“As Apple and Google’s businesses converge, Apple’s ability to create different experiences for the mobile user is standing out,” Darcy Travlos writes for Forbes. “Last week, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt received a lot of press as he stepped down from the board of Apple because it highlighted to the investor community that the two companies’ businesses were converging. This is true, on the surface, as both now have operating systems for smart phones and computers. However, there is one very stark difference in their strategies–Apple has created a different experience for mobile users while, to date, Google has not.”
Travlos writes, “Apple’s iPhone applications deliver services that users want. Users ‘opt-in’ by downloading applications on their iPhones that they want, and services are delivered by tapping an icon on their iPhone screen. This is a dramatic contrast, particularly on a mobile device, to searching for information or services. Think about it: Using an iPhone app, one can touch an application like OpenTable and make a dinner reservation. The alternative in a mobile environment is to go to your Internet browser on your phone, ‘Google’ restaurants in your area, scroll down (if you can even read the microscopic text) and then call to make a reservation. Search is cumbersome on a mobile device. Delivery of desired information will change user behavior and expectations.”
“Therefore, search is becoming a mature business because its future is tied to the desktop or laptop markets. Search is too inconvenient on a mobile device, if users have an alternative to just tap an application. And, today, the desktop and laptop markets are tied to the business cycle and some low-priced growth in emerging markets. It is no longer the secular growth opportunity of the 1980s and 1990s,” Travlos writes. “But mobility is.”
Travlos writes, “While Apple is not all about the iPhone, currently the iPhone is ramping up revenues and driving profitability, with the significant added benefit of the “halo effect”–bringing the Apple footprint beyond the installed Mac user base, and driving greater adoption of the Mac computers. The iPhone is driving a secular growth trend toward adoption of mobile devices and delivery of services, and changing how users receive information. At the end of the day, at least this day, Apple and Google appear to have based their futures on different strategies, and Apple is pulling ahead.”
Read more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
And yet Google still wins regardless of whether you buy an iPhone or an Android phone. Google wants to sell you ads not phones. Currently the only search choice built into Mobile Safari is Google. You use the browser Google gets paid. Google doesn’t want to be MS and sell software. Neither does it want to be Apple and sell hardware. The iPhone is a win for Google where as Android is a loss for Apple.
I kind of think Google is looking pretty good too.
First to post. Feels good. Finally somebody gets it. Darcy probably has a Mac and an iPhone.
Ok second to post. You can choose Yahoo as your search engine on the iPhone, but who would.
Whatever. I just sent the jerk in marketing who insists on using MAC a summary report from Microsoft Access and he says he can’t open it. All I can say is MAC and Google aren’t going to help him with that one. IT has been on the phone with him for the past 45 minutes. Stupid MAC losers.
Your potential. Our passion.™
Apple is way ahead of Google already.
Apple is laser focused on what it wants to do and were it is going.
Google jumps around and has no real focus (other then Search which that have not added anything new too in years), like an ADD 6 year old (no offense to all the ADD 6 year olds whom most likely have longer attention spans then Google does.).
Then there is Microsoft who is like a lumber giant whom as a Monkey Brain that died from oxygen depravation an eon ago. So all it can do in copy the work of the smarter brighter kid in the class and hope that the work was copied well enough that they get a D in the class and squeak by. Zune was an F, Windows Mobile was an F, Vista was an F, XP was a C, Windows 7 is looking at a D, Bing is a D, Xbox is a B, Zune HD will be an F (as too many Zune Resellers have dropped selling the Zune and without Apps it’s just a Zune, iPod want to be), and the Microsoft retail stores will be an D.
If you graded Apple in the same manner Apple Stores A, Mac OS X A, Apples Computer Hardware B (because they need a Mini Pro Desktop system), iPods A, iPhone A (So AT&T;is a C but, it’s about the phone not the carrier), iTunes A, iTunes Store A, Apple TV B (needs faster CPU, More drive space and so marketing), Air Port (Extreme, Express & Time Machine) A, and Apple other software (iLife, iWork, Logic & Final Cut) A
Isn’t it Apple who gets paid when someone accesses Google from Safari? It’s Google’s job to drive users to its pages for ad revenue. I believe it pays Apple to be the default search engine in Safari.
Apple will be a winner as long as they continue to expand their means of being a gateway (hardware) to the web and search.
They are still very different businsses. However, I do expect Apple to grow more towards services and cloud computing, something Google is already well positioned for. Why google is messing with the mobile phone market I don’t know; I don’t think android is going to prove to be anything serious.
Nonsense. Maybe Travlos forgot Maps App.
@Dallas,
Settings > Safari > Search Engine
This is news how? If the title of this article had been “why Google’s future is brighter than Apple’s” we would have been subjected to a barrage of name calling, with the comments of “these morons” being calendered for future reference. Instead, we get a pithy little “highly recommended”. Whoopee, some wrote something pro Apple, so MDN doesn’t have to spew poison about the poor unfortunate who did it.
The reality of this is that probably Apple AND Google will both succeed. And guess what? That’s great! They are both fine companies. But that doesn’t help the hit whores at MDN, so they stay low profile, and keep their powder dry for the next non sycophantically pro Apple article, so that they can jump all over it.
Get a life people. There is more to life than crawling up Steve Jobs’s butt. Just for once, post something mildly neutral, maybe even mildly negative, about Apple and say “they’ve got a point”. I dare you. But you won’t, because that’s not the way hit whores behave.
The key difference between them is that Apple is extremely focused and disciplined with adhering to a product development process that takes the marketplace and monetization into account. Apple innovates within that framework, even to the extent of envisioning and creating entirely new markets around the product.
The iMac, OS-X, the iPod, the Apple Stores, the iTunes Music Store, the iPhone, and the App Store are all fruits of this process. It’s amazing to think it’s all happened in barely over a decade since Steve’s return in 1997. Clearly, Apple has moved far beyond the “one trick pony” stage.
Google, on the other hand, seems to innovate from the hip, without prior regard to the marketability of a given gadget. While they have a robust prolific “skunkworks”, they do not have the displine or processes in place to monetize the efforts. The search engine is the obvious exception, which has funded the rule.
At this point, Google is one of the most successful “one-trick-ponies” ever. There will come a day, however, when one trick won’t be enough.
I think some people need a lesson on ‘One-Trick-Ponies’.
Wal-Mart is a one-trick-pony. They sell crap retail. That’s it. They sell crap. Now that one-trick covers an awful lot of space. They sell food, clothes, electronics, etc. Same with Google. Yes, they sell Ads. But their ads are in their Maps, Search, Earth, Mail, and a variety of other places. They also collect data. They collect a lot of data. They use this data to more accurately target ads to you so you are more likely to be interested in what the ad is pushing. This data makes their ad service far more valuable than news papers or television. It’s the sniper equivalent of trying to kill a person with a shotgun versus a rifle. The more data they have on you, the better they can serve you ads. Which is actually good for the consumer as much as the advertiser, in that the consumer is not sprayed with unnecessary advertisements they aren’t interested in anyways. Their position is very valuable. This is why Google gives their software away for free. MS charges for their software because that is how MS earns revenue. Google only cares that you will always have access to their services so that they can serve you ads and collect more data. They don’t care if you use an iPhone, Pre, WinMo, or Android just so long as when you use it you are clicking their ads.
This is where their profit sharing with Apple, Mozilla, and others comes in. Google works out deals with companies, that if they make Google the preferred search engine, then Google will share the ad revenue.
As I said before, Google wins. (And yes, you can change the search engine, though I didn’t know that and I doubt very many people do either. )
merge, merge, merge!
@Ed
If the regulators HAD acted to whip Valuejet into shape before their crash, you and the other free-marketeers would have howled that the government was restricting valuable efficiencies that make markets competitive. That’s what always happens, but the point is to intervene BEFORE catastrophe.
Grover Norquist and others have been working the following plan for twenty years:
Step 1) Do whatever you can to cripple an Agency A’s functioning, whether that’s restricting their scope or authority, or just cutting funding.
Step 2) Express outrage that Agency A does such a crappy job now that it’s been denied the resources to do a good job.
Step 3) Cut Agency A’s funding, since such an ineffective operation doesn’t deserve the tax payer’s money.
Step 4) Repeat until Agency A truly is as pitiful as your iedology requires. Eventually maybe you can argue for it’s abolishment.
Only step 1 is difficult- after that it snowballs naturally.
The radical right also loves to bring up any failures in government systems, as if imperfection = total irrelevance. It’s an obvious fallacy that even a Republican should be able to spot: I’m mostly productive and add a great deal of value to my company, but sometimes I do effaround and respond to dense posts on MDN. I suppose that because I’m not 100% effective 100% of the time, I might as well just put my feet up and not even try to get work done. Similarly, why bother to use a condom, since they fail 3% of the time!
How many plane crashes do you think have been avoided by regulation? For that matter, how many poisonous products? How many epidemics? Work place deaths? How much worse a financial crash could we have suffered without regulation and intervention? For that last one, we have a case study:1929. Oh, yeah, we have case studies for all the others, too, all from before regulation existed: medicines that were worthless or worse (heroin and cocaine were common ingredients), child labor, flu pandemic of 1912, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, etc, etc, etc.
Republicans like to see their “Free Market” ideas as radically new thinking, but they’re not. They’re old. We tried them already, and when they had killed, injured, sickened, and degraded enough people, we decided to abandon them in favor of reason and humanity.
“Free Market” is a ridiculous fallacy in itself: markets are created by agreeing on rules by which to trade. There is no capitalism without those rules. So now the question is only how will the rules work and what’s their aim?
Sorry- I pasted the preceding post to the wrong page!
@ Nathan
Don’t worry. It was a valuable post!
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Sheez, that Google Chinese Translation thing is Great
Wish they’d make one for Tech Writer Financial Babblespeak
Was trying to figure out what Religion had to do with all this …
“secular growth”
C’mon, Apple (w/Steve) been nothing BUT “secular growth” from Day One
Isn’t that how ALL Business should be ?
Government or Investments or Anything, yes ?
Humm, maybe this IS a “Religion” thing …
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Now, only Dallas and random AAPL fan seem to catch this in the Big Picture™
Kinda surprised nobody else seemed to see it, or least say it …
Hardware – Google ain’t got none
Google + any/all them other Folks out there – 1/2 got Hardware – Other 1/2 got Software
And each of them suck so bad – they might add up to 3/4
Apple got the Whole iThing – and adds up to about 2 1/2
If rest of you can’t keep up, sorry, we ain’t slowing down …
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And Zuney … don’t “blame” us for your dumb ass database algorithm you’ve spent 20 years screwing up and digging into such a deep hole that even your own systems have trouble working with it, much less Apple and OSX.
And read the last line from above …
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BC