Tim Bajarin reports for PC Magazine, “I recently spoke with an executive who is a PC vendor, and he asked me a question that also happened to be an important statement on his part: “Apple is really unstoppable, isn’t it?”
“Given Apple’s increased dominance in the smartphone and MP3-player space, as well as the company’s gains in consumer and business mindshare with the Mac platform, Apple is perhaps the most influential company in the personal computer and CE market,” Bajarin writes. “And this is driving its competitors crazy.”
Bajarin writes, “One of the more startling announcements made at Apple’s recent iPod launch event was that Apple has the credit card information on over 100 million users. And the company did not come to own these digital customers by accident. One of the things people don’t realize about Apple is that its roadmap and product planning is done in 10-year increments. In fact, Apple started laying the groundwork for being a digital asset management and distribution company two to three years before the first iPod even hit the market, back in 2001. And from that point on, the company has made this the framework behind everything it has done and created to date, and it will guide Apple’s product designs and strategy for the foreseeable future.”
Bajarin writes, “Apple has another major advantage in that it owns the Mac, iPod, and iPhone OSes; Mac hardware platforms; and iPod and iPhone designs. That makes it easy for the company to create devices that take full advantage of the content it offers and manages. This reinforces Apple’s unique position, and is frustrating its competitors to no end.”
Bajarin explains, “If Apple does bring out a mini-tablet of some sort, it almost assuredly will have another winner, so long as it takes full advantage of its platform ecosystem. In fact, Apple could continue to innovate around all types of new hardware designs while integrating its asset management and distribution system into new devices: next-generation TVs, set-top boxes, and so on. It could easily continue creating products that consumers will snap up—and extend the Apple empire well beyond its current footprint.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
@Btaylor36
Apple is growing at a rate it can handle. As the article stated all of this is no accident. They control their fate, and there will not walk in MS’ shoes or follow their footsteps and let the Apple way win out over time, remember it’s not about their market share or money they just want to make great products and everything else takes care of itself. just play fair.
Most of Apple’s competitors play it safe and only control one element of the user experience. They build the hardware, provide the software, or operate the media content delivery system. If they are really “bold,” they will provide two of those three. And if you’re Microsoft, you flail around, trying to provide all three, at least in the music/media player space (and Xbox too I suppose where they are actually somewhat successful).
Apple wins because it is not even playing the same game as most of its competition. It’s easy to score goals if everyone else is mostly standing still playing baseball.
Good article.
Not very deep…. Apple understands ‘computing’. Cocoa, Cocoa Touch, OpenGL , OpenCL, Webkit, GCD, BSD. Development tools are (mostly) free. Unix allows apple computers to run most open source projects ruby, python, apache, X11 apps, the list goes on! processor not good enough lets re-compile to another chipset. This is what will kill the competition.
yes apple has had their share of “boondogles” for lack of a better word. But remember–and I think this is important–these products, were before Steve started making 10 year plans. I don’t think that Steve will have the same problem now, the “system” is in place, the OS and the architecture is there for them to follow. The “team” is also in place and what a team!! I can’t wait for the next 10 years!