“Within the past two years, every company not named Apple has basically stopped MP3 player production,” Gideon writes. “Sure, Sony and Samsung still make gym-friendly budget options. But no one is wasting time trying to manufacture iPod touch killers anymore—that category has been conceded, and now the former Apple competitors are making iPod accessories to get a piece of the pie. They’re also making tablets.”
Gideon writes, “It’s not hard to see how this will go. Virtually every functioning tablet at CES was running Android 2.2—an OS that was not designed for tablets. Tapping the screen, using apps—it all feels like a lesser experience when compared to using an iPad. As I walked around CES, the cautionary refrain of the giant from Twin Peaks played on an endless loop in my head: “It is happening…again.” Just like the MP3 player market at the middle of last decade, every company wants a piece of the pie. Just like that market, the field, over the course of a few years, will dwindle to a small group consisting of survivors, the clear winner, and some budget options that probably should just be avoided. So far, the clear winner is the iPad.”
MacDailyNews Note: So far, so good, but now Gideon hits a snag:
Gideon continues, “Tablets are the Big Thing now, but in a year or two, the dust will settle, and most of these iPad competitors will be long gone or struggling to stay in the game. Apple is surely hard at work on the Next Best Thing, but in the interest of competition, let’s hope that some other company beats Jobs and company to it for once. The cycle of introduce, imitate, struggle to survive, and retreat can’t be doing anyone—aside from Apple—much good.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This whole “Apple needs competition” meme fails the test of logic. Apple competes with Apple. Competition is only any good when it’s good. Gideon’s cycle’s first step: Apple’s introduction (throw out the imitation and the rest like the pigeons do the wannabe products) is doing everyone much good; everyone who’s smart enough to buy an iPhone, iPod, Mac, and/or iPad over inferior derivative product, that is.
Followers, by definition, do not lead.
Gideon’s “logic” is that of someone with a Dell Ditty gathering dust on their shelf. The only reason to “hope some other company beats Jobs and company to ‘The Next Big Thing'” is because you dislike Apple and/or Steve Jobs.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jim – TIV” for the heads up.]