Apple versus the rest of the world:
Record quarterly revenues of $28.57 posted at the end of its fiscal Q3.
Cash reserves greater than the yearly earnings of 128 countries.
A market value greater than that of Microsoft and Intel combined.
Producer of 75 percent of the tablets sold in 2010, and the likely market leader until 2015.
Can anyone stop Apple now?
Now that I’ve piqued your interest, I’m going to take the tension out of the writer-reader rope by saying that my answer to the question posed above is: Yes – somebody can stop Apple. But it might not be the Google you expect.
Google’s mobile platform Android has been making headlines recently thanks to a slew of statistical analysis, which show it will soon have many more users than Apple’s iOS. That’s true (and kind of obvious) because it has an open field amongst users of mid-market phones to whom it is consistently bringing an “almost-Apple” experience. But what other evidence is there that Google will be able to mount a serious challenge to their OEM foe? Erm…let’s hold that thought for a moment and turn, instead, to the case for the prosecution.
The Android user interface is pretty rubbish, despite the amount of money and expertise poured into its development (it was arguably better on the Sidekick, whose team came to Google to mastermind Android), and the patent waters around the code underpinning most of the OS are becoming increasingly murky.
In addition, Google’s advertising model rides—rather than rocks—the market. In terms of business development, Google spreads its cash around, spending on anything and everything (rather than concentrating its resources, as Apple tends to do) with the result that almost all of their recent product releases have had a distinctly hobby-ish feel to them. No one’s denying that Google can continue to be wildly successful with its existing business, but that may be exactly the problem – at the moment the company is just a little too well-fed (read: bulky) to take on the lean and powerful Apple. Inc.
What about Microsoft? The jury’s still out as regards their mobile OS, Windows Phone 7. It’s excellently engineered, but initial take-up figures are low and the boost those numbers will receive from the Nokia partnership will probably come too late to save the situation within the current generation of operating systems and mobile device users. Away from phones, the company’s software business is already in long-term decline. (Although, like IBM’s mainframe software business it’s still very much alive and will take a long time to die.)
However—and it’s a big however—the massive community and technology assets Microsoft’s built up around the Xbox give it a major lead in a field which Apple hasn’t yet entered, and can’t enter for the foreseeable future. If Microsoft can leverage that community and those assets, they’ll earn themselves at least a couple more rounds in the ring with Apple.
And my final contender? Amazon (if they move now, and quickly). The Kindle has done extremely well – its (virtual) leaves having stolen the consumer sunlight and strangled the growth of the iBook store, whose success would have ensured the total dominance of the iPad. (Incidentally, Google’s antiquary bookstore of 19th century curios is not much of a threat – if there’s demand for the content, it quickly finds its way onto Amazon.)
It’s a leap, but I think the release of a new, more expensive, iteration of the Kindle, capable of running apps (which Amazon is now selling), and audio and video content, would certainly sustain (and likely boost) sales of the device, taking a chunk out of Apple in the process. Think about it: every moment that goes by that Apple isn’t “killing” Amazon, the latter’s customers are picking up more and more content, and locking themselves further into the Amazon store by virtue of their non-portable libraries. It’s not difficult to envisage a situation in which Amazon could start undercutting Apple on tablets and do it extremely successfully, at least until we all start using The Cloud for everything. (When this happens the cost of producing tablets will fall to almost nothing—as they will have many fewer components—making it almost impossible for anyone to undercut Apple, especially with the economic advantages they already have in hand.)
If you read the technology news, you’ll know that the latest rumors put the release of an Amazon tablet back to October. But these rumors relate to an Android-based tablet, which as you’ll probably have guessed from what I’ve written above, isn’t something I view as a game-changer. However, the same rumor mill has also produced the following flour: “The company is working on another (tablet) model, of its own design, that could be released next year.” Sounds a lot more like what I’ve been envisaging here.
Apple’s a kind of pulse, rather than steady-state company. To be successful it has to turn things upside down. In between those turning- things-upside-down events, it consolidates, but doesn’t disrupt. I would suggest that it’s been in consolidation for some time now. The iPad2 spec was underwhelming (if still wildly successful with consumers), its recent updates to iOS and Mac OS were relatively minor, and the iCloud announcement was effectively no more than a long term fix and shoring up of its existing cloud strategy. Of course, this period of consolidation won’t last for ever. Right now Apple still has serious challengers, but unless those challengers move fast, that may not be the case in three years’ time.
Tags: Amazon, Andriod, Apple, Google, Intermittent Signal, Mark Watson
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