“Most, like Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung and LG, have opted for some sort of Android-based strategy,” Faulkner writes. “Still others like Research in Motion are back at the drawing board hoping to develop a new device that will generate more sales than yawns… With the iPhone opening the doors to corporate networks, RIM is scrambling. Let’s say for the sake of argument that Research in Motion comes out with a fabulous new family of devices. They’d still likely be number-three in the battle for mindshare among consumers and software developers.”
“My gut feel [when Apple unvield the iPhone in 2007] was that it was a game-changer, and now a full three years later, its ‘competition’ is still struggling to figure out what hit them” Faulkner writes. “There’s an old saying in the technology industry that if you don’t eat your own children someone else will. In this case, someone else did because of the inability of the entrenched competitors to take risks and innovate. Their management preferred to make minor changes around the periphery and milk their cash flows. But when real change arrived, they were the proverbial deer in the headlights.”
Faulkner writes, “There once was a huge industry for companies like DEC, Data General, Apollo, Prime and Wang. They were the hot growth stocks of their time but they disappeared very quickly, just like the dinosaurs. Nokia, Research in Motion, Motorola, and others are the minicomputer companies of the current era. They just don’t know it yet — nor do their investors.”
Full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Ah, so it’s nice when the truth cuts through the FUD.
One thing is for sure: If the iPhone rumours do turn out to be true, it will crank up the heat even further in what is already a hotly competitive market, and companies like Nokia, Palm, Motorola, and Research In Motion could really start to sweat. – Mathew Ingram, The Globe and Mail, December 07, 2006
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dow C.” for the heads up.]
And by the time they do, they’ll get hit again by Apples future moves….
Such is the nature stagnation
Excellent, accurate article.
I hope Apple never stops innovating. That’s the key.
In theory only M$ has the “tools” to compete with Apple. The software, the problem here nobody has software + hardware combined. Of course Apple doesn’t offer yet a big variety of phones and the diversity of the world requires many choices.
In order to compete with Apple you need Xcode, you need to offer developers an environment in which you can grow. The iPhone is more than a phone, it’s a walkman, a phone, a wii, a GPS and much more. Which phone maker had the idea to add an accelerometer, a compass, a GPS and now a gyroscope.
iPhone hardware is way ahead of its league and the iOS 4 has no competition getting close. Google has no hardware expertise, they can’t rival Apple. Microsoft is the only one, and we saw with Zune how far behind their vision is. They only can copy and when they finally reach a close position, or what they think is close the puck is already somewhere else.
I don’t see any competition coming close to Apple within the next 10 years. It’s the time it will take to build up a serious competitor to iOS.
Probably Apple is already working on it… who else has the vision…and the cash.
“Eat your own children…”
That’s Apple’s forté.
They are still looking at what hit them already and can’t see what is again coming up to pound them into the ground of antiquity. What do these idiots thing Apple is going to be doing with a BILLION DOLLAR CLOUD COMPUTING SERVER FARM that they finished up this year?
Idiot speed bumps on the IT road to the future!
The question is how does Apple maintain the edge and not become a DEC, Data General, Apollo, Prime and Wang or for that matter a MS? SJ, as we know, is a special individual. Can anyone think of another person like him? Or is the culture of innovation now so intrenched at Apple that SJ isn’t really required? Only history will tell the real story but meanwhile I am loving all of this!
Rules of the game had changed. It is not hardware issue any more; it is a software war. It is either they have not figure that out yet, or basically can’t change their business model as it is rooted deep down in their thoughts and beliefs.
To compete they have to completelly shift their business model.
Googoid is the only true threat to Apple with their desperate move into the mobile space.
Sad to see the new M$ version of we can do too, any crap version will do.
Curtesy of Mr. Smithers the dark ages will continue.
loloontheair, Apple has the software + hardware + the innovative people. Steve Jobs make sure to thank the engineers, programer, design team, … during his KeyNote speeches. It starts with the right people who build the foundation of everything else.
If any company has a culture of innovation it’s Apple.
RIM only got popular because Palm destroyed itself in the enterprise space.
BSD/OS X is the foundation. Married to state of the art hardware design and extreme testing from one Mr. Jobs blurs the boundaries between APIs, metal and glass, and the final user experience are hard to duplicate.
DEC is replaced by Apples new BILLION DOLLAR SERVER FARM.
It’s the Software – Stupid
It’s the Hardware -Stupid
It’s the iPhone -Stupid
It’s the iPad -Stupid
It’s the Integration-Stupid
It’s the Software – Stupid
@ breeze, that’s exactly their problem. It’s not even a “phone” market anymore, it’s now a “mobile device” category. Apple has changed the very definition of the market they’re all playing in.
Even if they could launch a decent “phone” competitor (like Android, or perhaps the upcoming Windows Phone 7), this not about the phone anymore.
When the Zune came out, Apple was way past the MP3 market (“classic” iPods are now just a nice side-business).
It’s been said often enough; Apple’s only “competition” is Apple. I don’t see that changing any time soon.
Innovation is born of struggle and strife.
Apple takes its cues from a vast technological industry. Their six-o’clock perspective affords cherry picking those products with the most promise.
However, once you have changed the industry to the point where everyone is following or copying
you, who do you take your cues from?
In other words, if all the players on the ice are wearing the same uniform, because everyone wanted to play for the same team, and no one would dare challenge them, competition is dead, at which time Apple becomes something like the Harlem Globetrotters, entertaining us with transformations of their greatest hits.
Apple will be putting their greatest hits into every techno product out there, much in the same way we find cranberries encroaching into all our foodstuffs.
The day that happens, people will begin to dream of a world without Apple, because it would be a refreshing change of pace.
@Amazin1 – To help answer your question, I suggest you look at the year when Steve was ill, and Tim Cook was in charge of delivering products based on Jonathan Ive’s newest innovations (such as unibody construction). It seems to have worked out pretty well.
RIMM makes money on the back end. The servers, licenses and service costs are what make them the most money.
They make software for Win Mobile already. They should write software for the iPhone. This way they can still sell their phones to people who want a keyboard, and get iPhone users to access their services.
At least until Apple rolls out an enterprise version of Mobile Me…
I’d worry far more if Jon Ive left Apple; Steve may come up with the idea (iMac, iPod, iPhone, etc.), but it’s Ive and his team that puts those ideas into practice and sets them apart from the rest of the field. As long as Ive is there, we’ll stll have innovation. Apple wasn’t the first with an MP3 player or a phone…they just held back till they could be the best.
G4Dualie :
Change just for the sake of change?
If so, that day is still far down the road
There are new economies and industries currently being built and thriving around Apple’s products and innovations that will serve to displace and replace the economies of the fallen/falling giants…
Apples time is now the future is now.
There is no phone, except those legacy devices that connect at the end of a bunch of wires and switches, or the wireless simulations thereof.
When SJ demoed FaceTime with WiFi only connectivity the death knell for the “phone” sounded. It’s all over except for the crunching sound as the facade collapses and the cloud of dust that comes rising afterwards. Eventually the last grandparent will hold an iPhone or camera equipped iPad and say, “I want to talk to Junior or Missy”, touch their picture and start talking. Then the last rotary phone can be disconnected. And AT&T;will stop billing for TouchTone service.
There once was a huge industry for companies like DEC, Data General, Apollo, Prime and Wang. They were the hot growth stocks of their time but they disappeared very quickly, just like the dinosaurs.
Ah, nothing like revisionist history.
@lurker:
I like your vision for the future of the video phone; it’s about time, as I think it was first shown by AT&T;in about 1959! It’s time for Apple to finally make it real somewhere besides Star Trek.
@G4Dualie, Microsoft isn’t losing its dominant position because it has the dominant position. It’s losing its dominant position because it decided not to innovate and turn out crap instead.
If Apple keeps innovating and cranking out killer products, it could dominate for a very long time.
@qka: That’s not so much revisionist history, as it is an abstraction of concrete events. Read Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma.
What would be the effect on the WiFi only when president have the “KILL SWITCH” on the Internet.