It wouldn’t surprise me if it was a larger percentage of my discretionary income than Apple gives.
You are totally right. I’m going to go Samsung. They don’t make their products in Foxconn, right? Oh wait. They don’t have numerous outgoing patent lawsuits right? Oh wait.
Also charity work is not the point of a business. If an individual (say Apple’s CEO) wanted to do charity work, hey, that’s awesome. But that’s not what the corporation is for.
As for their hoarding, why does it matter? How do you know they aren’t just saving to buy some spectrum?
Apple’s track record in this regard is pretty standard for a big corporation. But that’s kind of the point Bluto was trying to make, I think.
Apple is sometimes regarded by folks as some kind of wonderful hippy corporation, somehow separated from the evil corporations that those same people profess to hate.
Not really applicable to a discussion about the technology though.
I think you’re confusing hippy with hip. Nevertheless, Apple as a corporation is no more hip than Exxon Mobile… they just produce good products for an industry that is considered cool, they have a really good marketing department, and they tend not to go around ripping off other companies’ designs.
They do, however, have zero compulsion about butting into existing IP space and taking over nascent markets (hello iPod).
I think Apple is going to face some serious antitrust lawsuits in the coming years.
It was batshit interpretations like this that let me get an amazing overnight return when QCOM posted earnings shortly after Apple last quarter. So… thanks! ;)
Last night was another one.
For what?
You missed the lessons of history, Timex. Completely, and totally. I guess you didn’t notice it, but Apple makes more money selling PCs than anyone else in the industry. Computing, like mobile, is a business – and Apple won. And the biggest competitive threat to that business is (drum roll please) Apple themselves.
Good question. It’s just a feeling I have. Maybe for anti-competitive practices in the mobile arena or related to software tools for developing for the iOS ecosystem.
This is a longer discussion, but you guys are being much too simplistic (and dominant they aren’t, not in any meaningful sense of the smartphone space).
The smartphone market is growingly insanely, and that will continue at a huge clip until the feature-phones are mostly gone – after which it’ll grow at the rate of the industry overall (which is still a big growth number). While this continues, market share is an interesting number, but it masks things like overall growth, share of market segments, etc. Like with PCs, the consumers who spend the most (buying more expensive models, spending more on apps) have an outsized influence on the market as a whole. And also like PCs, Apple is utterly dominant at the high end.
So… yeah. Lots of commenting going on, but not much of it hits the mark in terms of relevant discussion.
The Microsoft antitrust case was brought about because it used its market dominance in one area (desktop operating systems) to obtain market dominance in another area (web browsers).
I’m not saying it will or even should happen, but one could make a similar claim that Apple used its market dominance in one area (mp3 players) to obtain market dominance in another area (online music stores). AFAIK, music purchased from the iTunes Store will only work on Apple products, not competing hardware devices or software media players, locking consumers into the Apple ecosystem.
That’s absolutely ridiculous.
You can say they make more money (although that’s was certainly not the case throughtout Apple’s rough period when they didn’t have Jobs, or even when they did at times), but saying they “won” is absurd.
The Windows/PC combo was the dominant force that shaped computing throughout the 80’s and 90’s, and continues to do so today. Even with the recent gains they’ve made in this regard, they’re still only at 12%. Go back to 2000, and you’re talking a fairly trivial percentage of the desktop market (maybe 2%? Less?). In 1990, PC’s had 80% of the desktop market. By 2000, they had 97%.
Apple’s going gangbusters now, but I think your recollections of the (fairly recent) past are overlooking some major things. Microsoft shaped the face of computing, especially during the emergence of the internet. Apple was a footnote at that time. And largely because Microsoft was far more keen on freeing up third party developers. And so they got WAY more software, so way more people used windows machines, and the cycle repeated… driving Apple almost entirely out of the market.
Hell, when iOS first came out, Jobs was apparently against the idea of third party iOS apps at all… which would have, obviously, destroyed the platform. Luckily he changed his mind.
The idea that somehow Apple “won” the PC/Mac war though? Man, that’s just crazy talk. Maybe if you ignore a few decades and just focus on last year. And even so, they still only have 12% of the desktop market.
Err. for real? They donated 650k during a quarter they made $43 Billion (and that only after their employees ponied up an equal amount), and that’s your argument?
No, my argument is that it doesn’t matter.
It’s a business, Timex. It’s not a charity. Obviously Microsoft won the GUI market-share war (utterly, from 1995 onward, and it still resoundingly leads today 17 years later), while Apple lost many, many battles along the way, almost going out of business themselves, but ultimately the model Apple ended up with has proven to be a much better business than the one the PC industry followed.
The basic model of the PC industry resulted (perhaps inevitably) in a race to the bottom of profitability. The big players have all either bailed from the market entirely, or are but shadows of their former selves. Meanwhile, Apple stopped focusing on market share, and started focusing on building a sustainable, profitable business. The result: Apple could buy every PC maker on the planet with cash on hand, and still have billions left over.
Let me repeat that: Apple could buy all of them. With cash. Their cash on hand is now about half of Microsoft’s total market cap. So from a business standpoint, yes – they won. If you don’t get that… you don’t get that.
The point being, anyone attempting to draw correlations with the PC industry in an argument of closed vs open as it applies to the mobile space should pay closer attention to how that turned out, for everyone involved. Let alone how being a closed system is what let them take on the incumbents in the phone industry to begin with.
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For at least the last two years or so the iTunes store has served up bog standard unprotected AAC music files which are playable on a large range of hardware. The Apple specific piece of iTunes music files used to be the Fairply DRM, but that is gone.
You can also trivially convert these files to bog standard mp3 if you want. iTunes does it, I assume other software must too.
I’m going to withhold comment on the constant analogies being drawn between desktop PCs and cell phones even though the markets and circumstances are completely different.
Edit: Oh yeah, iTunes Plus (drm-free) rolled out FIVE years ago. Yet everyone still thinks it’s all Apple specific AAC. Oh well.
It’s a business, Timex. It’s not a charity. Obviously Microsoft won the GUI market-share war (utterly, from 1995 onward, and it still resoundingly leads today 17 years later), while Apple lost many, many battles along the way, almost going out of business themselves, but ultimately the model they ended up with has proven to be a much better business than what the one the PC industry followed.
I understand that, currently, Apple’s business is doing great… But it wasn’t always so. As you point out, they almost went out of business, and the PC dominated the industry (and also dominated all of the profits of the industry) for ages.
Now, the Mac is making something of a comeback, and climbing out from the gutter where it landed… but, all profits aside, it’s still a niche player in terms of the overall computing industry.
In this regard, I’m talking about how much influence they have in the overall industry… Software development, for instance. Throughout the past two decades, Apple didn’t play any significant role in how software developed. Maybe, if you were lucky you’d get the applications you wanted on the Mac. But even in areas where they once had some specific niche, like graphic design, they lost those markets to the PC too. Microsoft, whether they made a bigger profit or not (although, let’s be realistic… MS made a mountain of money), played a far larger role in how desktop computing, and computing in general, evolved over the past two decades.
Their cash on hand is now about half of Microsoft’s total market cap. So from a business standpoint, yes – they won. If you don’t get that… you don’t get that.
But you can’t just take a snapshot of today, and apply it to their their entire history, and say “They won!”.
Apple almost went out of business. They were pushed into a microscopic niche, to the extent that virtually no one used their hardware.
They recovered from this, but they did so through modifications to their business strategies, and in no small part due to their iPod and mobile platforms. I mean, hell, the iPhone accounts for HALF of their profits. They’re not making their mountain of cash with their desktop… They’ve had an admirable recovery in that regard, but they still are only 12% of the US market, and less than 5% of the global market.
I mean, yeah… Apple, as a company, is doing great… it’s why I own their stock. But that success is not due to their computers. It’s due to their mobile devices.
And in some of their attitudes regarding mobile devices, they appear to be repeating some of the mistakes that led to their getting pushed out of the PC market. Maybe not… I guess only time will tell.
I mean, yeah… Apple, as a company, is doing great… it’s why I own their stock. But that success is not due to their computers. It’s due to their mobile devices.
To show the reader just how true this comment is, consider the below pie chart:
More than 75% of Apple’s revenue comes from iPhone, iPad, and iPod sales. Mac sales are now only 14% of Apple’s overall business.
Apple lost the GUI market due to incompetence. Not due to their business model. But their business model required not being incompetent in order for it to be an advantage. I think it’s safe to say, they’re not incompetent anymore.
Briefly, about the PC industry: ~12% market share (ignoring the iPad, which some analysts are starting to include but would just muddy this argument), but more profit than anyone else. By far. That’s ignoring everything about mobile, and it’s been a growing trend since before the iPhone existed (although obviously that has accelerated things).
Argh, “CPU” sales.
That’s why they stopped calling themselves “Apple Computer” like 5 years ago. They’re a consumer electronics company that sells “smart” devices. Lifestyle appliances with computer guts. Now, this may be a distinction without much of a difference if things go the way they want it to with the ipad and tablet computing in general.