“Barclays Capital’s Ben Reitzes late yesterday published a note making the case that ‘iCloud,’ Apple‘s hosted data service for its computers and iOS-based devices, is the biggest thing for the company since the introduction of iTunes,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s.
Ray reports, “Reitzes, who has an Overweight rating on Apple shares and a $555 price target, writes that ‘a truly reliable cloud service that frees customers from wires should foster more customer loyalty and convenience, in our view,’ and that CEO Tim Cook ‘gets it’ when he says iCloud is ‘profound.'”
Read more in the full article here.
I thought an analyst previously said that Siri was the biggest thing since something from the past?
(Seriously, why analysts are so random?)
In all sanity, why analysts just can not say that both Siri and iCloud are profound changes? Is this because analysts and sanity are two things that just do not go together?
more articles more clicks.
Damn internet…. oh, nevermind.
Yep. We have become spoon fed information consumers.
1. Few will take the time to read long, comprehensive reports;
2. These guys need to look productive so have to generate single topic reports;
3. Clicks, baby, clicks!
Sparky!
I’m relieved to hear that Tim Cook “gets it”.
He’s making reference to how iTunes developed into a deep and wide moat — from a store for music tracks to a core ingrediant of an ecosystem that few (ok, one — Amazon) can approach.
iPhone and iPad are equally “biggest thing” for AAPL, but in different ways.
Will this give AAPL two deep moats? Who could attempt to match them? I would think a merger of GOOG+AMZN or MSFT+AMZN would be the only way for someone out there to mount a challenge (or MSFT+NOK+AMZN).
” I would think a merger of GOOG AMZN or MSFT AMZN would be the only way for someone out there to mount a challenge (or MSFT NOK AMZN).”
That is hilarious!!
And absolutely stupid
actually, y had an idea, you’re the one with the stupid comment
ad hominen attacks is the best you can do?
the discussion around here has taken a few steps down of late. maybe it’s time to police the trolls more (Dediu’s zero tolerance policy seems to work well)
I still remember how blown away I was the first time I tried SoundJam. It was the heart of the original iTunes. So happy that Apple hired the fellow who created it. Hard to believe this has all happened in around 12 years. Quite a time!
I still don’t get why iCloud is better than MobileMe. It does many of the same things, adds a couple more, but has less functionality in key areas (e.g. no Keychain Syncing). Sure, it’s free to start with, but you end up paying if you want to store more than 5Gb, which most people will.
One thing I found out (via a friend new to the Mac fold) was how easy it is to lose ALL your contacts.
If you don’t have your Address Book backed up (same with iCal), you run the risk of deleting stuff with iCloud, and then it is gone. Whereas with MobileMe, you could still reset your sync (unless you had sync set to automatic).
He learned two very aggravating lessons the hard way.
Back up locally, and get an external for Time Machine.
Apple customers are the among the most loyal in the world. When Steve Jobs returned, Apple built its return to profitability on the loyalty of its remaining customers, who valued the Mac user experience over Windows. In a way, the Mac user experience was a unique “service” that helped maintain loyalty.
The next key service was iTunes and the iTunes Store, to expand Apple’s customer base beyond the “cult” of Mac users. The way it was tied to using iPods, it was unique and helped maintain loyalty; after building and organizing a library of songs in iTunes, customers were not going to abandon it (and their iPods) unless something really superior came along from a competitor. That obviously never happened because the competition mostly copied what Apple had already accomplished.
The next key service was the (iOS) App Store. In this case, you could say that Apple was trying to reproduce a key advantage the Windows platform had over Mac OS, back in the “bad old days” (1990s). Customers did not want to abandon an investment in applications to move to a different platform. For Windows, it was more “momentum,” less “loyalty.” But they might consider a “switch” if the competing platform was markedly superior (like with the more recent steady flow of “switchers” to Mac). But once again, it’s not going to happen very much with existing iOS users moving to Android because the competition is mostly interested in copying what Apple as already accomplished.
Now, iCloud is the next key service. It’s a system that integrates using Apple’s computing hardware products and services. iCloud it not something that is “front and center.” Macs, iPhones, iPads, iTunes… those things are more customer-facing and visible. Instead, iCloud mostly works in the background to make the overall Apple customer experience better; iCloud integrates everything Apple does (hardware, software, services). So, some people may say iCloud is not a “big deal” because it does not call attention itself. But it IS, precisely because it makes using Apple’s products and services more seamless, effortless, and convenient. It will help maintain customer loyalty in a “quiet” way.
Depth Charge BloodBATH!! down here?
I hardly think iCloud is that important. I am far less impressed so far about what iCloud can do. While MobileMe SUCKED royally because Apple simply could not operate the service, the rare times it worked were wonderful.
iCloud? meh…
Did i miss something? I had very few problems with Mobile Me. When my son complained about Mobile Me being down, it was fine for me. (Perhaps the problems were due to the carrier?)
Aside from a few features that i wish it had, I could not complain. I think some folks are just resistant to change.
Ah, reliability, that’s the thing.
And availability too – not much good away from 3G or wifi.
The ONE RING to RULE THEM ALL!!!
omg Tim Cook is SAURAN!!