10 months let alone 10 years.
These companies have blown it on so many levels. It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.
If Microsoft thinks that denying Office for the iPad is a major strategic move, they better think again. I’ve installed iWork for iPad and it works in a way that has exceeded my expectations.
You don’t have to buy the whole lot, just the individual apps that you want to work on. I don’t see anything stopping the iPad juggernaut and like I said earlier, Microsoft is deluded if it thinks Office for Windows 8 tablets will make the slightest difference. It will not.
just wait till they get iCloud collaboration for iWork sometime this summer! And more functionally complete iWork for the iPad! it will get even better. 🙂
@leggo,
THAT’S what I’m hoping for as well–real collaboration built around iCloud and iWork!! What iWork.com seemed like it was destined to become but, sadly, never did. I’m looking for an iWork ’12 release this summer that includes this functionality, perhaps at the same time as the Mountain Lion official release.
Tim Cook may have his limitations, but I bet he’ll finally push Apple in the business world; after all, one of his first moves last fall was to expand Apple’s enterprise sales force. The enterprise will be a long slog with slow gains, but Apple could just BOOM in small business.
I agree. Not sure how an iPad treats a word file (does it open it in pages??). But at the least, you can open the word file in pages on your Mac and email a saved pages version to the iPad. Word,, is that a program? What does it do??
Just a thought,
en
It will go even further. The mindset that Office is “the only way to get work done” is going the way of the dodo, and users are learning that they have a number of choices for office software now. Microsoft is in danger of losing out as the most-used word processor altogether, not just on tablets and mobile devices. Excel will live on for some time with hardcore spreadsheet fans, but many home users just won’t see a reason to buy Office when they can get what they want elsewhere.
Microsoft is being stupidly stubborn. They produced Office on Intel and Apple boxes. They do make a lot of money from it.
But it does get hard justifying the $300 price when compared to the iPad set (that you can install on several devices), 3 x $10, or just say $50 to cover another program or two.
Kinda how a CEO can do as much in one year as their average employee requires 400 years to do. NOT. Greedy overpaid….
The lure and importance of Office is obviously not what it was. Not for the majority of users. So many good alternatives inluding Apple’s own. Good riddance to a bloated, antiquated and expensive standard whose cash cow status for Microsoft should start looking a bit more lean. Looking forward to the epic fail of Windows H8 tablets though I do think they will manage around 10-15 % of the market. That’s at least the right percentage of suckers out there.
I use Excel a lot. I have learned Numbers and can do all things Excel in Number !