“Dell has questioned Apple’s long-term business strategy, dismissing the iPod as a ‘fad’ and a ‘one-product wonder’ and claiming the new Mac mini won’t dent the PC market,” Andy McCue writes for Silicon.com. “In an interview with silicon.com at Dell’s Round Rock headquarters in Texas last week, CEO Kevin Rollins said the number of headlines Apple grabs does not worry him and that the company isn’t ‘in the same league’ as Dell.”
MacDailyNews Take: Of course Apple isn’t in the same league as Dell. Apple is not a commodity box assembler wholly dependent on another company to supply an operating system that strives unsuccessfully to be like a Mac. Hence Apple’s Mac platform works much more seamlessly and painlessly for their users.
“‘It’s interesting the iPod has been out for three years and it’s only this past year it’s become a raging success. Well those things that become fads rage and then they drop off. When I was growing up there was a product made by Sony called the Sony Walkman – a rage, everyone had to have one,’ [Rollins] said. ‘Well you don’t hear about the Walkman anymore. I believe that one product wonders come and go. You have to have sustainable business models, sustainable strategy,'” McCue reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Sony’s Walkmans played cassettes or CDs. Any player that played cassettes or CDs could do exactly the same things as a Sony Walkman. Apple’s iPod + iTunes cannot be replicated by others unless Apple lets them. Sony had no such advantage.
“Rollins was, not surprisingly, unimpressed with the Mac mini. ‘It might take some here and there, but Apple’s market share in the global computer business has really shrunk pretty far. Where they’ve been making success recently is not in the computer business, but in the iPod music business,’ he said. ‘So this might be an interesting new product but I’m not really believing this is going to turn the industry upside down.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Dell’s CEO sounds worried. He should be.
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