Jean-Louis Gassée: Of course, Apple isn’t doomed

15 years ago

“Apple is doing it wrong, Apple is living on borrowed time! Apple will fail again! This idea, this meme, isn’t new. For more than 30 years we’ve heard a number of versions of the ‘Apple is doomed’ requiem,” Jean-Louis Gassée writes for The Guardian.

“Then we have the ‘history repeats itself’ misconception,” Gassée writes. “While the Mac was born naked – where are the apps? – the JesusPhone came into the world (nearly) fully formed. It had, or quickly built, a full support system: apps in the App Store (no waiting for a modern day Lotus Jazz to emerge); the iPod; the Mac; the Apple Stores; and, last but not least, the iPad. (I’ll leave the newer Apple TV running iOS under the hood aside – for the moment.)”

“The notion that the iOS platform will lose to Android ‘the way Mac OS lost to Windows’ ignores history and disregards facts such as the growth of the iPhone and iPad. (Apple’s mobile share grew 115%, Q1/2010 to Q1/2011). It ignores the fact that Apple has the biggest market cap of the entire high-tech industry. In market cap terms: 1 Microsoft + 6 Adobes ≈ 1 Apple,” Gassée writes. “Still on Microsoft, Apple now has more revenue and, this last quarter, more profit than its old frenemy. And more cash, about $65B and counting.”

Much more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: As our own SteveJack explained back on on December 23, 2009:

iPhone isn’t the Mac, so stop comparing them. To draw an analogy between the Mac and iPhone platforms simply highlights… ignorance of the vast differences between the two business situations. Look at the iPod, not the Mac, to see how this will play out.

Google Android offers the same messy, inconsistent Windows PC “experience,” but without any cost savings, real or perceived. Windows only thrived back in the mid-90s because PCs (and Macs) were so expensive; the upfront cost advantage roped in a lot of people, who were, frankly, ignorant followers who did what their similarly-ignorant co-workers and friends told them to do. Microsoft still coasts along on that momentum today.

I’d call any Android device the “Poor Man’s iPhone,” but you have to spend just as much, if not more, to partake in an increasingly fragmented and inferior platform. There’s no real reason to choose Android, people settle for Android. “I’d have bought an iPhone if Verizon offered them.” Just look what’s happening in any country where iPhone is offered on multiple carriers. It’s a bloodbath.

Apple offers consistency to developers of both software and hardware. Just look at the vibrant third-party accessories market for iPhone vs. the Zune-like handful of oddball items for Android. If you make a case or a vehicle mount, does it pay to make 44 different Android accessories whose total addressable audience numbers under 1 million each, or to make one or two for what’s [well over] 100 million iPhone/iPod touch devices? As Apple’s iPhone expands onto more and more carriers, Android’s only real selling point (“I’m stuck on Verizon or some other carrier that doesn’t offer the iPhone”) evaporates.