“I often engage in discussions with the financial community on matters related to tech for their portfolio management. One of the things I was asked in a recent conversation intrigued me,” Ben Bajarin writes for Tech.pinions. “The question was around why Apple seems to be dominating their competition with such a limited product portfolio mix.”
“Tim Cook continues to emphasize with each investor, earnings, and public event that Apple’s laser focus is to continue striving to make the best products on the planet. Given that Apple seems nearly unstoppable, it appears their strategy is working,” Bajarin writes. “And it does make you wonder what Tim Cook’s statements about Apple continuing to focus on making the best products and Apple’s dominant position (especially with iPhone and iPad) says about other products on the market.”
Bajarin writes, “So the question thrown at me was ‘Do Apple competitors make bad products?’ In light of Apple’s continual progress forward and other companies’ struggle to keep up, this is an interesting question. The answer is simply that many Apple competitors make very good products. I happen to like quite a few of them. The problem — for competitors — is that Apple makes exceptional products and perhaps more importantly, extraordinary experiences with those products.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
If you have to ask, then the answer is YES!
Yes (ok now what is this article about? lemme see..)
I can’t think of any competitors’ products that are even remotely good. They all have severe limitations, either in hardware, software, ecosystem, or support, and are often cheaply made. Most seem to be made not to solve a problem the customer has, but to be a gimmicky thing the manufacturer thinks people will buy.
This applies in just about everything Apple makes: computers, phones, tablets, music players. Who out there has anything remotely good?
Hey now Windows Phone marketplace is up to 60,000 apps as of Jan 22nd 2012. That is close to the hundreds of thousands that Apple offers right? Besides Ballmer said the iPhone is a rounding error so obviously it cannot be that great!
Some are good, many are bad. I can’t think of any that are “insanely great”. I can think of a few Apple products that are.
“Insanely great”
+1
Oh how I miss hearing SJ saying that. Not that Tim, Jonathan and others won’t continue the path. It’s just that Steve said it so well. RIP!
It’s interesting that no one ever thinks to ask the opposite question: “Hey Mikey, does Apple make bad products?” The reason that question is never asked is obvious when you picture Mikey stammering for an answer that sounds remotely reasonable.
As for cell phones, I can’t bear the horrible software that comes on non-Apple phones. As a programmer, it drives me totally bonkers that makers would put such horrible software on their phones.
I think there are some decent gizmos out there purely from the hardware side–but it’s not about the gizmo anymore, it’s about the whole ecosystem around the gizmo.
And nobody seems to think about how crappy their UI is until they see how Apple does it.
“Do Apple competitors make bad products?”
Trick question.
As Ben Bajarin explains in the article, Apple has NO toe-to-toe competitors!
Apple aims to sell satisfying user experiences. Others sell hardware, software, or services. While competition does occur with each of these individual pieces, with different companies at different levels—only Apple has achieved the unique end-to-end vertical integration to sell satisfaction, the distillation of consumers’ desires at a fundamental psychological level. No other company has even comprehended that; hence, there are no competitors.
Apple has NO toe-to-toe competitors!
THAT is the problem at hand, NOT whether the also-ran OtherDevices are bad. Imitation may be flattery, but the imitators are flat on the arses as competitors.
If you purchase an iPhone or iPad (or a Mac) you’ve purchased more than you unbox after delivery. Congrats! You’ve just purchased an entire ecosystem.
Short answer: YES
Think of every control system and user interface from your car to home to living room to kitchen – are these all apple competitors? No. Do they suck? Yes.
“are these all apple competitors?”
not yet (lol)
😀 an Apple car? oh hot damn, that would be a pleasure to drive.
dddd is right – yes everything is Apples’ competitor – Apple seeks to improve where it can on products where Apple can contribute… integrating a scalable OS to anything where Apple see fit – of course everything is a competitor even if they have not begun to compete int the arena.
Some of them perhaps.
A product such as a phone without an upgradable OS
— is very bad.
A tablet which also has a non-upgradeable OS after its first 3 months
— is extremely bad.
A device that is plagued by viruses and lacking good software and the core which is in beta
— is again a terrible product.
A device which has stolen ip, mimics the functionality of the originator, lacking in vision and weak in an ecosystem
— definitely is a product to boycott and looked down as a piece of crap.
Tim Cook states Apples commitment to focus on making the best products – does not imply all others are bad — it merely states they are not the BEST – and IMHO it is true.
Everybody else vs is kinda like what Ringo Starr said about how frustrating writing his own songs was when Lennon & McCartney were in your band: “Shit, man, it’s Lennon and McCartney…”
Do Apple competitors make bad products?
Competitors?
What competitors?!
All I see are lame imitators!
Apple requires competitors!
Get with it tech community!
Where is ZuneTang?
I wouldn’t say “bad” per se. LAME is the word that pops up in my mind when I see stuff from the likes of Samsung, Dell, HP, RIM, Nokia, Lenovo, Acer, Asus, Sony, LG, Microsoft, Google, etc.
Anyone can get stuff done with a hodge-podge mix of products from all these competitors but the experience is simply not as elegant, seamless and fun as using the iOS/Mac ecosystem. There is simply no comparison.
It’s not that they’re making bad products, they are making products that are not as good as the best.
There are two guys walking through the jungle and a tiger starts chasing them. One of them is a good runner, so he starts running away, but the other guy is an olympic runner. You can probably work out which one gets eaten, despite being a good runner.
Being good or bad, fast or slow are both comparative terms. It depends entirely on who you are compared to.
It is the experiences that matter.
What happens when you have an issue with your Samsung Galaxy II? I was in a Samsung store the other day when someone walked in and they had a problem with their new phone. They were sent away somewhere else.
Every competing company has manufactured one or more models that were claimed to be “IPhone kilers!” the same holds true with the tablet makers. My Daughter and her boyfriend keep coming up with new phones they swear are better than the IPhone. Both have had a half dozen phones in the last year. The reason? All the non-IPhones they keep showing me replaced a defective “IPhone killer!” everyone I know with competing smart phones get no more than a few months use before failure. I have a 1st gen IPhone andIPhone 3 in my bureau drawer. If something happened to my 4S, I could pop the sim card in and either would be a perfectly functioning phone.
No actually Apple’s competitors(Samgsung,Sony,Microsoft,etc)make better pruducts the problem is that Apple and their pruducs are overated and people think that they’re better because they look pretty Iwas one of those people that thought that Apple is the most advanced but in technology advances Apple is always behind the others