Apple’s “new Siri ‘intelligent assistant’ melds computing into everyday life in a remarkably novel — and useful — way,” Stephen Wunker writes for Forbes. “A dozen years ago, we in the PDA business (in a former life, I led the smartphone program at Britain’s Psion PLC) heard consumers ask for voice activated organizers, but we never imagined something so far-reaching, intuitive, and…fun. This looks like yet another mega-hit for Apple.”
“Yet while we pop the champagne and queue to use the service, pause to think a moment about Apple’s strategy. The company has minted money through marrying device and interface in a way that stand-alone hardware and software companies never did. The Mac, iPod, and iPhone all succeeded through integrating radical hardware and software innovations to stand out from crowded markets,” Wunker writes. “With today’s announcement, we are seeing a shift. The hardware unveiled in the iPhone 4S is more advanced than in the previous generation, to be sure, but it is hardly exciting. Apple now seems to be betting on the software to drive the sales. With Siri, iCloud, and innumerable less prominent systems, the company is ingraining its systems into users’ lives in an unprecedented way.”
Wunker writes, “What would really make Apple’s market share explode would be to make Siri, iCloud, and other offerings easily available on any handset.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Market share is virtually meaningless when you dominate in profit share. Apple didn’t license Mac OS X to PC assemblers like Dell, they reserved it for Macs, the most profitable personal computers ever made, and, while they make make some services available to lesser platforms (see iTunes, iTunes Store, QuickTime), it’s quite a stretch to see them give away the company jewels in order launch some quixotic quest to make their “market share explode.” How many PCs does Dell have to sell for every Mac sold just to match Apple’s personal computer profits? Nine? Ten? More? Apple took two-thirds of the available mobile phone profits in Q211. Two-thirds! Profit share trumps market share every damn time.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
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