“There’s a serial killer loose in Silicon Valley. His name? Steve Jobs. No need to buy an alarm, invest in pepper spray or deadbolt the door, however. No, Apple’s chief executive is coming for your gizmos and gadgets, your purveyors of movies and music. The latest target: your cute little point-and-shoot camera,” Brian Caulfield reports for Forbes.
“First, a body count. Jobs wiped out the portable music player business with the iPod, introduced in 2001. Then music piracy and Apple’s iTunes digital media store strangled the corner record store. In 2007, Apple went after the smart-phone market,” Caulfield reports.
“So far, Apple is ripping out big chunks of its competitors. Apple sold more than 1 million iPhone 3G S devices during its first three days of sales last month. Collins Stewart analyst Ashok Kumar estimates Apple shipped 6.8 million phones in the June quarter,” Caulfield reports. “No deaths, yet, but Nokia and Motorola are already bleeding.”
“It’s software, as always, that gives Apple an edge. Plenty of phones could surf the Web before the arrival of the iPhone. None of them, however, could do it well. Same goes for the ability to listen to music or watch movies [or snap photos or shoot and even edit video],” Caulfield reports, “Apple’s software makes doing all these things easy. In short, Apple has turned once wonky technologies into sleek consumer-friendly category killers. The only question now: What’s next after cameras?”
Full article here.
