“The biggest benefit of owning the hardware and OS-level software isn’t performance,” Zentech writes for Seeking Alpha. “It is true that optimizing the two to seamlessly fit together performs more with less, but competitors can simply load their phones up with more advanced hardware to counter this.”
MacDailyNews Take: You know, like they did when Apple’s iPhone and iPad went 64-bit. (smirk)
We won’t even get into the fact that jamming overkill processors into pretend iPhones causes Android phones to require more battery (thicker, heavier) or shackle the user with poor battery life. The advantage of owning the whole widget cannot be countered by throwing “more advanced hardware” at the issue. Overkilling on processors comes with battery life or weight/thickness costs. As does stupidly trying out-spec Apple on displays when nobody is complaining about Apple’s Retina displays. So-called competitors cannot match Apple because only Apple can offer OSes tailored to custom hardware and vice versa.
“Rather, the greatest advantage that Apple gets from being able to own the software and hardware is that it greatly strengthens the company’s ability to set the technological/design standards that it deems best,” Zentech writes. “This is a critical form of soft power for Apple, which lets the company make the best products it can, while also making sure that other third-party devices and services will support its products.”
Zentech writes, “After all, Apple was the one to officially establish how a GUI would work, with Microsoft copying it soon afterwards.”
MacDailyNews Take: “Soon.” As in: 8+ years later.
More recently speaking, there’s the USB C standard that Apple is likely to have created and is pushing for with its latest Macbook. You can see that other companies are already starting to adjust to using the USB C,” Zentech writes. “However, the absolute best example of Apple’s standards-setting power at work would be with the smartphone. All popular smartphones today have the same basic look of the original iPhone… Apple’s ability to influence and create standards will be the key to reducing its exposure to the iPhone and provide a major upside catalyst, by allowing it to take control of new markets. Two of the biggest markets I see Apple taking advantage of in the near-to-mid term future are the Internet of Things (IoT) market and the Virtual/Augmented Reality (VR/AR) market.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple leads. The rest follow at a great distance. As usual.
Cellphones before and after Apple’s iPhone:
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bill” for the heads up.]