“Pundits are declaring mobile the new PC. The number of mobile phones far outstrips the number of desktops. Mobile phones are available to people in the developing world who never had an opportunity to buy or even use a PC. With phones becoming smarter, there will be even less need for people to own PCs. Microsoft has dominated the PC-based world ever since it drove Apple close to extinction in the mid ’90s,” Saad Fazil writes for VentureBeat. “But with Apple’s strong footing in mobile, its recent release of a larger, tablet form factor, iPad, also based on its mobile iPhone OS, and more form factors likely on the way to challenge the traditional PC, we may be in for a rematch.”
MacDailyNews Take: Welcome, Saad. (There’s a reason why Bill Gates took his marbles and went home when he did; even he could see it coming.)
Fazil continues, “Several companies realize that the future lies in mobile. Google, with its obsession about mobile advertising and its foray into the mobile OS space with Android, is a good example. And Microsoft is certainly rethinking its strategy with Windows Phone. But while these and other players develop their mobile strategies, Apple has already built a huge lead, not only with its powerful iPhone operating system, but with the vast number and variety of applications available on that OS. The jury’s still out on whether Apple’s iPad will be the huge success many expect it to be. But even so, the app development community has so much faith in Apple’s ecosystem that we’ve seen startups and bigger companies racing to join a gold rush of app development for the platform. There are more than 150,000 apps available on iPhone and a lot more to come on iPad.”
MacDailyNews Note: There are currently 185,531 apps in Apple’s App Store as of publication. Oops, make that 185,532. Uh, 185,533… You get the idea. Note also that Fazil has underreported the number of apps in Apple’s App Store by approximately the total number of apps available for distant runner up: Google Android (although his “more than” serves as an out of sorts).
Fazil continues, “Now that Apple’s gained a solid foothold in the mobile market, there’s nothing to stop it from expanding its mobile OS and mobile devices — from smartphones and tablets to other, more computing-intensive devices — until it’s once again in a face-to-face fight with Microsoft for dominance of the computing market. And if it does, this time I believe it’ll win.”
MacDailyNews Take: BINGO!
Fazil explains “how Apple could use its lead in the mobile market to redefine the PC industry, and unlike Microsoft, which has gone mobile by stripping down its Windows operating system to create Windows Mobile, will move up the market, from smartphone to PC-like device, by growing its iPhone OS to support new kinds of functionality and devices” in the full article – highly recommended despite our assorted wiseassery above – here.
PS: you guys who keep trying to explain how the iPad is some kind of computer are pathetic. It’s not. Even with a couple of cameras, a usb port, and some more useless, crippled apps it won’t be a computer.
Yet again, retarded MDN simply doesn’t even understand their own arguments.
Apple iPhone is only a fraction of the world mobile market, dominated by Nokia and phones that simply aren’t that smart.
Most people, in most developing countries can’t afford iPhones, unsubsidized or not, yet a lone data plans for networks that don’t even exist in those countries.
PC’s exist in almost all developing countries, and it’s a lot easier to update software (or continue to purchase lesser software like Windows XP) then to invest in a whole new mobile platform.
Most people in developing countries don’t have $500 to spend on a device that does so very little compared to a competent netbook that costs half the price.
MDN you are getting pathetic with your mindless, unabashed, kool-aid drinking. Get a life.
P.S. Where is your little banner showing Apple taking a dive today on stock value? You wet your pants posting gains, but similarly can’t stomach losses?
P.P.S. Microsoft has a market cap roughly 50 billion dollars more then Apple, and they haven’t released a product of interest other then Windows 7 (which sold more copies in a few months then Apple has ever sold of all OS versions combined through the history of its company). Pathetic for Apple.
P.P.P.S. Bill Gates took his 35 million dollars worth of personal marble wealth and is donating his time and resources to make this world a better place. Steve Jobs steals livers from people by jumping ahead of them on the donor list by moving to another state. Awesome.
Keep trying to ban me from posting, I find it amusing.
One wonders if ‘personal’ computing was ever out of Apple’s hands. The experience one gets from using Windows is far from ‘personal’, and the spread of such devices from the workplace to the home was largely not a choice made for ‘personal’ reasons.
You forget that Microsoft has said they will deliver Office for the Ipad. So they have, without actually admitting it captulated.
@BiteMe:
You underestimated BG’s wealth by a factor of about 1,000. That’s just about the amount you don’t understand Apple and its future.
You can’t do Photoshop, Lightwave, serious video editing work etc etc on a mobile device, sorry. Mobiles may be taking over as passive ‘consumtion of media’ devices, but if you want to create any of that media you’re gonna need something bigger.
@mike-while you were a kid using an SE i was using an SE @work replacing the functionality of $20K workstations. sometimes it depends on where you sit. back in those days, we reveled in the introduction of tektronix thermal wax printers networked with appletalk that (w/our macIIs) spewed out presentations for missile programs that are still being used today (the missiles, not the presentations). we thought SEs and II/IIci’s were a bargain and bought about 20,000 of them over 10 years. ironically, we were using MS powerpoint even then. BTW, i’m using a 20″ imac, so where along the way did the mac’s die.
back on topic: this “crown” BS is made up, past tense and irrelevant. apple has redefined the market. it is no longer a supply chain type market, but an economic system with hardware, software, aspiration, demand, value, margins, innovation, expanding and creating new markets and functionality all wound together. most people are not smart enough to imagine it much less write about it, but that’s what it is.
news tot the author of the article: there is no market to be take back. there are markets to be defined. the nice thing about defining a market like apple has been doing is you get good margins, hence the nice market cap value and a reason for people to bid the price even higher.
In personal computers, Apple led the field for 5 years and then dwindled to a luxury niche company for 20. Now they have the lead on mobiles and music, but just like with PCs, their high-cost, closed-door, propriety-centric approach leaves them prone to a value-for-money platform that offers full interoperability with the mainstream.
I’m not an expert, but it seems to me that Apple are setting themselves up to repeat 1985-2005 all over again.
@ nicwalmsley,
You’re right, you’re no expert. Apple’s mobile hardware is not high cost. Apple’s smart phones are competitively priced and when people have a choice, the majority choose iPhone. Same goes for iPod.
50% of new Mac buyers are Windows users. Apparently high end equipment and the Mac OS that just works is what Windows users really want.
I am a Mac expert and it seems to me that you don’t know WTF you’re talking about.
It’s called a typo, and like every fanboy before you, you have nothing of substance to bring to the discussion. Apple will remain a luxury niche.
It will NEVER rule in the global phone market. Sorry. I know it hurts.
Apple -$1.52 today. Boo hoo…
@ stretch,
I wish there was some way to rub your face in it when, in a couple of years, iPad has started the new era of ‘PCs’. When iPad is the most popular ‘new’ PC. When most of the people who by your so called ‘real’ computers are content creators and most content creators are buying Macs.
Alas, there is no way to do it. I’ll tell you one thing though. If you think the MBP was a minor refresh, especially the 15″ and the 17″, then you don’t know WTF you’re talking about. Only an idiot or a troll would say that. Only you know which one you are.
@ @Jaundiced,
Do you know the difference between a smart cell phone and a $20 untraceable, throw-away cell phone? Nokia makes about $1 per throw-away phone it makes. Who wants that business?
Let’s talk about profitable hardware. No one cares about loss leader throw-away phones. Soon most people will have smart phones. Smart phones are profitable. Apple sells between 1/4 and 1/3 of all smart phones. Apple makes more money on cell phone sales than Nokia does.
Who wins? The company with the throw-away phone business or the company that makes a profit?
seems the windows crowd is out in force today…
Megi… That’s an old quote from Wired Magazine, February 1996. I’d say that’s a little over the 10 years of dark ages that Jobs predicted.
Why does this quote have anything to do with 2010 or what is happening with desktop computing today?
What the trolls don’t seem to understand is that Apple doesn’t need to have big marketshare to dominate a market. It has mindshare, which is far more important for future growth.
Case in point: why does literally every smartphone device in the market today look and act like an iPhone, although the iPhone has (for now) such a “small” overall marketshare? Because other manufacturers FEAR Apple’s potential, and are trying to preempt their own fall into irrelevance. THAT is mindshare
this reminds me of the Count of Monte Cristo (quote not in the book, but the movie)
“death is too good for them; I want them to suffer as I have suffered… see their lives, and everything they love taken from them”
when the iPad was announced, I saw the revenge on two fronts:
-Windows
-Office
Steve just had to get iWork on to the iPad. If you go right at Microsoft’s two big only profitable products, you can really steal some market cap.
And that’s what this is all about… Microsoft were always thieves, and though they may have outsmarted John Sculley this is Steve Jobs we’re talking about…. And the notion of Apple having a bigger market cap than Microsoft is going to feel like the sweetest vindication after being robbed by the pirates and car salesmen all those years ago.
“I wish there was some way to rub your face in it when, in a couple of years, iPad has started the new era of ‘PCs’. “
Easy. Market Cap.
Apple 224 B
Microsoft 268 B
This is our next goal.
“Windows 7”
Is a trainwreck. XP and Vista are kicking its ass in terms of marketshare. Its adoption rate is a joke, despite what various glowing press releases and a fawning tech media rapturously shout from the hilltops. There’s a reason why Microsoft is already making noise about Windows 8.
“Bill Gates took his 35 million dollars worth of personal marble wealth and is donating his time and resources to make this world a better place.”
The Gates Foundation is a tax shelter for Bill’s many investments and a cynical ploy to lock the world into Windows.
In otherwords, it’s a sham. The humanitarian work is only a veneer to hide its actual purposes as an investment vehicle for Bill Gates and an anticompetitive tool for Microsoft. Now, said veneer does require that the Gates Foundation do some real charity work, and that is good, but it’s still a veneer nonetheless – one that is covering up some extremely unsavory things, and that is bad. So let’s not pretend the raison d’etre behind Bill’s philanthropy is to “make the world a better place”, because it sure as fuck isn’t.
“Keep trying to ban me from posting, I find it amusing.”
I’ll bet you do. “Haha, stupid MDN! Think you can ban me!? I can change my IP address at will. Haven’t you ever heard of a proxy? LOL, idiots. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make some tweets about how awesome Doritos are. MS ain’t my only client, y’know…”
@ Bite Me
Oh gosh, “AAPL stock took a nosedive today” of 0.8%.
Considering that HPQ and the Nasdaq went down 0.9%, I’d say AAPL actually went up slightly (negligibly w.r.t. normal daily fluctuations).
“Microsoft has dominated the PC-based world ever since it drove Apple close to extinction in the mid ’90s,” Saad Fazil writes…
Actually, it was that stupid-assed former sugared-water sales Bozo, John Sculley, that almost killed Apple. Douchebag.
His incompetence as a CEO is what put Apple into its dire straits back in the 90’s. The best thing Apple ever did was to rid themselves of him. Second best thing was buying NeXT (see what I did there?)
But, I understand Fazil’s point. Although there were other mitigating factors besides MS at that time, it was not the only one putting a hurt on Apple.
@Big Als MBP
Let’s go back to basics: did Apple take the lead on PCs and then lose their dominance for 20?
If yes, why will a similar thing not happen with online mobile media over the next 20? That’s a fair question, yeah?
If your answer to the above question is no, we are talking different language.
Apple is not after world domination! They just want to make smart people happy. The rest can suffer.
This guy so gets it. If you can do it starting afresh and moving up is so much more productive in so many ways than trying to strip down and minimise an already overweight and inefficient fully featured OS. Apple’s revolution is being able to do just that from years of planning and well laid out foundations. The fools didn’t see it coming when they laughed at that first iPod music player. Now who’s laughing dorks? (with apologies to zuny)
.. or again Apple could keep repeating it same mistakes, Windows dominated the PC market because it was an OPERATING SYSTEM.
Apple tied their products to only run on their own line of systems whereas Windows went for mass market and had multiple vendors moving their product, all these vendors competed with each other and pushed the quality up (to the point where current Apple’s are now essentially using PC hardware – oh yes it is)
This time in the mobile space Apple is doing it differently, it’s releasing iPhone OS on it’s own line of systems, while Google release Android OS to any vendor who wants … oh damn. Sorry ignore this post.
Big Als MBP has hit the nail squarely on the head. Consider this:
Most desktop/laptop machines in use today by the average consumer are used for media consumption. Reading email, watching movies, listening to music, etc. True?
Some desktops/laptops are used solely for content creation, whether it be photo editing, movie production, publishing, whatever. Of these “some” purely content creation machines on the market, I’d say Apple has a much higher marketshare than 8%. Might be 25-50%. Not sure.
Those majority machines that are solely for the purpose of content consumption, where Apple currently has a dismal share, will be replaced by smart mobile devices over time.
This is where Apple has the early lead. This is where the majority of the market will go in time. This is why we have briefly seen netbooks soar to popularity. They are consumption oriented laptops.
The iPad seizes that trend of consumption, but does it with such ease of use and simplicity that the device itself fades away to where there is nothing between the consumer and the content he/she consumes.
Hence the author’s assertion that this is the future of ‘computing’. The iPad will almost certainly NOT replace the 27″ screen desktop used for content creation. The iPad’s target is mass of content consumption devices that rule the computing landscape today. Apple sees this future and has delivered in spades.
Netbooks will topple, followed by casual consumption machines (laptops/desktops ONLY used for consumption), until we are left with a majority of simple content consumption devices and a smaller amount of high end content creation devices.
Seems like Apple has set themselves up quite well in these two future ruling segments of computing. Cheers to all that get it (read: Big Als MBP)