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Mobile Is Eating The Car
This article is exclusively for subscribers to the Think.Tank.
The Apple Mac Takes Its Place In The Post-PC World
PC Resurgent
The PC market turnaround is real. ~ Bob O’Donnell (@bobodtech) 10/15/14
Q: IS THE PC MARKET TURNAROUND REAL?
A: No.
Macs are resurgent. Google Chrome is slowly gaining ground. However, sales of traditional personal notebook and desktop computers that run the Windows Operating System and are known as “PCs”, continue to falter.
In the second quarter of 2014, Apple’s Mac sales grew by 18% while overall PC sales declined by 1%.
In the third quarter of 2014, Apple’s Mac sales grew by 21% while overall PC sales declined by 1.7%.
On the other hand according to NPD, PCs went from 75% share to 68% in two years.
Source: “PC market still shrinking, with smaller firms squeezed out“, Charles Arthur
Conflating Apple’s Mac, Google’s Chrome, and Windows powered PCs conceals, rather than reveals, what is happening in the personal computing category. PCs were expected to get a big bump in sales from the end of life of Windows XP. A bump occurred, but it hasn’t signified a recovery, it has only slowed the PC’s decline.
PC Dead
So you believe the Windows PC is dead? ~ Oren Kaufman (@HorhayAtAMD) 10/20/14
PCs dead? I think not…when are people going to finally wake up? ~ Bob O’Donnell (@bobodtech)
Q: IS THE PC DEAD?
No.
No reasonable, rational observer of the tech marketplace is claiming the PC is dead. That’s a straw man — an exaggerated depiction of an opposing argument easily disproven. However, there is nothing unreasonable or irrational in asserting the PC will never again regain its once preeminent position in computing. In 2006, the PC dominated computing with around 95% market share. Today, the PC is but one of three branches of computing and, in terms of market share, it is rapidly becoming the lessor of the three.
Macs Resurgent
(T)his is claim chowder for those claiming death of PC form factor. ~ Oren Kaufman (@HorhayAtAMD) 10/20/14
Q: DO INCREASED MAC SALES REFUTE CLAIMS THE PC HAS LOST PREEMINENCE?
A: No.
Mac sales are up, but they are not increasing overall desktop and notebook sales. Instead, Mac sales seem to be displacing PC sales. Despite the increased Mac sales, notebooks and desktops as a whole continue to decline.
iPads
Windows 8 launched during a time when lots of people said that tablets would kill the PC. Does anyone still think that? ~ Harry McCracken (@harrymccracken) 9/30/14
Looks like AAPL made more money on PCs than tablets. What was that about the PC being dead again? ~ Bob O’Donnell (@bobodtech)
Q: DO INCREASED MAC SALES REFUTE CLAIMS IPADS/TABLETS HAVE SIGNIFICANTLY IMPACTED PC SALES?
No.
We have to keep things in perspective. PC sales are mildly declining. Smartphone sales are rapidly growing. Tablet sales are flat, but they still easily outsell PCs.
There are now close to twice as many iPads as Macs in use. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) 9/22/14
Just think about that for a second. Macs have been around for 30 years. iPads have been around for 4 years. Yet already, there are twice as many iPads in use as there are Macs.
Despite the Mac’s recent surge and the iPad’s stalled growth, iPads easily outsell Macs and the iPad’s base is therefore growing much faster. Just look at the sales numbers. In the third quarter of 2014, Apple sold 39.3 million iPhones. They sold 12.3 million iPads. And, in a record breaking quarter, Apple sold 5.5 million Macs. That means the much criticized iPad is outselling Macs by more than 2-to-1 and iPhones are outselling Macs by more than 5-to-1. The surging Mac is not catching up. It’s falling further and further behind.
As the chart above shows, even though iPad sales are flat and Mac sales are surging, iPad sales are still, far, far greater than those of the Mac. The Mac is not going to help the notebook and desktop form factors reclaim their once dominant position in computing. Rather, with every passing day, the notebook and the desktop’s total share of the computing pie becomes ever smaller.
Next quarter, Apple will sell its billionth iOS device (around 950m so far) ~ Jan Dawson (@jandawson) 10/20/14
Apple will probably sell more iPhones & iPads this quarter than there are Macs in use (~80m). ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) 10/20/14
IDC said worldwide PC shipments for the third quarter of 2014 were 78.5 million, down -1.7% year-over-year. ((IDC had an odd way of reporting this news. They said, “Global PC Shipments Exceed Forecast with Mild Improvement in Consumer Demand”. Translation? The decline wasn’t as bad as they expected it to be. But it was still a decline of 1.7%.))
Would not be surprised if 90 million iOS devices will ship next quarter. ~ Horace Dediu (@asymco) 10/20/14
Let’s try to put the above information in perspective. Last quarter, the desktop and notebook form factor sold 78.5 million units. Next quarter it is likely iOS alone — the minority platform — will outsell the entire PC industry. Add in Android and “other” and it’s no contest.
Apple will pass 1bn cumulative iOS device sold this year. Android will pass 3bn. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) 9/18/14
Macs But Not PCs
IMO Mac sales are increasing because Apple is great at leveraging their monopolies. iOS only works with OSX so Mac sales up. ~ Oren Kaufman (@HorhayAtAMD) 10/20/14
Q: WHY ARE MAC SALES RISING WHILE PC SALES ARE FALLING?
I’m certain the “Halo Effect” is a contributing factor to the Mac’s increased sales. The more iOS owners there are, the more likely it is some of them will choose a Mac as their next notebook or desktop computer.
I’m even more certain Apple’s “continuity” feature is going to make Macs ever more attractive to iOS users. The close integration between the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac, makes the Mac a natural choice for many iOS owners.
Having used Continuity, Handoff across MacBook, iPad and iPhone, I can say it’s awesome. I would have expected Microsoft to get there first. ~ Patrick Moorhead (@PatrickMoorhead) 10/23/14
But here is my pet theory as to why the Mac is growing while the PC continues to decline.
In 2006, almost anyone who owned a computer owned a PC. Today, we can choose between a PC and a variety of non-PC computing alternatives, including phones, tablets, Macs, etc. Many people feel little need to upgrade their existing PCs. Others feel no need to own a PC at all.
I still believe the traditional notebook and desktop form factor is overkill for most mainstream consumers. ~ Ben Bajarin
However, many people absolutely and positively need the power and flexibility provided by a notebook or desktop computer. These potential PC buyers differ from those in 2006. In 2006, the PC was (almost) the only game in town, so everybody got a PC. Power users got powerful PCs and people who needed minimal computing power purchased the cheapest PC they could find. Today, people who barely need a PC are opting for phones and tablets instead. That leaves only power PC users as a potential PC buyers.
The power user never has, and never will, buy a cheap PC. They know their computing needs will only be met by powerful computing machines. Here’s the important bit. Many power users are realizing if they’re going to be spending a thousand dollars and more for a computing device, the best PC…is a Mac.
In other words, for the budget conscious, the Mac compares poorly to the budget PC. But to the power conscious, the Mac compares very favorably to the top-of-the-line PC. Macs are a premium product and more and more, the only people buying notebooks and desktops are power users who are shopping for premium computing devices.
[pullquote]Increased Mac sales are not proof the PC form factor is becoming more popular. Rather, it is proof notebooks and desktops are becoming a premium niche[/pullquote]
In my opinion, Mac sales prove the exact opposite of what the “PC-IS-RESURGENT” crowd is contending. Increased Mac sales are not proof the PC form factor is becoming more popular. On the contrary, increased Mac sales are proof the PC form factor is becoming a premium niche.
Post-PC
Maybe we aren’t in a post-PC world. Maybe it’s an also-PC world. ~ Farhad Manjoo (@fmanjoo) 10/20/14
Q: ARE WE IN SOMETHING OTHER THAN A POST-PC WORLD?
No.
If a person as informed and as intelligent as Farhad Manjoo doesn’t know what “Post-PC” means, then I’m guessing most of us don’t understand what the term means either.
The Stone Age did not end because we stopped using stones. The PC era isn’tending because we stopped using PCs. ~ Horace Dediu (@asymco) 10/24/14
Post-PC does not mean the PC goes away. It does not mean we only use phones and tablets to do our computing. It simply means the PC is no longer the center of our computing universe.
“PCs are going to be like trucks,” Jobs said. “They are still going to be around.” However, he said, only “one out of x people will need them.” ~ AllThingsD, 2010
Emphasis added.
Apple has always emphasized the importance of the Mac in the post-PC world. Shortly after taking the reins at Apple, Tim Cook had this to say about the Mac:
[pullquote]As people walk away from the PC, it becomes clear that the Mac is what you want if you want a PC.[/pullquote]
And we haven’t given up on the Mac. A lot of people are throwing in the towel right now on the PC. We’re still spending an enormous amount on really great talent and people on the Macs of the future. And we have some really cool things coming out there. Because we believe as people walk away from the PC, it becomes clear that the Mac is what you want if you want a PC.
Two years later, that statement is looking mighty prescient.
Apple’s position is, whether it be a Mac or an iPad or an iPhone, people should use the right tool for the task at hand. In 2006, we owned one computing device. In 2015, we will own multiple computing devices. Truth be told, we already live in that reality today. Multiple computing devices are the norm not the exception.
Globally, the average connected devices per person is 2. In USA it is 2.8 ~ Ben Bajarin (@BenBajarin) 8/21/14
90% of students in the UK own both a laptop and a smartphone. A further 40% have a tablet computer ~ BBC News
Ironically, it was Bill Gates, in 2007, who predicted the multi-device computing world that we live in today:
Mossberg: What’s your device in five years that you’ll rely on the most?
Gates: I don’t think you’ll have one device.
I think you’ll have a full-screen device that you can carry around and you’ll do dramatically more reading off of that – yeah, I believe in the Tablet form factor…
…and then you’ll have the device that fits in your pocket…
…and then we’ll have the evolution of the portable machine. And the evolution of the phone will both be extremely high volume, complementary–that is, if you own one, you’re more likely to own the other.
Now tell me, does that sound like the vision embodied by Microsoft’s 2-in-1 Surface ((If you think the Surface is doing well, you need to read this article by Mark Rogowsky and look at this chart by Jan Dawson.
—
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Source: THOUGHTS ON MICROSOFT’S Q3 2014 EARNINGS)) computer or does that sound more like the vision embodied by Apple’s iPhone, iPad, and Mac portfolio of computing devices? (And don’t forget the upcoming Apple Watch, either.)
To be honest, I don’t much care what your opinion is. The market is the only opinion that matters and the market has emphatically expressed its opinion by overwhelmingly voting for multiple devices. If you don’t think multi-device is the direction computing should be taking, argue with the market, not me.
Conclusion
I believe as we move further and further into the post-PC (or multi-computing device) era, two things are going to happen.
First, the base number of notebook and desktop computers will remain at, or near, current levels. However, the form factor’s overall share of the total number of personal computing devices will continue to shrink as phones and tablets rapidly spread across the globe.
Second, those who need less computing power will eschew the notebook and desktop form factor. Those who need the form factor, but eschew the power and complexity, will gravitate toward devices like the Chromebook. And those who need both the form factor and the power it embodies, will move towards Macs.
What was unthinkable only ten years ago is happening. The traditional Windows PC is being squeezed by Chromebooks from below and by Macs from above and is rapidly moving from monopoly to minority status. The Mac on the other hand is emerging from the shadow of the Windows PC and, among power users, is taking its place as the majority player. ((26.8% of the notebooks and desktops sold in the U.S. between July 4th and September 1st were Macs.))
Technological Patriotism
Technology is breaking down barriers throughout the world. Conversely, a form of technological nationalism has taken hold, limiting tech’s rise. Expect such nationalist fervor to become more widespread, more virulent, probably more unfair.
Technology is the new oil. It’s vital to our lives, our economy, our personal wealth, our national interests. As such, governments believe it is right to be intimately intertwined in the development, use, purchase, promotion and spread of technology.
Government inquiries, embargoes, regulatory barriers and tax disputes with technology companies will become commonplace. Fighting (and/or championing) such affairs will become a standard course of business for tech firms, much like complying with accounting standards are today. VCs, start-ups and well established high tech companies will need to fundamentally reconstruct their focus. I say this all without judgment.
That most of the world’s largest, richest tech companies are American — Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Cisco — makes this new world order that much more combustible.
Should Five Percent Appear Too Small
Big technology companies are sitting atop sizable piles of money. Many governments believe they are owed their rightful share of these piles. The European Union (EU) alleges Apple is concealing taxes duly owed on sales and profits generated throughout Europe. Their allegations rest almost entirely upon the obvious:
“Multinational corporations have a financial incentive when allocating profit to the different companies of the corporate group to allocate as much profit as possible to low tax jurisdictions and as little profit as possible to high tax jurisdictions.”
Examine Apple’s European org chart. What does it appear optimized for? If successful, the EU’s action could cost Apple billions. That is why, when Tim Cook told the US Senate “we pay all the taxes we owe — every single dollar,” he is no doubt being 100% accurate and equally irrelevant.
Tax battles are costly for tech firms, but just one fight of many. Regulatory barriers can similarly limit the full and beneficent spread of the world’s most liberating technologies. As famed tech investor Peter Thiel recently remarked:
“It probably would be better for Europe to find ways to be more innovative, rather than ways to regulate.”
This sentiment was echoed by uber-VC Marc Andreessen, an aggressive proponent of Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that could, in theory, disrupt a core government function and major policy lever:
‘‘The problem with building a new product or service in the existing financial industry is that tens of thousands of pages of legislation and thousands of lobbyists are going to come down on you very quickly. We needed a new technology to have the wedge to be able to enter the market, to be able to justify all the work to rebuild the system.
With bitcoin, we now think we have that wedge.”
Neelie Kroes, the EU’s digital chief, has made it abundantly clear government is not so willing to rebuild its systems:
“I do wonder how many more Valley companies have to get slapped before the rest of them realize it’s time to start investing in better relations with the EU.”
Expect such “investments” to become commonplace. Likewise, add Amazon to that list of companies who apparently need to be “slapped”:
The European Commission is poised to launch a formal in-depth probe into its serious concerns over improper state aid, dragging Amazon into a multi-pronged clampdown on sweetheart tax deals that has already ensnared Apple in Ireland and Starbucks in the Netherlands.
To absolutely no one’s surprise, Amazon has declared it pays “all applicable taxes in every jurisdiction that it operates within.” As with Apple, the accuracy of this statement is borderline meaningless.
Prediction: numerous governments will alter their tax rules simply to prevent other governments from getting a larger share of any Big Tech monies available. To wit: Why let Europe get a (theoretical) cut of Apple’s bounty when that money could be put to better use in America? Or Brazil? Or China?
Here, There And Everywhere
Tax disputes are certainly not the only concern for tech companies. Just this year:
The Chinese government (blocked) virtually all access to Google websites, instead of just imposing 90-second delays when banned search terms were used. Experts initially interpreted the move as a security precaution ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 4. But the block has largely remained in place ever since.
This latest move and previous actions by China have significantly impacted Google’s long term potential inside the world’s largest Internet market. Not surprisingly, China’s own Baidu has a 90% share of search — and not because users prefer its results to Google’s.
Despite Baidu’s ubiquity, many users are finding it to be a poor replacement—especially students, academics, researchers, and technicians who need to rapidly find reliable information online.
It’s not only Google that faces such barriers. Twitter and Facebook are both “filtered” in China. Nor is the problem confined only to American technology companies.
Two popular messaging services owned by South Korean companies, Line and Kakao Talk, were abruptly blocked this summer (by China), as were other applications like Didi, Talk Box and Vower.
Nor is hardware spared. Despite its stellar reputation for security, China’s CCTV ran a report earlier this year suggesting Apple’s iPhone location tracking could put state secrets at risk. If true, China obviously has no choice but to take swift, decisive action.
Government entanglements can take many forms. For example, Apple was caught off guard last month when regulators did not provide the requisite approvals for the company to begin legally selling its new iPhones in China. This despite Tim Cook’s many visits to the country, Apple’s sizeable third party workforce there, and the fact Apple and its partners had readied a major advertising push, believing they had done everything necessary to satisfy the various interested parties. Not so, apparently.
Surprise! Regulators have now proffered their assent, in large part due to Apple’s latest assurances that the American government cannot “backdoor” access iPhone data and obtain any of those China state secrets as noted above.
Rules are rules. The costs required to successfully navigate such rules may not always fall the way prices of technology always seems to fall. Nor may such rules prove as leveling. As Bloomberg recently reported, myriad new government rules in China are likely to benefit local companies, such as Xiaomi.
Moreover, now that users in China can legally purchase iPhone 6, it may cost them more than anticipated. China’s government recently decreed that China Mobile, the world’s largest carrier, must reduce phone subsidies. The effect of such actions are obvious.
“High-end flagship phones will suffer the most from the regulation due to their prohibitive prices in the China market without subsidies.”
“Samsung and Apple, as the two major high-end flagship phone makers, have the most to lose.”
A Day In The Life
Brazil has demanded Apple delete the Secret app from iPhone. Russia recently seized Bitcoin mining equipment at its border with China. Several US states have taken legal action against Uber and Lyft. The EU wants Google, Facebook and Twitter to help it combat what they view as online extremism — and what others view as free speech. The lesson, once again: Tech company interactions with governments will become the norm. Simply put, because tech touches everything.
No matter what you think of Europol‘s veracity, when Europe’s cybercrime unit writes the following, it necessitates a reasoned, continued and very likely financial response from well-heeled technology companies eager to profit from the Internet of Things:
With more objects being connected to the Internet and the creation of new types of critical infrastructure, we can expect to see (more) targeted attacks on existing and emerging infrastructures, including new forms of blackmailing and extortion schemes (e.g. ransomware for smart cars or smart homes), data theft, physical injury and possible death, and new types of botnets.
Death and botnets are always scary. Fighting them is no doubt expensive.
Technology’s promise carries with it parallel strands of fear, always. Consider how smartphones and social media have deepened our understanding of events around the world, such as the recent protests in Hong Kong. Now consider not everyone is pleased by this.
Tim Cook has spoken publicly about civil liberties. Is it fair to ask him — and Apple Inc — to choose a side in this latest skirmish? Is it fair to ask the same of Twitter? Many will.
You Say You Want A Revolution
I suspect you want me to say these many government interventions are dubious, the product of terminally greedy tax collectors, frightened regulators, and entrenched forces hoping to kill off outland competition.
I won’t. Mostly because such sentiments are not relevant.
The many reasons for these many government actions will grow in number, kind and intensity as technology continues to destabilize and disrupt industry after industry. You must understand: There is no bigger industry than government.
Tech is money. Money is power. All three are quickly spreading around the world and most of us want, at minimum, our perceived fair share. Do understand, however, that what’s right and what’s wrong are just two sides to this proverbial Rubik’s Cube.
Freedom is not a zero sum game. Not all believe the same is true for money and power. This is true everywhere. The really big disruption won’t just be of the established order, but of human nature.
I Want It Later! Building The Inconvenience Economy.
As I stood in line with a giddy gaggle of high pants hipsters, each eagerly anticipating the drip, drip of their very own drip coffee from the sainted Blue Bottle, conversations were many and temporary friendships took brief flight.
I looked up from my phone and realized: we are doing it all wrong.
In nearly every aspect of our lives, from work to parenting to play to eating, we are demanding quicker, faster, now. Worse, our technologies — the very products and services we build for our own good — are forcing this upon us. Even worse: We seem to have no idea, no plan, no counter to this offensive.
Understand, I am no Luddite. I am not suggesting we limit the advance of technology (or progress). Rather, I am suggesting we figure out a way to build technologies and services that nurture our very human need to take our time, to hone our craft, to focus on our work, to block out the noise. Almost nothing we have created allows this. Almost no one in Silicon Valley even considers this. I am considered a gadfly whenever I merely suggest it.
Why have we allowed our technology to be so limiting?
Convenience and productivity are just two of the many human desires we hold dear. So where are the devices, the apps, the advances that satisfy our longing for peace, calm, reflection?
No. Turning something off is not a solution. Partly, because that’s so hard — like eating only a “single serving” of cookies. Secondly, because this requires everyone else do the same. Unplug, walk outside, stare at the stars and then count the seconds before a jet flies by, a leaf blower punctures your ears or a bright light pierces your vision.
We are demanding convenience above all else, when in fact we crave the messiness of taking our time. Yet, none of our richest corporations and none of our very best minds appear to have any solution. I doubt they are even considering this. Twitter co-founder, Ev Williams, made this clear last year when he described the Internet as “a giant machine designed to give people what they want.”
“The internet makes human desires more easily attainable. In other words, it offers convenience. Convenience on the internet is basically achieved by two things: speed, and cognitive ease.”
I got 99 problems but convenience ain’t one.
Fat And Fast
Our very best minds — and we have encouraged this — view the next big thing as whatever it is that satisfies our present, reflexive, fleeting demand for: Now. Want. Now. Want. Now. Again, from Williams:
“Here’s the formula if you want to build a billion-dollar internet company. Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time…identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.”
Then what? Race ya till you die! There are many human desires where taking out a step does not make life better.
To be fair, Williams does make the obvious connection between our burgeoning abundance of convenience with last century’s abundance of fast, cheap calories:
“Look at the technology of agriculture taken to an extreme — where we have industrialised farms that are not good for the environment or animals or nourishment. Look at a country full of people who have had such convenient access to calories that they’re addicted, obese, and sick.”
Despite this awareness, however, Williams doesn’t really offer a route around this. Nor does Silicon Valley. Most infuriating of all, neither do I. I keep wracking my brain to come up with a way out, to imagine technology truly supportive of all our human longings. I got nothing.
The newly heralded convenience economy is enabled by smartphones, apps, the location-based web, the cloud, and pretty much every device in our possession. It’s lighting every moment of our lives, altering our work, deconstructing our expectations, yet I am not sure it’s as liberating as we believe.
Immediate access to messaging, e-mail, media, and other online functionality through smartphones has generated a sense of entitlement to fast, simple, and efficient experiences.
Aren’t we also entitled to contemplation, craftsmanship and effort? Is pining for a thing no longer a viable thing in this new millennium? What else might we lose? Taking our time, honing our craft, embracing the goal, the journey, these are vitally important pillars of life — I presume — yet our own creations constantly work against them. Imagine pitching to a VC your idea for a service that makes people wait, that never interrupts, that takes forever to master. Are such technologies or services even imaginable by our collective, connected 21st century brains? With access to everything, at low prices, instantly, how do we deny ourselves? Should we?
The Marshmallow Test
In the 1960s, the marshmallow test validated the idea children who could push aside a minor reward — a marshmallow now — for a greater reward — many marshmallows in the near future — enjoyed greater success in life. Why then, are the products of our best companies designed to reward us all instantly?
According to the Harvard Business Review, “as adults we face a version of the marshmallow test nearly every waking minute of every day. We’re not tempted by sugary treats, but by our browser tabs, phones, tablets, and (soon) our watches—all the devices that connect us to the global delivery system for those blips of information that do to us what marshmallows do to preschoolers.”
Will we grow fat on convenience? How might that look? Explosions of uncontrollable anger when the young man at the drive thru counter takes seconds longer than the lighted sign has promised us?
When the great minds of the early 1900s constructed methods to ensure we would all never go hungry again, it’s unlikely they envisioned a world where hundreds of millions become morbidly obese. Again, from the Harvard Business Review:
“As we’ve reshaped the world around us, radically diminishing the cost and effort involved in obtaining calories, we still have the same brains we evolved thousands of years ago, and this mismatch is at the heart of why so many of us struggle to resist tempting foods that we know we shouldn’t eat.
A similar process is at work in our response to information.
Just as with food, the problem will almost certainly not be solved by self control, which was always a lie, an easy way to blame others and ignore reality.
Is there some Paleo diet for the mind, an Ornish diet for the spirit?
Goethe wrote, “talent is nurtured in solitude.” Can solitude exist in our world? If not, will talent vanish, killed off by the creations of our smartest humans and our mutual lust for immediacy?
I wish I could offer you some guidance but I just thought of the cleverest tweet.
Thoughts On Apple
Let’s start with the bad news: The Apple Watch. This beautiful, technological marvel is, in my view, the device our future selves point back to as delineating when Apple changed forever.
Not necessarily for the good.
The company long known for delivering absolutely amazing computing devices, so perfect, so uncannily universal that often times, one device, one product line, one price point is sufficient, is no more. The new Apple Watch starts out with three distinct variations and what appears to be a near-infinite number of eye-catching bands.
This feels wrong.
Tim Cook said the Apple Watch is the company’s most “personal device yet.” Maybe so. At present, my take is thus: The Apple Watch is a pricey talisman, one certain to accelerate the top-line yet with only marginal tangible benefit to Apple’s existing customers.
Have we crossed a line?
The Strange Changes
Yes, change is necessary, often good. I realize this is Tim Cook’s Apple, not Steve Jobs’ Apple. That’s both obvious and expected. What I find so troubling is that I no longer know if this is my Apple. Having defended Apple for years against the silly, baseless charge that “Apple is a marketing company,” I woke up last week to discover that, as John Gruber flatly stated, “Apple is not a tech company.”
I am at a loss to adequately explain why anyone would pay $349 for this device. Indeed, $349 just gets you in the door. Yes, many analysts made similar declarations about the iPhone and the iPad. Fair enough. The Apple Watch may prove transformative. Still, Apple was able to fully, succinctly proclaim exactly how we could and would all benefit from those earlier products. This is much less so with Apple Watch:
It’s the most personal product we’ve ever made, because it’s the first one designed to be worn.
Yes, but what does it do? And why should I buy one?
A device you wear is vastly different from one you keep on a desk or carry in your pocket. It’s more than a tool. It’s a very personal expression.
Yes, but what does it do?
Apple Watch combines a series of remarkable feats of engineering into a singular, entirely new experience. One that blurs the boundaries between the physical object and the software that powers it.
I do not understand.
Apple Watch also presents time in a more meaningful, personal context by sending you notifications and alerts relevant to your life and schedule.
Such as?
Apple Watch is right there on your wrist, so it makes all the ways you’re used to communicating more convenient.
Tell me one!
Don’t Want To Be A Richer Man
Most of the world could never afford Apple products, be they Macs or iDevices. This was, frankly, because the costs of quality, usability, integration and reliability necessitated those high prices. True, Apple margins on iPods, iPhones, iPads and some Macs are sizable. Prices can be lower, in theory. The bargain between Apple and customer, however, is we accept these large margins knowing that year after year after year Apple products will get better, without fail, until a completely new magical device takes flight. That’s money well spent.
Will this be so with Apple Watch?
I think not.
Based purely on the company’s marketing messages, the various Apple Watch(es) appear priced primarily for reasons almost fully extraneous to its technology or functionality. I find this disconcerting, to say the least.
For most users, Apple offers the very best smartphone, tablet, MP3 player and laptop available anywhere. The Apple Watch changes this equation in no way. Still, I can’t help but wonder if my relationship with Apple will change now that this “non-tech” company so proudly offers what we assume will be, per Gruber, gold bands on deluxe watches that retail for an astounding $10,000 or more.
I don’t even go into those stores.
Time May Change Me
Throughout its history, Apple has gifted us with numerous incredible devices. Recall the iMac, the iPod (classic) or the very first iPhone. We never envisioned such a device, then quickly wondered how we ever lived without it. It was as if someone from the future left this marvel behind, perhaps accidentally, perhaps as a test. But always, magic, always liberating.
The Apple Watch feels the opposite of this. Lock-in is not liberating. With Watch, Apple has created a mobile computing device with a small screen which requires another mobile computing device with a small screen, the iPhone, before it can function properly.
I can’t help but think how much better it would be — for us, the users — had Apple taken all that Watch work, all those Watch resources, and made the iPhone, iPad and Mac even better, more magical. This applies to the iPhone, in particular. The fact is, I believe Apple and iPhone are on the cusp of remaking everything and I selfishly do not want Apple to blow this opportunity by getting sidetracked with a watch.
And now the good news.
Change Their Worlds
In his long interview with Charlie Rose last week, Tim Cook stated it’s important to think about long term, big picture ideas. One of these, he said, is what comes after the Internet?
I suspect Apple is not merely thinking about what comes after the Internet, but actually working toward this. What is it? My prediction: The entire Internet done right. That is, a secure, family friendly, screen-optimized web paid for by all of us — with our money not our privacy.
Google should be very concerned.
With iTunes, apps, Apple Pay, Apple TV, iCloud, continuity, inter-app communication — now available across all screen sizes and devices — we can finally have our “web” the way we’ve always wanted, the way we’ve always deserved, before we foolishly allowed it down that horrible path back in the 1990s, funded by pornography, data tracking, unceasing ads and content “aggregation” that bordered on theft.
Apple has developed the tools to make these bad bits all go away. We get what we want, reliably, securely, privately, by paying for it, not by having bits of us taken, not by having our eyes and ears assaulted with unwanted garbage.
This will change everything. It cannot come soon enough.
Oh, and the company is not just remaking the digital web and e-commerce. Apple is helping to re-configure offline retail, making it better, faster, more personal. Consider its currently available toolkit:
- Apple Pay (money and credit)
- Touch ID (security)
- iPad (cash register)
- iBeacon and Passbook (for deals and rewards)
- AirDrop (peer-to-peer sharing of money and benefits)
No one else has anything like this.
Perhaps I’ve been unfair to the not-yet-released Apple Watch. But, companies can’t do everything. The iPhone is literally helping us to change the world. It is re-making commerce, the web, play, learning, work. I don’t want to lose this opportunity.
I fear the Apple Watch has captured Tim Cook’s focus and consumed the best of the company’s design, hardware and software skills. If so, while Watch may be great for Apple I believe it is detrimental for the rest of us.
I Shall Now Make My Apple Event Predictions!
I always like to make my predictions AFTER the fact. Improves accuracy. Yet I’m still bound to get a few things wrong.
You can only predict things after they have happened. ~ Eugene Ionesco
Truth be told, I’m working on some massive articles regarding the Apple Event and they’re just not done. I simply haven’t been able to absorb the information yet and I’d rather do it right than do it now.
I’m finding it impossible to keep up with the research in my field” (said every researcher ever throughout history). ~ David Smith (@drs1969)
So I thought I’d fill this week’s column with my quick takes on last Tuesday’s Apple Event.
iPhones
Surprises? Not So Much.
Lots of leaks. Few surprises.
Sales Projections
Expected sales? AT&T said that iPhone 6 demand was “off the charts” and Apple has confirmed the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus crushed earlier preorder records. So how many are they going to sell?
My official answer to how many iPhones Apple will sell in the holiday quarter— crap tons. ~ Ben Bajarin (@BenBajarin)
Average Sales Price
Apple is selling its base mode iPhone with 16 gigabytes of storage and its mid-tier iPhone with 64 gigabytes of storage. Further, the iPhone 6 Plus starts $100 higher than all previous iPhone models did before it.
Apple has 10% of handset sales, high-end Android another 10% and the rest of Android a further 40% (& growing). Guess which Apple targeted. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
A weird thing is about to happen. The Average Sales Price of the iPhone is about to go UP! That’ll put a real dent in the “iPhone” is a commodity theory.
The iPhone Is A Commodity Claim Chowder
With all things tech, fused products and commoditization are inevitable markers of the product cycle. The iPhone 5 will be Apple’s last hurrah as competitors increasingly gain ground. ~ Kofi Bofah, Onyx Investments, 29 August 2012
As the mobile phone market increasingly offers more quality phones at a range of price points, Apple now faces a difficult choice. Does it try to remain a premium product-premium price company, or does it dive into the commoditized lower priced arena? Neither choice is very appealing. ~ Bob Chandler, Motley Fool, 2 May 2013
I’m guessing the choice to go premium wasn’t as tough as old Bob here imagined it to be.
Phones and tablets are inevitably following computers into commoditization. ~ Peter Nowak, MacLeans.ca, 28 January 2013
The iPhone as a commodity. That’s really all Apple’s iStuff is — an enormous and very profitable fad. It’s the Pet Rock of the new millennium. ~ Anders Bylund, Motley Fook, 6 Mar 2012
Miscellaneous
Here’s a couple of miscellaneous thoughts for you all to chew upon as you wait for me to finish my research and publish my Magnum Opus on the Apple Event:
It’s still a common mistake to see smartphones (and even phones) as a luxury. In fact, their value is inversely proportionate to income. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) 8/15/14
More people on earth have a mobile phone than a street address. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
Tablets
There’s been a lot of talk of late about tablets diminishing in importance. I don’t see it that way. To me, phones and tablets are just one big continuum — they’re all tablets. But that’s an article for another day.
Pay
Platform building is one of the hardest things in tech. A payment platform requires simultaneous adoption by 1) Banks; 2) Retailers; and 3) Consumers. It took years and years and years for credit cards to finally gain critical mass and they were mocked all along the way.
How do you stop a charging Rhino? You take away its credit card.
And many digital payment schemes have come and gone without consumers even noticing.
Only here’s the thing. Apple makes platform building — the hardest thing in tech — look easy. Take a gander at some of the ads that appeared on the very day of the Pay announcement:
–
–
Some people say Apple is late to the NFC party. But until Apple showed up, NFC was a wake, not a party.
It will take years for this to play out, but I believe Apple has already pushed digital payments past the tipping point. Pay is a done deal. Once we’re using our phones (and watches) to make payments, it will change the way retail looks and works forever.
Never underestimate the impact of the law of unexpected consequences. ~ Harvey B. Mackay
Brand
On his ‘Critical Path’ podcast, Horace Dediu expressed surprise at Apple’s move from i-everything to -everything branding. I am surprised by his surprise.
iNames, RIP. ~ John Gruber (@gruber)
The “i” Brand was misnamed from the start (not that it matters to a brand). It originally stood for “i”nternet in the iMac and now it’s simply a nonsensical way of knowing it is made by Apple. Apple is moving into an era where they need consumers to know the product or service was made by Apple. “iPay” would have been generic. Pay is anything but generic. The branding is both a name and a logo and the will put Apple’s brand in your face — which is right where Apple wants it to be.
Watch
Mea Culpa
I thought the Apple Watch would be more of a wrist band, less of watch. I was very concerned about battery life, so I thought the Apple wearable might have no screen. I was wrong.
Apple went the fashion route. Now, the fact Apple made all those fashion hires should have been telling me something. But I wasn’t able to put 2 + 2 together. It’s not the first time I’ve been wrong about Apple and it most certainly won’t be the last.
Why?
A lot of the post-Apple Event discussion on the Watch has been around whether Apple provided the “why”. “Why should I buy this?” “Why does this product even exist?” My favorite take on this so far is by Ben Thompson at Stretechery: “APPLE WATCH: ASKING WHY AND SAYING NO“.
I agree with most of Ben’s article but I have some serious issues with a couple of the details. I hope to write a too long article about this in the not terribly distant future.
What’s Next
Here’s a rough outline of the series of articles I’m working on:
- The Why Of The Watch
- Steve Jobs On Category Creation
- Category Mistakes We Makes
- Knee Jerk Objections
- Lessons Unlearned
- Watch Use Cases
- Watch User Interface
- First Generation Issues
- Fashion Issues
- Price Issues
All topics are subject to change.
Change is inevitable, except from vending machines. ~ Anonymous
I hope to have the articles done before Watch 2.0 comes on the market in 2016.
Hobby
Rest assured, the Watch is no hobby. Tim Cook used the “one more thing” line to announce the Watch. He called it the “Next Chapter” in Apple’s story. And it was announced by Tim Cook himself. If the Watch fails to become a category, it won’t be due to any lack of effort on Apple’s part.
Apple’s Wheelhouse
Keep the following in mind. As things get smaller, design matters more. And as design matters more, Apple’s expertise in design matters more.
I love how people say a big company can just ‘get good’ at design – they’d never say that about search or AI or big data in the same way. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
Further, as things get more personal, fashion matters more. And fashion is an alien concept to most tech companies (and to most tech observers, like you and me). Apple is way, way ahead of most companies in design. And they seem to have “stolen a march” on most companies when it comes to fashion, too. Apple’s wearable products will never achieve mass adoption. However, Apple seems willing to settle for massive admiration (and massive profits) instead.
The most expensive Apple Watch will cost more than the most expensive iPhone which will cost more than most PCs. ~ Horace Dediu (@asymco)
Claim Chowder, Redux
Finally, I’ll end with some delicious claim chowder. Enjoy!
I was talking recently to someone who knew Apple well, and I asked him if the people now running the company would be able to keep creating new things the way Apple had under Steve Jobs. His answer was simply ‘no.’ I already feared that would be the answer. I asked more to see how he’d qualify it. But he didn’t qualify it at all. No, there will be no more great new stuff beyond whatever’s currently in the pipeline. ~ Paul Graham, March 2012
(W)hy are people losing their faith in the money-making machine that is Apple? Maybe it’s because they’ve done it all. What is there left for Apple to do? ~ ~ Emily Knapp, Wall St Cheat Sheet, 24 May 2011
Apple Claim Chowder: Business Models
With an Apple Event fast approaching, I’m reviewing critiques of past Apple Events to see how accurate they were. Turns out, not very. Critique is needed and welcome. Repeated errors? Not so much.
Business Models
No one gets more bad advice than does Apple. Apple went from near-bankruptcy to nearly the largest company on earth, all the while being told each step of the way that they were doing it wrong. And now that Apple has done the equivalent of winning ten Super Bowls in a row, have the critics relented? Of course not. Their advice to Apple, as always, is that the only way for them to remain successful is to do the exact opposite of what made them successful.
It’s hard to say who gets criticized the most, the successful person, or the failure but it’s mighty close. ~ Joe Moore
This final section of my Claim Chowder Series focuses on business models. Apple has done all right while employing their own, unique, business model. However, no matter how much success Apple has, the critics insist that Apple is doing it all wrong.
Closed
Apple has done all right while employing a vertical (closed) business model. The critics insist that Apple is doing it all wrong.
There’s something problematic in the idea that platforms with 1.5 billion users and 100 billion+ 3rd party apps installed are ‘closed’. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) April, 2014
…Apple’s ability to sustain an innovative edge over Android will be reduced to months – if that. The collective development opportunities made possible by the fact that Android is Open Source will see to that. ~ Brian Prentice, Gartner, 21 September 2009
Apple will have to make a strategic decision on whether to open up the platform. Ultimately a closed system just can’t go that far. ~ Patrick Lo, CEO, Netgear, 31 January 2011
It’s quite likely that Apple is going to commit the classic Apple mistake of trying to be too controlling and therefore the market gets away from them and people start to move towards Android. ~ Jimmy Wales, Co-founder, Wikipedia, 8 March 2011
Microsoft will ultimately muscle-out Apple as the leader in smartphones and tablets. Apple’s insistence on controlling every aspect of both its software and hardware puts it at a disadvantage to a more flexible Microsoft. ~ Charles Sizemore, Sizemore Capital, 29 Nov 2012
Average Sales Price
Apple has done all right when it comes to maintaining a high average sales price. The critics insist that Apple is doing it all wrong.
Phones and tablets are inevitably following computers into commoditization. Apple may still charge a premium for its products, but it will ultimately have to settle for a relatively small market share as a result, just as it has in computers. There is also a limit to that premium – with the likes of Google and Amazon setting the pace, the respective days of $700 smartphones and $500 tablets are numbered. ~ Peter Nowak, MacLeans.ca, 28 January 2013
You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out. ~ Warren Buffett
The strong inference from Qualcomm’s earnings report is that smartphone prices are falling so fast that the new low end Apple iPhone is not likely to be competitive. ~ Nigam Arora, Contributor, Forbes, 25 April 2013
Margins
Apple has done all right when it comes to maintaining high margins. The critics insist that Apple is doing it all wrong.
The whole sector is priced as if the average player would sustain 25 per cent margin in eternity. It’s bordering on absurdity. This will end in tears. ~ Per Lindberg, MF Global Ltd, Feb 2009
Competition is compressing Apple’s margins. ~ Glen Bradford, Seeking Alpha, 10 July 2011
Apple is focused on defending the high end of the market, and that is becoming harder to do each year. Competitors, such as the Galaxy from Samsung, are starting to catch up. I think it is inevitable that the margin pressure increases. ~ Mark Newman, Director of Mobile Research, Informa Telecoms and Media, 26 Feb 2012
It shows (data chart from Nomura Holdings) that there is no historical precedence for Apple’s gross margins. Check this out. It shows gross margins for Nokia, RIM and Apple over the past ten years and it comes to us from Nomura because it believes the iPhone’s margins are likely 10% above the sustainable levels. ~ Sara Eisen Bloomberg, 15 Oct 2012
Margins are shrinking. ~ Howard Gold, MarketWatch, 1 February 2013
In closing, the price cuts for the iPhone 5c and the shuffling of the iPad lineup do little to address the company’s core problems of its dwindling market share, slower growth, and contracting margins. ~ Leo Sun, Motley Fool, 19 March 2014
Premium
Overheard in 2001: “Who would pay $399 for an Apple music player?!?” ~ kirkburgess (@kirkburgess)
Apple has done all right when it comes to charging a premium price for their products. The critics insist that Apple is doing it all wrong.
In Q2, Apple made 68% of mobile device OEMs’ profits (65% in q1, 53% in Q2 13). Samsung – 40% (41% q1, 49% q2 13) Source: Canaccord Genuity ~ Daisuke Wakabayashi (@daiwaka) 8/5/14
The market is already saturated with popular [phones] that are virtually free to consumers. The perceived zero cost of a cellphone like the Motorola RAZR is a serious impediment. ~ Ashok Kumar, Capital Group, 30 July 2007
Free things cost too much. ~ Talleyrand
Bleier believes Apple will have to dramatically lower iPhone prices or risk losing market share to Android-based phones and/or RIM’s Bold, which he believes will be a big hit this holiday season. ~ Scott Bleier, CreateCapital.com, 24 Oct 2008
Pricing to gain market share simply for the sake of market share is a chump’s game. ~ Bill Shamblin
Who’s going to buy an Apple iPad? Well, not you or me, anyway – not this version, not at $600-800. ~ Bruce Beris, bruceb consulting, 4 February 2010
It’s far better to buy a wonderful product at a fair price than a fair product at a wonderful price. ~ paraphrasing Warren Buffett
Americans now are buying more Android phones than iPhones. If that trend continues, analysts say that in little more than a year, Android will have erased the iPhone’s once enormous lead in the high end of the smartphone market. ~ Miguel Helft, New York Times, 17 October 2010
iPhone owns the US market. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) 7/22/14
From July 2012 to July 2014, iPhone share in the U.S. went from 32.4% to 42.4%.
Problematically, the Android competition is just as expensive as the iPad lineup, so Apple obviously feels free to continue gouging consumers on iPad pricing. ~ Paul Thurrott, Windows IT Pro, 3 March 2011
Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it. ~ Publilius Syrus
If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. ~ Milton And Rose Friedman
No one had a product that could generate that kind of excitement until HP sparked a frenzy when pulled the plug on its poor-selling TouchPad and slashed the price to $99. It’s an ugly way to go, but sacrificing profits might be the quickest way to rack up big revenues, and blunt Apple’s momentum. ~ Brian Caulfield, Forbes, 30 Aug 2011
There is hardly anything in the world that some man can’t make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man’s lawful prey. ~ John Ruskin
Amazon’s willingness to sell hardware at a loss combined with the strength of its brand, content, cloud infrastructure, and commerce assets makes it the only credible iPad competitor in the market. ~ Sarah Rotman Epps, Forrester, 29 Aug 2011
Apple is expected to introduce an ‘iPad Mini; next week, which will compete directly with the Kindle and Nexus, but it seems unlikely that this device will sell well if it is priced at, say, $299. ~ Henry Blodget, Business Insider, 7 Sep 2012
Price – Expensive piece of kit [iPhone 5] ~ Oliver Wolf, Greenwich Consulting, 10 Oct 2012
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. ~ Oscar Wilde
The iPhone, with its single annual update and super premium price, has been run down from behind by a pack of rivals with segmented product ranges, 6 month product cycles and aggressive price points. ~ Paul Sagawa, Sector & Sovereign Research, 19 Nov 2012
I think they should invest more of it in the margin, in the business. Get lower-priced products out there. Stop going after just the premium piece. Get into the real growth engine of the smartphone market, which right now is Android, its low-priced phones in China and India, same thing on the tablets. ~ Henry Blodget, CNBC, 3 January 2013
Author’s Note: Apple should get into lower-priced products? Why? Because that strategy has worked out so well for Samsung? See chart, below.
As the mobile phone market increasingly offers more quality phones at a range of price points, Apple now faces a difficult choice. Does it try to remain a premium product-premium price company, or does it dive into the commoditized lower priced arena? Neither choice is very appealing. ~ Bob Chandler, Motley Fool, 2 May 2013
Author’s Note: If being a premium business provider does not appear very appealing to you, you need to get out of the business of providing business advice.
Apple’s philosophy has always been to be consumer-centric. It wants to make easy-to-use, broadly-accessible products. But on some level, it’s failing consumers when only 18% of the global smartphone population has an iPhone. ~ Jay Yarow, Business Insider, 24 May 2013
Apple’s vision is to make the best, not the most. Apple is is the cutting edge that breaks the ice and allows others to follow. There are many fast followers (and even more slow followers). There are few pioneers. If you think that Apple is failing consumers, then you haven’t looked at the computers and notebooks and MP3 players and smartphones and tablets that consumers are using. They were all inspired by Apple.
Amazon’s pricing ambition is the clearest indication of its phone playbook: undercut rivals and grab meaningful market share. It is also shows that Apple’s worst nightmare may be coming true: prices could fall not just for cheap phones in developing markets but higher-end ones too. ~ Amir Efrati and Jessica E. Lessin, jessicalessin.com, 6 September 2013
(T)he pricing of the company’s iPad line as a whole is absurdly high, with Apple’s models often costing at least $100 more than their closest rivals. ~ Troy Wolverton, Mercury News, 24 October 2013
Apple’s new iPads and iPhones will aid the company’s revenue growth going into the busy holiday season. However, Apple’s pricing of iPhone 5c will have a difficult time competing in the lower end of the smartphone market. If Apple products remain expensive the company’s penetration rates will hit a brick wall sooner or later. ~ Ishfaque Faruk, Motley Fool , 26 October 2013
The iPhone 5c appears to be Apple’s red-headed stepchild. The tech giant is selling far fewer units of the 5c than it is of the (more expensive) 5s, according to recent reports. ~ Cadie Thompson, CNBC, 15 October 2013
Author’s Note: So Apple sells more of its premium product than its second-tier product and this is viewed as a bad thing. That reminds me of a joke:
Question: How did the fool try to kill the fish?
Answer: They tried to drown it.Question: How did the critics try to kill Apple?
Answer: They tried to drown it in profits.
Apple in my view made a huge mistake by not launching a mid end smartphone. ~ Sneha Shah, Seeking Alpha, 2 January 2014
Wars are not won by fighting battles; wars are won by choosing battles. ~ George S. Patton
Note that the average Android price is heading toward $200 and the average iPhone price is heading toward $600. Apple is asking the question, do you want to pay three times as much for our phones? Thus far, 80% of the market has answered ‘no.’ ~ Jim Edwards, Business Insider, 31 May 2014
Twenty percent of the market has answered: “yes”.
For all that Android has improved, and we see the difference as a matter of taste, iPhone still outsells Android at the same price 3:1 ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) ~ 3/30/14
As of June there were 886,580,000 iOS devices sold. 1 Billion sold will happen well before this year is out ~ Horace Dediu (@asymco)
Platform
Apple has the strongest computing platform in the world. The critics insist that it is an illusion that cannot last.
Over the last year, Google paid devs ~1/2 of Apple’s App Store ($5B vs $10B) on ~2x the devices @BenedictEvans
In other words, each Apple owner is worth 4 times as much to developers as is each Android owner.
Apple’s critics have always been wrong about the how Platforms work. They insist that cheaper hardware will always outsell more expensive hardware and that platform is a game of winner-take-all with the more ubiquitous hardware sales attracting the majority of the developers. You have to admire Apple’s critics for their consistency. Despite having no evidence to support their position and plenty of evidence to refute it, they’ve remained consistently wrong.
There are very roughly the same number of high-end Android and iOS users, yet total Android payout in last 12m was $5bn, where iOS was $10bn. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) 8/23/14
Apple will likely have a tough time convincing application vendors to build specialized clients for the iPhone until the volumes are there, and the volumes could be limited by the lack of third-party applications – a Catch 22. ~ Jack Gold, J. Gold Associates, 10 January 2007
Even if it is opened up to third parties, it is difficult to see how the installed base of iPhones can reach the level where it becomes a truly attractive service platform for operator and developer investment. ~ Tony Cripps, Ovum Service Manager for Mobile User Experience, 14 March 2007
Will [Android] be as elegantly executed as the iPhone? Probably not. But it won’t matter to the mobile application developer if there are eight or ten Android handsets shipped for every iPhone. Addressable market will again trump elegance. ~ Brian Prentice, Gartner, 21 September 2009
All the apps that count will be ported to every one of them (smartphone platforms). ~ Microsoft’s chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, at the Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference, 17 November 2009
All the people (including me) who felt underwhelmed by the iPad initially might have missed its true potential. Put another way: the iPad is all about software. Forget the sleek form factor – that’s just a prerequisite. Ironically, it’s the software and services that Microsoft never ‘got’, that Apple totally does get. ~ Dan Wayne, apc mag, 12 February 2010
The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger. I hate it. ~ Tim Bray, Developer Advocate, Google, Inc, 15 March 2010
(W)hile Apple’s attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of web sites that use Flash. We think that customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple. ~ Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO, Research In Motion, 20 October 2010
Android will become the operating system (OS) of choice for developers rather than IOS within 12 months. ~ Adam Leach, Ovum, 23 Jan 2012
If Apple continues to pursue its current pricing and maximize-short-term profit strategy, it may continue to increase its profits for the next couple of years. (BlackBerry and Nokia grew earnings for a couple of years after some analysts began seeing the writing on the wall.) But Apple will also continue to lose platform and ecosystem share in most of the world. Apple fans can talk all they want about how Apple is “like BMW,” but in a couple of key competitive respects, it isn’t. And if the gadget platform market behaves the way other platform markets have (think Windows), Apple and its fans may come to regret this short-term thinking in the end. ~ Henry Blodget, Business Insider, 15 November 2013
Author’s Note: Hardware is the musical instrument. Software is the musical score. Platform is the stage. Ecosystem is the Orchestra that brings the instruments, the music and the players altogether on the grand stage. There is no company on the planet who out orchestrates or out ecosystems Apple.
Until such time as the critics understand that the Orchestral performance — the overall ecosystem — is worth far more than its component parts, they will never understand Apple.
Wall Street
October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February. ~ Mark Twain
Just before, during, and after the upcoming Apple Event, Apple stock is going to take a dramatic turn. And you know what that means about the future of Apple’s current products and about the future of Apple…
…absolutely nothing.
Believing that the direction of Apple stock determines the value of an Apple Event is like believing that a weathervane controls the direction of the wind. ~ John R. Kirk
The stock market is neither a gauge of current success nor a predictor of future success.
Markets reflect perception. In that sense they are always right. For the price to change, perception has to change. ~ Horace Dediu (@asymco)
In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine. ~ Benjamin Graham
We think that markets reflect and even anticipate facts. But markets reflect perception, not facts. And perception is not about reality, it’s about human foibles.
If a business does well, the stock eventually follows. ~ Warren Buffett
Claim Chowder
iPhone which doesn’t look, I mean to me… And I guess some of these stocks went down on the Apple announcement, thinking that Apple could do no wrong, but I think Apple can do wrong and I think this is it. ~ John C. Dvorak, 13 January 2007
The best revenge is massive success. ~ Frank Sinatra
Sell your Apple stock now, while the hype’s still hot. You heard it here first. ~ David S. Platt, Suckbusters!, 21 June 2007
I made a killing in the stock market. My broker lost all my money, so I killed him. ~ Jim Loy
(W)e think investors should also pay close attention to Apple. In addition to the Amazon tablet, Apple faces a growing number of risks. ~ Naked Value, 27 Sept 2011
Cook has been increasingly compared to Jobs and found wanting. ~ Rob Enderle, TechNewsWorld, 26 March 2012
I was talking recently to someone who knew Apple well, and I asked him if the people now running the company would be able to keep creating new things the way Apple had under Steve Jobs. His answer was simply ‘no.’ I already feared that would be the answer. I asked more to see how he’d qualify it. But he didn’t qualify it at all. No, there will be no more great new stuff beyond whatever’s currently in the pipeline. So if Apple’s not going to make the next iPad, who is? ~ Paul Graham, March 2012
Market share analysis presumes a zero sum game but greatest wealth comes from creation of new markets. ~ Horace Dediu (@asymco)
Here are seven events, all of which could hurt Apple’s stock price in a big way:
1. Wireless service providers (WSPs) collectively decrease iPhone subsidy
2. Window 8 is a huge success
3. No surprise in iPhone 5
4. Departure of major executives
5. Lukewarm replacement sales
6. Global smartphone growth slows down
7. Chinese demand of iPhone unsustainable during the last quarter
Gutone, Seeking Alpha, 29 May 2012
Here are four reasons why I don’t think Apple’s stock will see $700 again:
1. Growth in phones is slowing as competition increases
2. Margins are shrinking
3. Apple is losing its innovative edge
4. Apple may no longer be a growth story”
Howard Gold, MarketWatch, 1 February 2013
Author’s Note: Apple’s stock adjusted price passed $700 in August, 2014.
As a value investor, I strongly believe in BlackBerry’s future because the company has several advantages, such as the security, the Q10 and the corporate world. On the contrary, Apple’s potential increase appears very limited in the short run because the company won’t release new products, which can increase the interest of the company. ~ Gillian Mauyen, Seeking Alpha, 28 April 2013
Harvard University, the world’s wealthiest university, has liquidated its stake in Apple Inc. as the iPhone maker’s shares tumbled after reaching a record high of $702.10 in September. ~ Michael McDonald, Bloomberg, 10 May 2013
Author’s Note: One doesn’t have to go to Harvard to know that it’s “Buy low, sell high.” Instead, most investors — including large institutional investors — are inclined to buy stock on the way up and sell it on the way down.
Apple has become a value trap, This is a company with no growth, and profit margins that are way too high vis a vis the competition. ~ Doug Kass, Seabreeze Partners Management, 17 Sept 2013
I will look at taking my profits on Apple stock as I do not think that the company has much upside left at the current valuation and price. ~ Sneha Shah, Seeking Alpha, 25 October 2013
They only have 60 days left to either come up with something or they will disappear,” said Trip Chowdhry, managing director at Global Equities Research. (March, 2014)
Wasn’t Apple supposed to have disappeared by now without the iWatch? ~ Brad Reed (@bwreedbgr) 8/20/14
—
We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful. ~ Warren Buffett
Lessons Learned And Unlearned
When I find the road narrow, and can see no other way of teaching a well-established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools — I prefer to address myself to the one man. ~ Maimonides
This has been a very long article and this has been a very long series of articles. Have we learned anything from it? I fear we haven’t learned much. As this week progressed, I watched pundit after pundit make the same ridiculous errors that they’ve always made and, I guess, that they always will make. But just because they will never learn does not mean that we cannot profit from their mistakes.
Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise. ~ Cato the Elder
Here then are seven last lessons learned and unlearned.
Butcher
Don’t take a butcher’s advice on how to cook meat. If he knew, he’d be a chef. ~ Andy Rooney
Apple is one of the greatest Chef’s of our age. Most critics are butchers. Enough said.
Swimmingly
Never offer to teach a fish to swim. ~ Proverbs
Apple seems to be doing swimmingly without our advice. Perhaps we should stop spending our time telling them what they’re doing wrong and start learning what they’re doing right.
There are a lot of people innovating, and that’s not the main distinction of my career. The reason Apple resonates with people is that there’s a deep current of humanity in our innovation. ~ Steve Jobs
Cannot
The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it. ~ Chinese Proverb
Don’t listen to people who say it can’t be done. ~ Steve Jobs
If something is being done, we should stop saying that it cannot be done and start figuring out how they’re doing it.
Things are only impossible until they’re not. ~ Jean-Luc Picard
Prophets
“Apple is screwed” – 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014. ~ Sammy the Walrus IV (@SammyWalrusIV)
It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena. ~ William Whewell
To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality. ~ Ayn Rand
The prophets of doom have predicted Apple’s demise year in and year out and always they have been wrong. We need to pay less attention to prophets and more attention to profits.
Unconventional
Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally. ~ John Maynard Keynes
It is a paradoxical truism that success comes from unconventional strategies which are, by definition unpopular.
Differentiated
It’s not about doing what you can, it’s about doing what others can’t. ((Excerpt From: C. Michel. “Life Quotes.” C. Michel, 2012. iBooks. https://itun.es/us/AyIDI.l))
Apple’s critics always want Apple to adopt the strategies employed by their competitors. This, of course, makes no sense at all. The goal is to be different from, and more successful than, one’s competitors.
Apple has no competition who sell what their customers are buying. ~ Horace Dediu (@asymco) (3/18/14)
Apple has a monopoly on being Apple. They want to maintain that for just as long as they can.
Long Run
It may not be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong – but that is the way to bet. ~ Damon Runyon
Apple is in it for the long run. We too should viewing Apple from a long-term perspective.
Apple is run ‘for the investors who are going to stay, not the ones who are going to leave.’ ~ Warren Buffett
When you get up in the morning and the press is selling Apple short, go out and buy some shares. That’s what I would do. That’s what I have done. ~ Steve Jobs
If you’re in Apple for only a week… or two months, I would encourage you not to invest in Apple. We are here for the long term. ~ Tim Cook
CAPTION: Tim Cook and Apple crying all the way to the bank.
Apple Claim Chowder Series:
Introduction
Events
Killers
Cynicism
Product
Evolutionary Or Revolutionary
Business Models
Apple Claim Chowder: Evolutionary Or Revolutionary
With an Apple Event fast approaching, I’m reviewing critiques of past Apple Events to see how accurate they were. Turns out, not very. Critique is needed and welcome. Repeated errors? Not so much.
Evolutionary Or Revolutionary
The iPhone and the iPad have received a lot of criticism for being evolutionary, not revolutionary. I take strong exception to this sentiment. Apple’s iPhone and iPad — which are only seven and four years old, respectively — have been about as revolutionary as tech can get.
Before And After
From 1906, to 1956, to 2006, we went from the horse to the car to the airplane. However, as the photos below demonstrate, the way we read, entertained ourselves and communicated, while waiting to ride in the horse, the car and the plane, remained largely unchanged…until the iPhone arrived in 2007.
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Convergence
Further, look at the two photos, below, showing the multiple tasks that we can now accomplish with the aid of a single device.
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Inevitable
Finally, perhaps the critics think that this is no revolution at all; that this is all simply the inevitable result of the march of progress.
Hardly.
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Things do not happen. Things are made to happen. ~ John F. Kennedy
Critics think Apple’s products are evolutionary? I beg to differ. And reality begs to differ too. They’re as revolutionary as it gets.
An Attitude Of Ingratitude
If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself. ~ Tecumseh
There are (at least) two reasons why we don’t appreciate the significance of the iPhone/iPad revolution.
First, change seems to come very slowly when we’re looking forward but very rapidly when we’re looking backward. The iPhone was a leap. The iPad was a leap. Some acknowledge that they were revolutionary but claim that everything since has been evolutionary. I disagree.
We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. ~ Bill Gates
Sometimes, evolutionary can be revolutionary too. During the 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s, personal computing improved at breakneck speed. The changes were gradual and iterative but they came so rapidly, one after the other, that the effect was to change everything in a very short period of time. The same thing is happening in mobile, today.
Big things start small. ~ Hiten Shah (@hnshah)
Big things do indeed start small. But they don’t stay small for long.
The second reason we don’t appreciate what we have is because we’re an ungrateful lot.
Human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. ~ Aldous Huxley
- It’s been years — considered a long time in tech — since Apple delivered a “mind-blowing” product that made a cultural dent, some say, harking back to the iPad in 2010 and iPhone in 2007. ~ Jon Swartz, USA Today, 4 October 2012
Seriously? “It’s been years….” You mean it’s been, like TWO years before that article was written and FOUR years before today, since Apple changed everything. All over again? Geez, what a bunch of slackers they are.
The discontented child cries for toasted snow. – Arabian proverb
All this ingratitude reminds me of a joke:
- A woman was driving down the street in a sweat because she had an important meeting and couldn’t find a parking place. Looking up toward heaven, she said, “Lord, take pity on me. If you find me a parking place, I will go to church every Sunday for the rest of my life and give up sex and tequila.” Miraculously, a parking place appeared. She looked up again and said, “Never mind. I found one.”
Claim Chowder
Here are some past quotes regarding “evolutionary” vs. “revolutionary”. They haven’t stood the test of time very well.
An ungrateful man is like a hog under a tree eating acorns, but never looking up to see where they come from. ~ Timothy Dexter
- (T)he iPhone itself may not be so great after all. ~ Randall Stross, professor of business at San Jose State University, 12 December 2009
The iPad is not the revolutionary product so many hoped it would be. ~ Don Reisinger, eWeek.com, 28 January 2010
Yet for some of us who sat in the audience watching Steve Jobs introduce the [iPad], the whole thing felt like a letdown. ~ Daniel Lyons, BusinessWeek, 28 January 2010
Ultimately, the iPad is a large iPod touch: a great device to draw your inspiration from, but perhaps not the seismic shift in technology that we were expecting. ~ Claudine Beaumont, The Telegraph, 28 January 2010
The company once notorious for its ability to upend convention and revolutionize markets may no longer have what it takes, worry some technology journalists. Call it the iPad or the iPlod, but the message seems clear: Apple may have lost its mojo. ~ Jeremy A. Kaplan, FOXNews.com, 28 January 2010
Behold: The Apple iFlop. Neither “truly magical” nor “revolutionary,” the cluelessly named Apple iPad tablet device has dropped like a shiny wedge into the gadget game, dividing tech watchers in to opposing views — the critical and the adoring. ~ Scott Moritz, TheStreet.com, 28 January 2010
Apple’s new iPad device is destined to disappoint (and not just because of the unfortunate name). ~ Russ Wilcox, CEO E-Ink (makers of Amazon’s Kindle), 28 January 2010
It’s not going to revolutionize anything, it’s not going to replace netbooks… ~ Bruce Beris, bruceb consulting, 4 February 2010
Tablets look cool, but the reality is they don’t do anything new. ~ Michael Comeau, Minyanville, 5 March 2010
- The iPad is a not so ‘magical’ e-reader. Expect to hear a lot of: ‘I spent a cold night in line for this?’ ~ Scott Moritz , TheStreet.com, 9 March 2010
(T)he Apple iPad is not unique, nor necessarily the best of breed in the media tablet sector it is spearheading. ~ Anders Bylund (TMF Zahrim), 11 March 2010
And while Apple would be expected to ignite the tablet computing sector as it has done with MP3 players and the smart phone, there is something it can no longer do: sneak up and surprise the competition. There is no surprise with this device; it is just a huge iPod touch. ~ John C. Dvorak, MarketWatch, 26 March 2010
In short, I don’t get the ‘magical and revolutionary’ vibe that Apple chief executive Steve Jobs touted at the iPad’s January unveiling. ~ Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post, 9 April 2010
The iPad is useless. Beautiful, but useless. ~ Josh Belzman, MSNBC.com, 20 May 2010
Right off the bat, I’m glad to see that my initial reactions to [the iPad] were accurate. Anyone who believes this thing is a game changer is a tool. ~ Paul Thurrott, Paul Thurrott’s Supersite for Windows, 6 October 2010
I cannot see a need for the thing [iPad]. ~ John Dvorak, MarketWatch, 22 October 2010
I can’t imagine anyone under the age of 30 wanting an iPad. … Furthermore, I do not recall ever seeing anyone under 30 actually using an iPad. ~ John C. Dvorak, PC Mag, 13 December 2010
But I don’t see any overwhelmingly compelling capabilities that would make people sitting on the tablet fence go out and have to buy one, despite some attractive apps. I don’t see this as heads above the competition (especially the Xoom) right now. Apple didn’t really move the bar all that much. ~ J. Gold, J. Gold Associates, 2 March 2011
The iPhone is heralded as the most revolutionary mobile phone in human history, but the cold and harsh truth is that for all the cheering and punditry, the iPhone’s impact on the world is negligible. ~ Thom Holwerda, OS News, 29 Dec 2011
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- Apple’s new iPhone 5 is a well-crafted device that’s likely to please the company’s fans and sell in the tens of millions. But if you’re looking for something truly innovative in a smartphone, look elsewhere. ~ Troy Wolverton, Mercury News, 12 Sep 2012
Key take aways: Innovation at Apple is over… Just incremental improvements, nothing ground breaking. The best is over for Apple. ~ Trip Chowdhry, Global Equities, 23 October 2012
And I’m really struck by this mini iPad thing. As if that’s any kind of a product innovation. You know, once you start just changing the size of your products, I really think you’re not exactly innovating. I wonder if they’re going to start coming out with the tutti-frutti iPad, where it comes out in different colors. As if that would be some sort of innovation… ~ Jeff Gundlach, CEO, Doubleline Capital, 7 Nov 2012
However, for the company to truly move forward as a tech power, Apple should hang-up on the iPhone after one more iteration – presumably the iPhone 6. You might disagree. Granted, the phone is still selling well. However, aside from a different chip and larger screen, the change from the 4S to iPhone 5 was not that significant. ~ Richard Saintvilus, Forbes, 6 January 2013
Google glasses may look and seem absurd now but (Brian) Sozzi says they are “a product that is going to set the stage for many other interesting products.” For the moment, at least, the same cannot be said of iPhones or iPads. ~ Jeff Macke, Yahoo! Breakout, 27 February 2013
Enterprise tablets now exist that provide the best of both worlds between end user and IT, which puts the Apple in a precarious position of needing to add more robust enterprise features. Until that point, Moor Insights & Strategy recommends enterprises re-evaluate their iPad pilots and deployments. Enterprises should immediately evaluate the latest enterprise tablet offerings from HP, Dell and Lenovo and make their decisions on future deployments incorporating those additional options. ~ Patrick Moorhead, Moor Insights & Strategy, 15 March 2013
Nothing new is coming from [Apple’s] pipeline. The iPhone5S and the iPad Mini aren’t new products. ~ Stephan Dube, Seeking Alpha, 28 May 2013
Let’s face it this new iPhone is just an upgrade, a refresh, dare I say a sequel. I am sure that true tech devotees will tell me how wrong I am, that this new device is smarter, faster, revolutionary, etc. But to me and millions like me it seems a lot more evolutionary. It looks a whole lot like the last iPhone and the one before that and the one before that too. ~ Sandy Cannold, ABC News, 23 Sept 2013
(T)hese days, Samsung sells the most smartphones, and up-and-coming manufacturers like Huawei and ZTE are nipping at Apple’s heels. The new iPhones — at least the ones being spun from the rumor mill that claim color as the big innovation — do not exactly sound like great leaps in technology. ~ Nick Bilton, New York Times, 8 September 2013
Remember when the iPhone was truly innovative? Think hard, because you’d have to go back to 2007, and the release of the first iPhone. But since then, Apple has been tossing out retread after retread… ~ Paul Thurrott, Supersite for Windows, 13 September 2013
The 5c may be this year’s Surface RT. ~ Rick Munarriz, The Motley Fool, 13 Sept 2013
Apple’s innovation problem is real. … Rivals have caught up to Apple in the markets it once dominated, and the tech giant’s rumored future products appear to be more evolutionary than revolutionary. ~ Julianne Pepitone and Adrian Covert, CNNMoneyTech, 8 September 2013
The most that Apple could think to do with the new, faster processor in the iPhone 5S was animate 3D effects that make some users feel ill and a fingerprint sensor that solved a problem that wasn’t exactly pressing. Apple’s new iOS7 mobile operating system, which felt ‘more like a Microsoft release,’ crippled many older iPhones and led to complaints of planned obsolescence. ~ Christopher Mims, Quartz, 30 December 2013
By copying the work of others, Apple seems to admit it has fallen behind competitors. ~ Transcend Asset, 5 June 2014
Lessons Learned And Unlearned
I can think of (at least) three lessons here.
First, little people belittle greatness.
To belittle, you have to be little. ~ Khalil Gibran
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. ~ Benjamin Franklin
Ridicule is the tribute paid to…genius by the mediocrities. ~ Oscar Wilde
Little men with little minds and little imaginations go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds. ~ Zig Ziglar
Second, we often do not see what is right before our eyes.
You see, but you do not observe. ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Third, acceptance comes in stages.
All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; Third, it is accepted as self-evident. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Apple Claim Chowder Series:
Introduction
Events
Killers
Cynicism
Product
Evolutionary Or Revolutionary
Business Models
Apple Claim Chowder: Product
With an Apple Event fast approaching, I’m reviewing critiques of past Apple Events to see how accurate they were. Turns out, not very. Critique is needed and welcome. Repeated errors? Not so much.
Product
Apple’s products receive a lot of criticism and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. Some of the criticism seems unfair to me but I usually refrain from commenting since values are both individual and subjective. However, perhaps it is worth noting that:
For all that Android has improved, and we see the difference as a matter of taste, iPhone still outsells Android at the same price 3:1 ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) ~ 3/30/14
Some of the criticism of Apple’s products is objectively flawed. The first mistake critics routinely make is to hyper-focus on a single missing or underdeveloped feature and then declare the entire product useless or dead on arrival. The world isn’t black and white. Not every feature is essential and not every flaw is fatal.
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. ~ William James
Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life. ~ Edward L. Bernays
If you see the world in black and white, you’re missing important grey matter. ~ Jack Fyock
The second mistake critics make is even more embarrassing. Critics often flat out get a product’s priorities wrong. They misinterpret the job the product is being hired to do and promote a particular feature or set of features as essential when, in fact, those features are less than essential and are sometimes actually an impediment to the product’s long-term success. I’ve highlighted features such as keyboards and Flash, below, but the “island of misfit features” is very crowded indeed.
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. ~ Goethe
Knowledge is power only if man knows what facts not to bother with. ~ Robert Staughton Lynd
Products get bloated one lazy decision at a time. ~ @destraynor
Critics think the flaw lies in the product but quite often it is the analysis, not the product, that is critically flawed.
Specs
Sometimes highly technical people forget that the world is not comprised of highly technical people. ~ Wes Miller (@getwired)
Specs are a ceiling. You’ve got to have them in order to get great performance and without them, your potential is limited. However, specs are not a floor. The greatest specs in the world are no guarantee of a great product. Many products have a very high ceiling but a very low floor. In other words, they have great specs but their actual benefit to the user is very low. A focus on specs as the be-all-end-all of a product has led to some poor analysis, as we’ll see, below.
Never underestimate the power of a simple tool. ~ Craig Bruce
- Top iPhone Killers
1. LG GD900
2. Samsung Pixon12
3. Samsung OMNIA HD
4. Sony Ericsson Satio
5. HTC Touch HD
In order to be considered an a iPhone Killer, the phone must have a large touchscreen. And provide something unique that’s not found in an iPhone, whether it’s GPS, higher data rate, vibration feedback, video recording, HD video, higher resolution camera, etc.iPhoneKiller.com, 1 June 2009
Author’s Note: Notice how the criteria used to define an “iPhone Killer” is entirely based on specs and features.
- Google phone Nexus One, whose launch is one of the most-awaited ones in 2010, boasts of tech specs that make iPhone look like a wimp. ~ Nick Brown, IB Times, 30 Dec 2009
Nothing from the iPad specs that I’ve seen really shows any great cause for celebration. ~ John Breeden II, Government Computer News, 28 January 2010
We very carefully chose our tablet processor, the Nvidia Tegra 2, and to really compete it will take [Apple] some time. You know, [Nvidia] is well known for graphics. ~ Jonney Shih, Asustek Computer, 3 February 2011
Technically Playbook is already on a par with iPad and the new devices will be based on its OS. ~ John Criswick, CEO, Magmic, 19 March 2012
- Watch the iPhone 5 launch with a critical eye, and you’ll see a device that has a smaller less-brilliant screen than competitors. It has a slower CPU and graphics processor. It’s more fragile. ~ Rob Enderle, Digital Trends, 15 Sep 2012
Google has beat Apple at its own Retina-display-thumping game. Meet the Nexus 7, the eye-popping 323-pixels-per-inch wonder. ~ Brooke Crothers, CNET, 27 July 2013
Mo(o)re computing power no longer makes technology feel better, so ‘design’ is how we choose. ~ johnmaeda (@johnmaeda)
Features
Engineers want power and they will sacrifice simplicity in order to get it. Giving up simplicity is really not much of a sacrifice for them since they thrive in complexity anyway.
I think a nerd is a person who uses the telephone to talk to other people about telephones. And a computer nerd therefore is somebody who uses a computer in order to use a computer. ~ Douglas Adams
Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems. ~ Scott Adams
Most people do not have the mind-set of an Engineer. They/we don’t want to work on their computer. They just want their computers to work.
- ’RIM didn’t expect iPhone to take off the way it did because it was so badly flawed from Day One,’ the former RIM employee said. ‘They believed that users wanted great battery life, great security, great mail handling, minimal network use, and a great keyboard experience. They never expected users didn’t care.’ ~ Former RIM Employee, according to Reuters, 16 March 2011
[A]s designers and engineers in general, we’re guilty of designing for ourselves too often. ~ Bill Moggridge
People get to buy the products they want, not the products engineers think they should want. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
KEYBOARD
Keyboards are a prime example of where the iPhone and iPad critics got it wrong. Critics viewed the keyboard in isolation and concluded that keyboards were superior to typing on glass (which they are). Consumers viewed the product as a whole and concluded that it was worth giving up the keyboard in order to get all the many other advantages afforded by a large, unfettered, touch screen display. The critics’ hyper-focus on features blinded them to the overall benefits being afforded to the consumer.
- iPhone which doesn’t look, I mean to me, I’m looking at this thing and I think it’s kind of trending against, you know, what’s really going, what people are really liking on, in these phones nowadays, which are those little keypads. ~ John C. Dvorak, 13 January 2007
As nice as the Apple iPhone is, it poses a real challenge to its users. Try typing a web key on a touchscreen on an Apple iPhone, that’s a real challenge. You cannot see what you type ~ Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO, Research in Motion, 7 November 2007
Not everyone can type on a piece of glass. Every laptop and virtually every other phone has a tactile keyboard. I think our design gives us an advantage. ~ Mike Lazaridis, Co-CEO, Research In Motion, 4 June 2008
We of course build plastic mock-ups that we show (to customers)…we had a slate form factor. The feedback was that for (our) customers it will not work because of the need to have (a physical) keyboard. These were 14-year-old kids, who, I thought, would be most willing to try a virtual keyboard but they said no, we want the physical keyboard. ~ Mika Majapuro, Worldwide Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Lenovo, 22 February 2010
The pure slate form factor has failed all these years because, other than for vertical applications, people want and/or need a keyboard for regular use. ~ Jonathan Yarmis, Ovum, part of Datamonitor Group, 6 April 2010
We’re finding — if you look at the surveys, you can see that large amount of the customers that have purchased touchscreen devices in last two years, they intend to get a device with the QWERTY keyboard on it now, right. I mean, they’ve got into a point where they’ve realize that a touchscreen alone is not enough; so that’s important. ~ Mike Lazaridis, Co-CEO, Research In Motion, Inc, 16 April 2010
[Computers in Education are] never going to work on a device where you don’t have a keyboard-type input. Students aren’t there just to read things. They’re actually supposed to be able to write and communicate. And so it’s going to be more in the PC realm—it’s going to be a low-cost PC that lets them be highly interactive. ~ Bill Gates, Former CEO, Microsoft, 25 June 2012
Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. ~ Clay Shirky
FLASH
- [Apple’s] decision not to support Flash…will have a limiting effect on the iPad’s sales potential. This is because one of the key use cases of the device, as marketed by Apple, relates to web browsing or consumption of online content. Absent Flash, iPad users will not be able to enjoy Flash-driven content, which is used in a considerable amount of websites as well as web-based games and videos. ~ Francis Sideco, Senior Principal Analyst, Consumer and Communications, iHS (now iSupply), 2 April 2010
For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that 7″ tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience. ~ Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO, Research In Motion, 20 October 2010
(W)hile Apple’s attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of web sites that use Flash. We think that customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple. ~ Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO, Research In Motion, 20 October 2010
Such a shame. Add this to the list of interesting places on the Internet you can’t see on your [iPad] device. Of course, if you had a Toshiba Tablet, you would enjoy the entire Internet. Yep, Flash sites too. ~ Toshiba ad when viewed on iPad, 22 January 2011
Despite Apple’s claims, Flash is and will be important on the Internet for many years. ~ J. Gold, J. Gold Associates, 2 March 2011
Since the experience of using an iPad is much more like using a computer, Apple’s (well perhaps Steve Jobs by himself) stubbornness to reject flash and not support many standard web widgets makes the experience on iPad inferior to a computer, bar portability. This is not the case for Android (and likely Windows 8). ~ Gutone, Seeking Alpha, 2 July 2012
All great truths begin as blasphemies. ~ George Bernard Shaw
SECURITY
- They are in a pickle. Their pickle is security. When the first big security flaw even happens in one of the large enterprises, you will see this turn around. Wait for the day this happens. ~ Thorsten Heins, CEO, Research In Motion, 29 Jan 2012
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. ~ Upton Sinclair
Toy
New products are often dismissed as being nothing more than mere “toys”. Here’s the thing — it’s not much of an insult ’cause people really, really like toys.
The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play. ~ Arnold J. Toynbee
My childhood may be over, but that doesn’t mean playtime is. ~ Ron Olson
Thought exercise: Try to picture the above scene with the participants using pre-2007 phones. Pre-2010 tablets. Netbooks. A Surface Pro 3.
- The iPhone is an expensive toy for the wealthy and self-indulgent… Michael Pachter, Wedbush Morgan Securities, 14 August 2007
Apple’s iPad 2… (is) still just a toy. ~ Zach Epstein, Boy Genius 2 March 2011
(S)top with the iCoolAde, it’s a toy. ~ Shogan, TechTalk, 5 July 2011
Apple…doesn’t want you to realize that Steve Jobs’ ‘magical’ toy is really just a Margaritaville frozen drink maker. ~ Rick Aristotle The Motley Fool, 7 July 2011
I remain very confident in the future of anything of which it is said ‘you can’t use that to do real work’ ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
Lessons Learned And Unlearned
In [computing] as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others. ~ paraphrasing André Maurois
Tech companies — even great tech companies — make two great mistakes. They build great products and they build great products that they, themselves, love.
Doesn’t sound like a mistake at all, right? Only here’s the thing. The twin questions that these companies should be asking is What and by Whom ((paraphrasing Jean Louis Gassee who is, himself, paraphrasing Horace Dediu)):
- What is the job the product is being hired to do; and
- Who is doing the hiring?
As counter-intuitive as it sounds, no one wants to buy a great product — they don’t care about specs or features. They care about whether the product does the job. And they care about whether the product does the job that THEY want done, not the job the creator of the product THINKS they want to do.
I don’t think the jobs iPads are hired to do in business are understood. ~ Horace Dediu (@asymco)
If it can’t do any useful job then it won’t get hired. Conversely, if it nails an unmet job, it will be blindingly successful. ~ Horace Dediu (@asymco)
Critics who focus on feeds and speeds rather than needs; who focus on features rather than benefits; are never going to get it right because they’re focused on the product when they should be focused on the consumer of that product.
The aim…is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself. ~ Peter Drucker
Apple Claim Chowder Series:
Introduction
Events
Killers
Cynicism
Product
Evolutionary Or Revolutionary
Business Models
Apple Claim Chowder: Cynicism
With an Apple Event fast approaching, I’m reviewing critiques of past Apple Events to see how accurate they were. Turns out, not very. Critique is needed and welcome. Repeated errors? Not so much.
Cynicism
All companies suffer from the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism. However, some companies seem to suffer more than their unfair share.
If a fool has a hump, nobody notices it; if the wise man has a pimple, everybody talks about it. ~ Russian
It is unwise to hold a company in disdain if you are trying to analyze that company. Yet I routinely see Apple labeled and dismissed by the very people who are supposed to be objectively evaluating them.
Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment. ~ Mario Puzo
Many of Apple’s critics think Apple’s success is based upon the foolishness of its customers. It’s a bizarre, but widely repeated — and widely accepted — theory.
A meaningless phrase repeated again and again begins to resemble truth. ~ Barbara Kingsolver
There’s a strong element of cognitive dissonance at work here:
- We don’t like Apple’s products;
- We’re rational;
- Apple’s customer’s like Apple’s products;
- Therefore: Apple’s customer’s must be irrational.
We often challenge the perceptions of others, but only very rarely question our own. ~ Dr. Mardy
Cognitive dissonance is a form of mental jujitsu that lets us flip our weaknesses and turn them into the weaknesses of others. If we don’t understand why someone does what they do, we don’t think of it as a lack of knowledge on our part, we think of it as a lack of knowledge on their part. Why should we question our own understanding of how things work and take the time to learn more about how others think when we can confidently assert that they don’t think at all?
Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack. ~ George S. Patton
Here’s the deal. Apple has well over 800 million active customers and they’re rapidly approaching the billion mark. That’s an awful lot of people voting for Apple with their hard-earned cash.
Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. ~ Stephen Colbert
Apple’s customers are not part of a cult. They’re not mindless fans or slaves to fashion. Neither are they victims of Apple’s Houdini-like marketing or Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field. They’re not to be mocked or dismissed out of hand.
If we want to understand Apple, we need to understand why Apple attracts so many customers and why those customers are so very loyal to Apple. And if we don’t want to understand Apple, that’s fine too. But if we’re going to stop thinking, we need to stop talking too.
If you don’t think too good, don’t think too much. ~ Ted Williams
Claim Chowder
Cult
I just have to wonder who will want one of these things [an iPhone] (other than the religious faithful). … So please mark this post and come back in two years to see the results of my prediction… ~ Richard Sprague, Senior Marketing Director, Microsoft, January 2007
I think this will appeal to the Apple acolytes, but this is essentially just a really big iPod Touch. ~ Charles Golvin, Forreter Research, 27 January 2011
For those of us without Apple tattoos, the reaction to Apple’s new iPhone 3G S, announced on Monday, seems to look pretty unanimous. ‘That’s it?’ ~ Nick Mokey, Digital Trends, 8 June 2009
The whole Apple cult is starting to creep me out. ~ Brett Arends, Wall Street Journal, 22 December 2010
As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly. ~ Proverbs 26:11
Fans
It’s the loyalists who keep promoting this device as if it is going to be anything other than another phone in a crowded market. And it’s exactly the crowded-market aspect of this that analysts seem to be ignoring. There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive. ~ John C. Dvorak, MarketWatch, 28 March 2007
It’ll sell a couple million units to the many people who have wet dreams about Steve Jobs, and that will be about it. ~ Matt Maroon, MattMaroon.com , 7 May 2007
This morning, the fool’s parade gets started. Apple is taking online “pre-orders” for its iPad tablet, which is supposed to begin shipping on April 3. ~ Galen Gruman, InfoWorld, 12 March 2010
Now with Android better suited to low spec hardware and commodisation of smartphones seeing powerful handsets available at bargain prices, starting with Android could well shift from a cautionary tale to powerful gateway drug. At that point blind loyalty would be almost impossible. Even for self-confessed iSheep. ~ Gordon Brown, Forbes, 21 March 2014
When [logical] ammunition runs low, inevitably the rusty artillery of abuse is wheeled into action. ~ Wallace Stevens
Fashion
Consumers are not used to paying another couple hundred bucks more just because Apple makes a cool product. Some fans will buy it, but for the rest of us it’s a hard pill to swallow just to have the coolest thing. ~ Neil Strother, NPD Group, 22 January 2007
The iPhone is going to be nothing more than a temporary novelty that will eventually wear off. ~ Gundeep Hora, CoolTechZone Editor-in-Chief, 2 April 2007
That’s really all Apple’s iStuff is — an enormous and very profitable fad. It’s the Pet Rock of the new millennium. ~ Anders Bylund, Motley Fook, 6 Mar 2012
If you’re an image-conscious hipster/rebel/brand-monkey and you don’t use the AT&T network in the SF Bay Area, the iPhone is a great choice, especially if you need obscure apps. ~ Scott Adams, Creator of Dilbert, 17 August 2011
Apple does what it does well, and then sluffs off everything else — like getting e-mail and actually making a call on the iPhone. Succeeding with that sort of hauteur and dismissiveness is awfully dependent on charisma and sex appeal, an expensive proposition in a commodified market. ~ Michael Wolff, USA Today, 11 Nov 2012
You can’t use the iPhone 5C to make your friends feel bad about themselves, and that’s creating a problem for Apple. ~ Kim Bhasin, Huffington Post , 23 October 2013
Apple iPad Fad Is Over. ~ Robert McGarvey, Main Street, 14 August 2014
My definition of a stupid person. A stupid person is a person who treats a smart person as though they’re stupid. ~ Errol Morris
Hype
I can’t believe the hype being given to iPhone. ~ Richard Sprague, Senior Marketing Director, Microsoft, January 2007
That’s the problem with hyping a product before it comes out. It’s bound to disappoint no matter how good it is… ~ Brent Schlender, Fortune, 30 May 2007 (11 June 2007 Print Edition)
God himself could not design a device that could live up to all the hype that the iPhone has gotten… ~ Harvard computer science professor David Platt told Reuters, 25 June 2007
What an utter disappointment and abysmal failure of an Apple product. How can Steve Jobs stand up on that stage and hype this [iPad] product up and not see everything this thing is not and everything this thing is lacking? ~ Orange County Web Design Blog, 27 January 2010
For all the hype about an Apple tablet, it is at best a niche product. The world doesn’t need an Apple tablet, no matter what the hype about rumored features or regardless of what actually releases (if anything). ~ Joe Wilcox, Betanews, 2 January 2010
Don’t Believe the iPad Hype. Apple has sold out pre-orders of the forthcoming device, but it could all be a marketing tactic. ~ Mike Schuster, Minyanville.com, 29 March 2010
I don’t get it. It costs $500 for the basic model, when you could get a laptop with a lot more functionality for about the same price. The iPad hype machine has been in full effect this week, and I still think it’s just that—hype. If I turn out to be wrong, I’ll gladly eat my words, but I’m pretty sure that I’m not wrong. ~ Alex Cook, Seeking Alpha, 3 April 2010
The man who questions opinions is wise. The man who quarrels with facts is a fool. ~ Frank Garbutt
Marketing
‘Mum, the iPad is not ‘amazing.’ It’s just marketed very well, both by Apple and its culpable partners in mainstream media. ~ Paul Thurrott (in response to comment by Mum), Paul Thurrott’s Super Site for Windows, 26 April 2010
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. ~ Charles Darwin
Reality Distortion Field
From my perch, the market’s very favorable reaction to Apple’s iPhone is yet another example of disbelief being suspended … on the Street of Dreams. ~ Doug Kass, The Street, 17 Jan 2007
The reality distortion field will fade. People will come back to their senses and ask what really matters to them in a mobile. The answers will be basics, like good telephony, long battery life, small size and low price. Which of these attributes apply to the iPhone? ~ Joe Wilcox, Microsoft Watch, 10 January 2007
Apparently Steve Jobs had a lifelong battle with reality, and won ~ Scott Adams
Wealthy
The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. ~ Matthew Lynn, Bloomberg, 15 January 2007
The iPhone is an expensive toy for the wealthy and self-indulgent… ~ Michael Pachter, Wedbush Morgan Securities, 14 August 2007
It seems like a high priced, unnecessary trinket to me. ~ Paul Thurrott, SuperSite for Windows, 27 January 2010
[The iPad is a] device for people who have more money than brains. ~ Alex Valentine, /dev/null, 28 January 2010
Apple is great if you’ve got a lot of money and live on an island. ~ Andy Lark, Global Head of Marketing for Large Enterprises and Public Organisations, Dell, 29 March 2011
It’s a nice-to-have product, for those of us who don’t have a budget… ~ Ashok Kumar, Analyst, Rodman & Renshaw LLC, 12 November 2010
If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool. ~ Carl Jung
Lessons Learned And Unlearned
I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb…and I also know I’m not blonde. ~ Dolly Parton
Apple is like Dolly Parton in the sense that they know they’re not dumb and they know something about themselves that we haven’t yet discovered. If we want to understand Apple’s success, we have to stop insulting them and their customers and start questioning our understanding of them instead. Here are some lessons to get us started.
First, never assume that what is right for you is right for others.
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Second, if we don’t understand someone’s motivations, assume that it is due to a lack of understanding on our part, not due to a lack of intelligence on their part. Just because we don’t understand a thing doesn’t mean that it can’t be understood.
The things we know best are those we have not learned. ~ Luc de Clapiers
Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right. ~ Laurens Van der Post
Third, never stop learning, never stop questioning. Certainty ends thinking. Doubt is the beginning of wisdom.
It is easier to be critical than correct. ~ Benjamin Disraeli. ~ Benjamin Disraeli
No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions. ~ Charles Steinmetz
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. ~ Voltaire
Doubt is the origin of wisdom. ~ René Descartes
Apple Claim Chowder Series:
Introduction
Events
Killers
Cynicism
Product
Evolutionary Or Revolutionary
Business Models
Apple Claim Chowder: Killers
With an Apple Event fast approaching, I’m reviewing critiques of past Apple Events to see how accurate they were. Turns out, not very. Critique is needed and welcome. Repeated errors? Not so much.
Killers
There is a long, sordid history of products being introduced as iPod, iPhone, and iPad Killers. You know the deal. Product “X” is introduced and it will be an Apple Killer because hypothetical products of the future are always superior to Apple products of today, yada, yada, yada. The problem with this theory is that repeated experience has shown that it just ain’t so.
The only thing experience teaches us is that experience teaches us nothing. ~ Andre Maurois
My rule of thumb is that a product isn’t real until it 1) has a ship date; 2) has a firm price; and 3) has been reviewed by independent third parties.
In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation. ~ Voltaire
You would think that critics would want to wait until AFTER they had gotten their hands on a product, and perhaps even wait until AFTER they had received some actual sales numbers, before declaring said product a “killer” of anything. But no. Why wait when one can be so wrong, so far ahead of time?
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as Sherlock Holmes, From “A Scandal in Bohemia”
Below is a rogue’s list some past Apple “Killers”, grouped by company. I am quite confident that critics have learned nothing from the past and that they will soom be adding many more “Killers” to the list come this Fall. Critics and competitors alike should remember the words of Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (attributed) before declaring any product an Apple “Killer”:
No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.
Amazon
If everything that we have heard about the upcoming Kindle tablet is true (upgraded Android front end, 7-inch touch screen, $250 price), we think AMZN will have another big product success. ~ Naked Value, 27 Sept 2011
Last year, we wanted to build the best tablet at a certain price. And, this year, we wanted to build the best tablet at any price. Take away the price and it’s still the best tablet. It also happens to be only $499. ~ Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon.com, 6 Sep 2012
Feature for feature – the latest Amazon) Kindle Fire is better than the latest iPad. ~ James Altucher, Seeking Alpha, 27 January 2013
Amazon is well on its way to effectively replicate Apple’s business model. ~ Victor Anthony, Topeka Capital, 25 September 2013
Blackberry
But when it comes right down to it, the BlackBerry Storm will be the superior mobile device and represents a true iPhone killer. ~ Andrew Hickey, ChannelWeb, 14 Nov 2008
At today’s BlackBerry developer’s event, RIM announced their iPad-beater: the PlayBook. ~ Brian Barrett, Gizmodo, 27 September 2010
Just the pent-up interest in the PlayBook is really overwhelming. ~ Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO, Research In Motion, 16 December 2010
The launch of Storm 3 gives RIMM the long-awaited answer to the iPhone and high-end Android devices. ~ Michael Li, Investing Blog, 16 January 2011
The sales of the PlayBook have been fantastic, we’ve re-ordered multiple times and it’s exceeded our expectations. ~ Ben McIntosh, Harvey Norman’s Computers, Australia, 22 Aug 2011
‘iPhone Killer’ BlackBerry 10 is here: iPhone is Dead! ~ Bob Brown, InfoWorld, 30 January 2013
Sorry Apple, the BlackBerry Z10 Is Hotter Than the iPhone. ~ Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo, 28 January 2013
BlackBerry 10 will be launching here in the US soon and I think they will increase their share to 3rd place and may even pass iOS in a couple years. ~ Matthew Miller, ZDNet, 14 February 2013
Google plans ‘to market a tablet of the highest quality’ in the next six months. ~ Eric Schmidt, Chairman, Google, 19 Dec 2011
Put simply, the Nexus 7 has redefined the mini-tablet category and raised the bar enough that it doesn’t matter whether Apple releases a Retina-class iPad mini this year or not. ~ Paul Thurrott, Paul Thurrott’s Supersite for Windows, 1 August 2013
If Galaxy Gear quickly creates a buzz, it will be hard not to look at the new iPhone and wonder why Apple is late to the smartwatch party. Samsung’s timing is beautifully calculated to challenge Cupertino. ~ Douglas Ehrman, Seeking Alpha, 5 September 2013
Hewlett Packard (HP)
8 Reasons Why Apple Should Fear HP/Palm… ~ Devin Connors, Tom’s Hardware, 7 May 2010
I hope one day people will say ‘this is as cool as HP’, not ‘as cool as Apple’. ~ Leo Apotheker, Hewlett Packard, 27 January 2011
In the PC world, with fewer ways of differentiating HP’s products from our competitors, we became number one; in the tablet world we’re going to become better than number one. We call it number one plus. ~ Eric Cador, Senior Vice President of the Personal Systems Group, Hewlett-Packard, 21 May 2011
Intel
iPad has come under additional pressure from Intel Bay Trail tablets. iPad’s future may hinge on whether ARM foundries can catch up to Intel. ~ Mark Hibben, Seeking Alpha, 30 April 2014
Apple’s A7 64 bit processor was a breakthrough last year, but this year Apple will face competition from Android phones running 64 bit Intel and Qualcomm processors. ~ Mark Hibben, Seeking Alpha, 20 June 2014
Microsoft
Apple iPhone Doomed To Failure — Windows Mobile 7 Plans For 2009 Leaked. ~ Mitchell Ashley, NetworkWorld, 11 January 2008
We are not at all worried. We think we’ve got the one mobile platform you’ll use for the rest of your life. They are not going to catch up. ~ Scott Rockfeld, Microsoft Mobile Communications Group Product Manager, 1 April 2008
About 20 million devices will ship with Windows Mobile on it. We will outsell the iPhone. ~ Robbie Bach, Microsoft, 8 June 2008
7 Reasons Why The Windows 7 Phone Is THE iPhone Killer. ~ Jamie Riddell, CEO of Digital Tomorrow Today, 16 March 2010
Microsoft workers celebrated the release to manufacturing of Windows Phone 7 last week by parading through their Redmond campus with iPhone and BlackBerry hearses. ~ Microsoft Employees, Microsoft, 10 September 2010
For the first time since its introduction in 2007, Apple’s iPhone is going to take a backseat at AT&T as Ma Bell prepares a glitzy launch of three Microsoft Windows 7 phones. ~ Scott Moritz, TheStreet.com, 1 October 2010
The Lumia 900 and its successors will help Microsoft to reclaim the number 2 (replacing iOS) ranking in smartphone operating system market share in 2015. ~ Wayne Lam, IHS analyst, 19 Jan 2012
Having a secure Windows tablet that works with all the Windows applications — we’re hearing a lot of demand for that and we think that will be quite attractive. ~ Michael Dell, CEO, Dell, 9 March 2012
If Microsoft could ship today, Surface would send ripples across the tablet marketplace. ~ Joe Wilcox, Beta News, 19 June 2012
Author’s Note: The Titanic sent ripples too.
Author’s Note: Please be certain to check out the device used to send the above tweet.
Lookout Apple, Here Comes Microsoft: Surface Tablets Break Into Top-5 ~ Gary Krakow, The Street, 2 May 2013
Microsoft can better give what a lot of folks wanted in the initial iPad – a single product solution – and with a price/legacy software tradeoff that Apple doesn’t have in a similar product. ~ Rob Enderle, TG Daily, 30 September 2013
IDC reports that Windows Phone sales dropped by 9.4 percent in Q2 2014 compared to the same period last year. They’re now at just 2.5 percent.
And the Surface? $1.7 billion in losses…and counting.
Motorola
I believe that this device (Droid) is the best smartphone on the market today. ~ Sanjay Jha, Co-CEO, Motorola, 28 October 2009
iDon’t have a real keyboard.
iDon’t run simultaneous apps.
iDon’t take night shots.
iDon’t allow open development.
iDon’t customize.
iDon’t run widgets.
iDon’t have interchangeable batteries.
Everything iDon’t…Droid does.
Verizon, 18 October 2009
So I’ve got this DROID X. And I have to say, suddenly, I get it. I understand why this thing is surpassing the iPhone as we speak. ~ Paul Thorrott, Paul Thorrott’s SuperSite for Windows, 21 September 2010
iPad Killer: Truly, Really, I mean It. …Motorola’s new XOOM tablet is poised to become THE best non iPad tablet on the market when it ships later this year. ~ Jim Louderback, Huffington Post, 6 January 2011
Given what I’ve seen of Honeycomb and Motorola’s excellent tablet, Cupertino will have some serious catching up to do with their iPad 2. ~ J.P. Mangalindan, Fortune, 4 February 2011
Nokia
Nokia may hasten the end of the Apple revolution. ~ Kofi Bofah, Seeking Alpha , 30 October 2013
Palm
You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later. ~ Major Palm investor & co-founder of Elevation Partners, Roger McNamee, 5 Mar 2009
The Palm Pre Will Be an iPhone Killer ~ Ross Catanzariti, PC World, 2 Apr 2009
We have a really good opportunity to become No. 2 in tablets fairly quickly. Possibly No. 1. ~ Jon Rubinstein, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Palm Global Business Unit, HP, 23 June 2011
Samsung
Imagine Samsung introducing revolutionary new lines of mobile phones and tablet computers with twice the battery life of Apple devices! Imagine colors more vivid than you have ever seen in any display before and half the thickness of Apple devices! The foregoing is not just a hyperbole; Samsung is pouring billions into making this happen. ~ Nigam Arora, Contributor, Forbes, 10 Feb 2012
Miscellaneous
Dvorak: ”I’m telling you, look at this product coming out of India called the Adam.”
Curry: “A-D-A-M?”
Dvorak: “Yeah.”
Curry: “And it’s a what it’s a pad?”
Dvorak: “It’s an iPad Killer. And I hate to use that term since the iPad is probably dead anyway.
No Agenda Podcast, Adam Curry & John C. Dvorak, 25 February 2010
Our tablet will be better than the iPad. ~ Chang Ma, VP Marketing, LG, 20 August 2010
(W)ith a new, potentially more compelling tablet coming — the Cisco Cius — the iPad’s success in the corporate world could be short-lived. ~ Don Reisinger, Channel Insider, 5 August 2010
We have an extreme focus on the innovation of LePad and LePhone because these products will dominate the future market. ~ Liu Chuanzhi, Lenovo, 27 January 2011
According to data from research firm BITG, checks at 150 Verizon Wireless stores indicate that in some cases the Thunderbolt is outselling the iPhone 4. …the iPhone may have met its match. ~ Ed Oswald, technologizer.com, 1 April 2011
Sony, Lenovo, Dell to Launch ‘iPad Killers’ in 2011. ~ Paul Thurrott, WindowsIT Pro, 28 April 2011
We will prove that it’s not who makes the tablet first who counts, but who makes it better. ~ Howard Stringer, CEO, Sony, 31 Aug 2011
All in all, I am impressed with the new phone (Atrix 2). And I think Apple has reason to finally be scared of the competition. ~ Cullen Roche, Seeking Alpha, 25 October 2011
Exhibit A: Xiaomi’s MiPad. Although we could easily focus on Microsoft’s recently launched Surface Pro 3, Xiaomi’s recently unveiled MiPad is an equally serious, if not more so, threat to the iPad Mini. ~ Andrew Tonner, The Motley Fool, 26 May 2014
That which does not kill me, makes me stronger ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Lessons Learned And Unlearned
First, don’t call anything a “Killer”. That term has overstayed its welcome. There will be product killers in the future, but we’ll only know that after the fact, not before.
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ~ Andre Gide
Second, can we not just wait until a product exists before we compare it to an existing product? Seriously. What is our major malfunction?
Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the reason is that you’re stupid and make bad decisions. ~ Bill Murray (@BiIIMurray)
Third, unreasonable people should not be reasoned with. They should be mocked.
You can always reason with a Troll. You can always reason with a barnyard animal, too, for all the good it does.
Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out. ~ Sydney Smith
Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone. ~ Ayn Rand
Apple Claim Chowder Series:
Introduction
Events
Killers
Cynicism
Product
Evolutionary Or Revolutionary
Business Models
The 5.5 Inch iRemote For The Apple Home
You want to talk about Apple. I understand. They are the biggest tech company in the world. Their products are used by hundreds of millions. Oh, and next week there’s — OMG! — a major Apple event, not at Moscone Center in San Francisco but at Flint Center in Cupertino, the very same location where the original Mac was introduced and where the phoenix-like (i)Mac was introduced, and this can only mean…
A new Mac?
How can that be?
We are all expecting an iWatch.
And a large, new iPhone.
Two!
Some of us are even expecting an iPad XL, complete with badly needed split-screen, multitasking function. Tim Cook has repeatedly promised us new products, after all. We are 14 years beyond Y2K. Macs are borderline inconsequential in our glorious new world. Apple can’t possibly be putting the Mac at center stage, can they?
Unlikely, but kudos for cleverly diverting our attention.
Oh, glorious Apple. Stoking the rumors, week after week. Divvying out the “leaks” bit by bit. Building our excitement. Inciting our lust until…shazam!
Something totally unexpected.
Fine. Two can play at that. Here’s my totally unexpected prediction: a 5.5-inch iRemote for the home.
Price? $299, including an Apple TV.
The $299 iRemote
Ben Bajarin says there will be no 5.5-inch iPhone “phablet.” I agree. Jony Ive resisted increasing the size of the original iPhone for years. Market demand forced his hand. The market now wants an even larger iPhone. Ive will once again be forced to capitulate.
A 4.7-inch iPhone should suffice.
An iPhone that size can retain most of Ive’s iconic design, support one handed use, at least for some, and have the additional benefit of offering a larger, longer lasting battery, which is sorely needed.
A 5.5-inch iPhone is nothing more than a twisted abomination of Ive’s design. I can’t believe this will happen. Unless the rumors of a 5.5-inch iPhone point instead to an entirely new device.
The Future Of The iPod
A remote control for the Apple-optimized home does not require one handed use. It needs only be light, mobile, affordable, possibly even unapologetically plastic.
Such a device can control your HomeKit-enabled appliances.
It replaces that wretched plastic Apple TV remote which has grown so useless even as Apple TV offers up so many more new content possibilities.
It’s the perfect size for tweeting while watching television. It encourages FaceTime calls.
Possibly, this device even supports multiple user accounts.
That Apple will finally offer “widgets,” which are optimized for both the small iWatch screen and glanceable CarPlay screens, may possibly work better on this new device as well.
The device also does not diminish iPhone sales, where Apple gets the bulk of its money from. Think of this as the future of the iPod, if that helps. Not quite an iPad, which is more personal, this new “iPod” belongs not to a person but to a home. It collects data, controls applications and commands other devices. Yes, even an Apple Television in time.
Instead of storing and presenting your music collection, this new iPod stores, presents and manipulates the collection of data from the family’s wearables, appliances, the Internet-connected thermostats, door cams, and lights. The iPod becomes the universal remote for the Apple optimized household.
Siri will be front-and center with this new iPod, encouraging you to tell her when to turn off the air conditioner, or for how long the oven temperature should be set. Plus, with iCloud, Apple suddenly becomes a leader not just in “machine learning” but more importantly, possesses a knowledge of people inside their homes that is truly unique.
Everywhere A Screen
I accept I may be completely wrong. Where a large iPhone ends, a small iPad begins, or how iPod evolves in a world with all of these is not as clear-cut as even Apple marketing would have us believe. My strength lies not in predicting new technologies but in understanding how existing technologies will re-make the world, the economy, learning, work, power, joy.
Yet, as computing spreads into all areas of our lives, and burrows its way into all of our things, we need new and better devices to help take full advantage of their combined potential.
This is a unique Apple strength.
Time and again, Apple shows us how all our many technologies are supposed to work — for people, not for corporations or things or business models or the established order.
This is why I am reasonably confident that, whether Apple reveals an entirely new device, a deconstruction of an old one, or something in between or far beyond, it will matter. If not right away, soon.
Next week, the very moment Apple releases a larger iPhone of any size, tech bloggers will giddily point their finger and exclaim: “J’accuse! Apple copied! The iPhone phablet is copying the Samsung Note!”
This is willfully missing the point.
Lousy artists copy. Tech bloggers squeal. Sound and fury signifying nothing.
Mobile computing is barely into the Model T phase. Apple is helping to push us forward, mostly in positive ways — even when we think their latest product is just one more device in an already crowded market. We can’t know what we need till we have it, be it an iWatch, a phablet, an all new Mac, or, yes, a universal home remote.
We live in interesting times. They are about to get even more interesting.
Apple Claim Chowder: Events
With an Apple Event fast approaching, I’m reviewing critiques of past Apple events to see how accurate they were. Turns out, not very. Critique is needed and welcome. Repeated errors? Not so much.
Events
A book is a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you cannot expect an apostle to peer out. ~ George Christoph Lichtenberg
An Apple event is a mirror too. If an ass peers into it, you cannot expect an apostle to peer out.
Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks. ~ Mark Twain
WHAT WOULD JOBS DO?
Ever since Steve Jobs’ death, there has been an unfortunate tendency by some critics to create counterfactuals that compare the Apple of this world to an Apple still run by a living Steve Jobs. There seems to be an inverse relationship at work here. The less likely it was for a critic to understand and predict Steve Jobs’ actions while he was alive, the more likely it is for that same critic to claim they can channel Steve Jobs’ spirit from the beyond. Ironic, no?
Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity. ~ Frank Leahy
All this talk of trying to figure out what Steve Jobs would have done reminds me of a true story:
- For many years, a Franciscan priest by the name of Andrew Agnellus served as an adviser to the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) on religious affairs. One day, a BBC producer sent a memo to Father Agnellus asking how he might ascertain the official Catholic view of heaven and hell. The witty priest’s return memo said simply:
Die. ((Excerpt From: Andre Bernard. “Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes.”))
To those critics who truly wish to know what Steve Jobs is thinking now, I extend the same advice.
And he looked at me with those intense eyes that only he had, and he told me to never do that, to never ask what he would do. Just do what’s right. And so I’m doing that. ~ Tim Cook
Premature Predictions
For some reason, people can’t wait until they actually see and use a product before predicting it will fail. It’s like judging a wine before you’ve tasted it. Why we listen to these pre-predictions, I have no idea. But we do.
It’s generally a bad idea to have a strong opinion of a consumer product you have no experience of. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
Some past premature predictions:
- Apple is slated to come out with a new phone… And it will largely fail…. Sales for the phone will skyrocket initially. However, things will calm down, and the Apple phone will take its place on the shelves with the random video cameras, cell phones, wireless routers and other would-be hits… ~ Michael Kanellos, CNET, 7 December 2006
Apple will launch a mobile phone in January, and it will become available during 2007. … After a year a new version will be launched, but it will lack the innovation of the first and quickly vanish. The only question remaining is if, when the iPod phone fails, it will take the iPod with it. ~ Bill Ray, The Register, 26 December 2006
When Apple introduces its iPhone this month, will it pass the acid test? In my opinion, no. ~ Al Ries, AdAge Blogs, 18 June 2007
In fact, I’ll go far enough to say that, if the iPhone 5 looks like the pictures that have recently appeared, Apple may be screwed. ~ Henry Blodget, Daily Ticker, 30 July 2012
With Apple’s next smartphone still months away, fans have been gobbling up iPhone 6 rumors faster than Pac-Man on a power pill bender. However, even the hottest rumor mill in tech can’t turn this device into a winner. ~ Avram Piltch, LAPTOP Online Editorial Director, 14 March 2014
A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains. ~ Dutch proverb
All great ideas look like bad ideas to people who are losers. It’s always good to test a new idea with known losers to make sure they don’t like it. ~ Scott Adams
Speculation
If you believe everything you read, better not read. ~ Japanese Proverb
Speculation can be fun. Speculation can even be helpful. However, building elaborate arguments on unfounded speculation is like building a castle on shifting sands.
A foolish man, which built his house upon the sand. ~ The Bible, Matthew
When it comes to speculation, a couple of rules of thumb can be helpful:
It is better to debate a question without deciding it than to decide it without debating it. ~ Joseph Joubert
Exceptional claims demand exceptional evidence. ~ Christopher Hitchens
Better to trust the man who is frequently in error than the one who is never in doubt. ~ Eric Sevareid
Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time. – Haruki Murakami
Wrong
We don’t know what’s about to happen but we’ll pretend that we do. Then — when we’re proven wrong — we’ll still pretend we knew it all along.
If futurism is visionary, history is revisionary. ~ Bruce Sterling. ((Excerpt From: Robert Cottrell. “The Browser Book of Quotations.” The Browser, 2012.))
Here, for example, is what we thought the iPhone would look like:
Image From “iPhone Dreams: Renders from 2006 tell us everything about what we used to think a phone could be.”
No one remembers how wrong they were about the iPhone and the iPad. All they remember is the parts they got right — or the parts they re-imagined that they got right.
The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to truth. ~ Scott Adams
Any event, once it has occurred, can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian. ~ Lee Simonson
Even God cannot alter the past, though historians can. ~ Samuel Butler
Change
Whenever a prediction doesn’t pan out, we’ll simply claim we were absolutely right on the money, but Apple changed their mind at the last minute. What the Onion writes as parody, some Apple critics take as gospel:
- CUPERTINO, CA—Claiming that he completely forgot about the much-hyped electronic device until the last minute, a frantic Steve Jobs reportedly stayed up all night Tuesday in a desperate effort to design Apple’s new tablet computer. “Come on, Steve, just think—think, dammit—you’re running out of time,” the exhausted CEO said as he glued nine separate iPhones to the back of a plastic cafeteria tray. “Okay, yeah, this will work. This will definitely work. Just need to write ‘tablet’ on this little strip of masking tape here and I’m golden. Oh, come on, you piece of shit! Just stick already!” Middle-of-the-night sources reported that Jobs then began work on double-spacing his Keynote presentation and increasing the font size to make it appear longer.
Claiming that Apple suddenly changed its collective mind is not enough for some critics. Some will go further and claim that that a spiteful Apple changed its plans IN RESPONSE to a critic’s predictions.
When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it. ~ Bernard Bailey
The bottom line is, no matter what shows up on stage at an Apple Event, our predictions are never wrong.
Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love the truth. ~ Joseph Joubert
Delay
Here’s another dodge favored by critics — the old “nonexistent product delayed” trick. You know how it goes. We make an outlandish prediction. Said prediction doesn’t happen. Were we wrong in our prediction? Of course not! The predicted product was simply “delayed” almost certainly due to production issues on Apple’s part. The beauty of this claim is two-fold. We weren’t wrong. Apple is incompetent.
Some recent examples of this line of argument:
A fresh report from China’s Economic Daily News believes that Apple has indeed delayed the Retina iPad Mini’s launch until early 2014 because of the troubles it’s having. Apple can’t afford to wait that long. ~ Evan Niu, Motley Fool, 13 July 2013
Continued production issues may force Apple to delay ‘iWatch’ until 2015 ~ @appleinsider
When we risk no contradiction, It prompts the tongue to deal in fiction. ~ John Gay
Lessons Learned And Unlearned
People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they were willing actually to remain fools. ~ Alice Walker
Set aside your predictions and preconceptions. Go into the Event with an open mind. See what is, instead of what is missing, and go from there.
The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind. ~ E. B. White
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ T.Pratchett
Apple Claim Chowder Series:
Introduction
Events
Killers
Cynicism
Product
Evolutionary Or Revolutionary
Business Models
Apple Claim Chowder: Introduction
Apple has scheduled an Event for Tuesday, September 9, 2014. Apple’s Events attract critics the way a trailer park attracts tornados. Good analysis and insightful critiques are expected and welcome, however many critics merely repeat the same discredited arguments over and over and over again. Some people simply never learn from their mistakes. Which reminds me of a joke:
- An Apple critic with two very red ears went to his doctor. The doctor asked him what had happened.
“I was ironing a shirt and the phone rang,” he said. “But instead of picking up the phone, I accidentally picked up the iron and put it to my ear.”
“GEEZ!” the doctor exclaimed in disbelief. “So, what happened to your other ear?”
“Isn’t is obvious?” the critic replied. “I had to call you to schedule this appointment.”
Perhaps the above joke would be more apt if it were we, and not the critics, who had the red ears, for the critics seem to escape their repeated errors unscathed while it is we who end up getting burned year after year.
History is a very good teacher, but (it) has very few students. ~ Wael El-Manzalawy
This is the first in a series of articles that examines past claims and, having found them wanting, expounds upon lessons learned and unlearned. Future articles will group the critics’ claims into topics, but I’ll get things started by simply serving up some of the juiciest claim chowder of all time. Bon appétit.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Almost all of the linked material comes from the excellent iPhone Death Watch and iPad Death Watch Web sites maintained by AAPL Investors.net. Highly recommended reading.
Apple Claim Chowder
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. ~ Robert Benchley
Is there a toaster that also knows how to brew coffee? There is no such combined device, because it would not make anything better than an individual toaster or coffee machine. It works the same way with the iPod, the digital camera or mobile phone: it is important to have specialized devices. ~ Former Apple Vice President, iPod Division, now with Palm, Jon Rubenstein, September 27, 2005
We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in. ~ Palm CEO Ed Colligan, commenting on then-rumored Apple iPhone, 16 Nov 2006
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In our view, the appearance of the iPhone (or something like it) poses little risk to RIM’s business. ~ Chris Umiastowski, TD Securities, 12 December 2006
…I am not sure how [the iPhone] will stand against Sprint’s Wimax`(when it successfully launches) and its phones, which I am looking forward much more than over-hyped Apple iPhone. ~ Bhaskar Chitraju, Indews Broadcast, 18 January 2007
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The big competitors in the mobile-phone industry such as Nokia Oyj and Motorola Inc. won’t be whispering nervously into their clamshells over a new threat to their business. The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. ~ Matthew Lynn, Bloomberg, 15 January 2007
$500 fully subsidized with a plan! I said that is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard, which makes it not a very good email machine. ~ Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, 17 January 2007
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The iPhone will not substantially alter the fundamental structure and challenges of the mobile industry. ~ Charles Golvin, Forrester Research Inc, January 2007
The honeymoon is over for the iPhone. ~ Tim Moynihan, Crave, the Gadget Blog from Cnet 11 January 2007
Last year Apple’s iPhone sales alone were larger than the revenues at 474 of the companies in the S&P 500 stock index. ~ Eric Chemi of Bloomberg Businessweek
The iPhone’s willful disregard of the global handset market will come back to haunt Apple. ~ Tero Kuittinen, RealMoney.com, 18 January 2007
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I’m more convinced than ever that, after an initial frenzy of publicity and sales to early adopters, iPhone sales will be unspectacular… iPhone may well become Apple’s next Newton. ~ David Haskin, Computerworld, 26 February 2007
Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… ~ John C. Dvorak, 28 March 2007
Nobody is completely worthless. Some can be used as bad examples. ~ John Tigges
Apple begins selling its revolutionary iPhone this summer and it will mark the end of the string of hits for the company. ~ Todd Sullivan, Seeking Alpha, 15 May 2007
How do you deal with [the iPhone}? How do they deal with us? ~ Ed Zander, Motorola CEO/Chairman 10 May 2007
We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves. ~ Eric Hoffer
What does the iPhone offer that other cell phones do not already offer, or will offer soon? The answer is not very much… ~ Laura Goldman, LSG Capital, 21 May 2007
The forthcoming (June 29) release of the Apple iPhone is going to be a bigger marketing flop than Ishtar and Waterworld combined. ~ David S. Platt, Suckbusters!, 21 June 2007
I may not agree with you, but I’ll defend to the death my right to tell you to shut up. ~ Andy Borowitz
Once the initial fever wears off, however, the bloom will really be off the rose, and sales will be disappointing (at least here in the U.S.). ~ Jim Louderback, PC Magazine. 6 June 2007
We Predict the iPhone will bomb ~ Porges, The Futurist, 7 June 2007
You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty. ~ Jessica Mitford
The iPhone is a sustaining technology relative to Nokia. In other words, Apple is leaping ahead on the sustaining curve [by building a better phone]. But the prediction of the theory would be that Apple won’t succeed with the iPhone. They’ve launched an innovation that the existing players in the industry are heavily motivated to beat: It’s not [truly] disruptive. History speaks pretty loudly on that, that the probability of success is going to be limited. ~ Clayton Christensen, Author of Innovator’s Dilemma, 28 June 2007
There’s a lot of rejoicing at Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile [at the iPhone’s initial sales]. ~ IAG Research’s Roger Entner, 4 July 2007
Some never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge
Let’s face it, the Internet was designed for the PC. The Internet is not designed for the iPhone. ~ Steve Ballmer, Microsoft, 21 October 2009
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The tablet market has only succeeded as a niche market over the years and it was hoped Apple would dream up some new paradigm to change all that. From what I’ve seen and heard, this won’t be it. ~ John C. Dvorak, MarketWatch, 29 January 2010
I added it up and … like 800 people are going to buy the iPad. . . . ~ Molly Wood, CNet, 31 January 2010
If Apple makes a successful tablet, they will have accomplished what no other company before them has ever managed to do, which is why I am not optimistic. If I turn out to be wrong, I’ll gladly eat my words, but I’m pretty sure that I’m not wrong. ~ Alex Cook, Frontier Outlook, 28 January 2010
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Unless Apple has also developed some new type of power source, such as nuclear cells or magical hamsters on tiny spinning wheels for the iPad, don’t expect the claims about battery life to hold true. ~ John Breeden II, Government Computer News, 28 January 2010
You might want to tell me the difference between a large phone and a tablet. ~ Eric Schmidt, Google, 10 January 2010
The true way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others. ~ La Rochefoucauld
You know, I’m a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard – in other words a netbook – will be the mainstream on that. So, it’s not like I sit there and feel the same way I did with iPhone where I say, ‘Oh my God, Microsoft didn’t aim high enough.’ It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it. ~ Bill Gates, Microsoft, 10 February 2010
Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Apple iPad is not going to be the company’s next runaway best seller. ~ John C. Dvorak, MarketWatch, 12 February 2010
The only time he opens his mouth is to change feet. —David Feherty
The iPad will remain an expensive, niche device compared to all-purpose netbooks…. (N)etbooks sales will still far outstrip those of the iPad. ~ Preston Gralla, PC World, 30 March 2010
The decline of the iPhone has started. And that will become clear long before the year 2010 is gone… ~ Tomi T Ahonen, Former Nokia Executive, Inc, 9 April 2010
(Apple) is not having an impact on Nintendo… ~ Reggie Fils-Aime, President, Nintendo of America, 7 April 2010
I admit, sales of the iPad beat my expectations. I didn’t think that this device would do that well, and I still think it’s an oversized iPod Touch. ~ Alex Cook, Seeking Alpha, 1 June 2010
Never miss a good chance to shut up. ~ Cowboy wisdom
It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I’m okay with that. ~ Kevin Turner, Chief Operating Officer, Microsoft, 14 July 2010
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If a user wants to walk from the kitchen to the dining room in her house, she simply walks through. It does not work like that in mobile–you have to go through the front door to get to the kitchen. iPhone has a home button which works like a go-back-to-front-door button. This is not a model that human beings are used to. People are spatial. ~ Peter Skillman, VP Meego User Experience and Services Design, Nokia, 20 September 2010
There could literally be millions of first-generation iPads gathering dust in people’s home offices already. This product is the tech industry’s biggest MacGuffin yet. ~ Paul Thurrott, Windows IT Pro, 23 October 2010
What you don’t know would make a great book. ~ Sydney Smith
I cannot see a need for the thing [iPad]. ~ John Dvorak, MarketWatch, 22 October 2010
A salad spinner would have been a better investment, [than an iPad] and I don’t even eat that much salad. ~ John Swansburg, Slate, 18 February 2011
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. ~ H. L. Mencken
Apple is a company that has to come up with hit after hit after hit, every 12 to 18 months, but once you do the iPhone on Verizon, what’s the next thing past this? ~ Patrick Becker Jr, Becker Capital Management, 7 March 2011
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The reliance by Apple and Android phones on the ‘app’ as the central metaphor is outdated. ~ Chris Weber, President, head of North America, Nokia, 10 August 2011
As more developers reach consumers through platform-independent technologies such as HTML5, Apple’s app store could be cut out of the loop as customers gain freedom to transfer their chosen applications from one device to another. ~ Michael Holt, CFA, Morningstar, 28 Dec 2011
What we see is that youth are pretty much fed up with iPhones. Everyone has the iPhone. ~ Niels Munksgaard, Director of Portfolio, Product Marketing & Sales , Nokia, 13 Dec 2011
Nobody goes there anymore—it’s too crowded. ~ Yogi Berra
The following are three reasons the new iPad will be dead on arrival (DOA)… ~ Michael Li, The GadgetMasters, 11 March 2012
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I don’t think anyone has done a product that I see customers wanting. ~ Steve Ballmer, Microsoft, 25 Nov 2012
Siri could signal the beginning of the end for Apple. ~ Greg Satell, Forbes, 26 March 2013
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(Android) Not secure? It’s more secure than the iPhone. ~ Eric Schmidt, Google, 8 October 2013
Apple’s iOS 7 launch is fast becoming its most troubled mobile operating system update, increasing concern that the technology giant has lost some of its magic touch since co-founder Steve Jobs passed away two years ago. ~ Scott Martin and Alistair Barr, USA Today, 17 October 2013
iPhone accounts for 41.9% of US smartphone subscriber base, up from 31.3% a year ago – Apple CFO Luca Maestri, via @macjournals
[Android phones] are a great Christmas present to an iPhone user! ~ Eric Schmidt, Google, 24 November 2013
I know there’s a lot of noise because Apple did [64-bit] on their A7. I think they are doing a marketing gimmick. There’s zero benefit a consumer gets from that. ~ Anand Chandrasekher, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer, Qualcomm, 1 October 2013
Anand Chandrasekher has been quietly reassigned — and removed from the company leadership page on its website as of 25 Oct 2013.
My prayer to God is a very short one: “Oh God, please make my enemies ridiculous.” God has granted my wish. ~ Voltaire
Lessons Learned And Unlearned
True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance. ~ Akhenaton
The lesson here is to not take things on faith. Question everything. Facts should underlie every argument and logic should support that argument’s structure.
A man is getting along on the road to wisdom when he begins to realize that his opinion is just an opinion.
Beware the opinions of critics who are too sure of themselves, for it is most likely that they are also too full of themselves.
Doubt is often the beginning of wisdom. ~ M Scott Peck
Further, while it is always wise to question every opinion, it is not always wise to have an opinion on every question. Some things can only be answered in time.
Who is there who can make muddy waters clear? But if allowed to remain still, it will gradually clear itself. ~ Lao-tsu
Apple Claim Chowder Series:
Introduction
Events
Killers
Cynicism
Product
Evolutionary Or Revolutionary
Business Models
The Unbearable Loneliness Of The Sharing Economy
The sharing economy promises the potential for riches, personal empowerment, new modes of work, and fear, the kind of fear that swells from a livelihood dependent upon algorithms, star ratings, and the feedback of strangers.
When we imagined the future, certainly starting from the point when the smartphone was born, few of us expected a world where in-kind tips and real time number crunching might determine where we live, how well we ate, the size of our home, the composition of our dearest friends.
Of course, in a world where billions are virtually connected, all fighting over the same job, the same task, the same dollars to be made by sharing our rooms, our cars, our talents, can we have any real friends? Or does everyone morph into some 21st century amalgamation of customer-competitor?
The billions of dollars fueling Uber, Airbnb and the sharing economy appears to generate as much fear as it does potential, and rightly or no, the great minds and deep pockets of Silicon Valley are failing to address these fears.
There is, in particular, a persistent fear which suggests for all save a fortunate, wiley few, the sharing economy will transform us into the modern day equivalent of chimney sweeps, smartphones replacing brooms, our independent (contractor) status leading us toward digital subjugation rather than technological emancipation: Alert! You have been selected to compete! Right now, for X dollars an actual human being will pay you to drive them some place. Go!
The Future Has Arrived Only It’s Evenly Distributed
The most popular, most repeated quote about our highly technological present comes to us from dystopian novelist William Gibson: “the future has already arrived — it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”
Except, what if Gibson is not just wrong but profoundly wrong? What if the future, the now, is in fact evenly distributed, and we are all equally victimized by it? What if technologies, algorithms, and Big Data do not liberate us but instead place us all at the mercy of a system where periodic demands — a room, a ride — meet endless supply?
A transformative element of Uber is its “dynamic pricing” feature, which can measure real time demand and shift prices accordingly. Can it also measure real time desperation?
I travel regularly between San Francisco, which is leading the current global technological economic transformation, and Detroit, which led the last. I sense at least as much fear as embrace for the new, sharing-based economy.
Confession: I believe these fears are generally overstated.
Over the long arc of time, the benefits of technology spread to the many. This spread appears to be quickening its pace. An iPhone may for now be available only to the world’s 10%, an iWatch to the world’s 5%, and the direct medical benefits from the individualized analysis of their combined HealthKit data available only to the world’s 1%. I believe this will change, fast. As we’ve seen from the rapid evolution of the Android platform, copying, learning and the endless tearing down of barriers is in our DNA, whether motivated by concerns for humanity or desires for riches. Technology’s benefits spread from the few to the many.
The problem, of course, is this spread can take years, and for some, decades before the technology’s benefit bears them fruit. What till then?
The answer: Government.
It is through government we mitigate the ill effects of technological disruption. Yes, this gets nasty. It always does. Already, petitioning the government for redress — and for preferential treatment — from the sharing economy has begun in earnest. Just as the disruptive impact of the sharing economy is eradicating many existing rules and regulations, have no doubt it will lead to many new ones.
There is one area, vital to our person, yet where government cannot protect us and which Silicon Valley has failed to even acknowledge: loneliness.
Message In A Bottle
A great unspoken fear of the sharing economy is loneliness.
Consider that should the sharing economy work as envisioned, all of us, with our cars, our homes, our tools, time, talents, eager to rent or sell each of these the moment a potential opportunity pops up on our smartphone screen, have been reduced to waiting.
Waiting where? Waiting for how long? With whom?
With the sharing economy, there may be no need for offices, no demand for meeting spaces. Sit alone, phone in hand, and wait to be summoned. As the world grows more virtually connected, physical connections diminish.
This is not how it’s supposed to be.
Even in the 21st century, we stand in lines, bemoan our commutes, tolerate annoying coworkers in large part because we all crave regular physical connection with others. The tools and technologies which fully enable telecommuting have existed for many years now, yet most people reject their use. This is not a failure of the tools nor of management. Plainly stated, we desire to be near others.
The leading platforms of the sharing economy may disrupt the need for us to interact with our fellow humans in physical space. That is scary.
Perhaps that’s why more and more we read these joyful tales of customers at coffee shops ‘paying it forward’. Standing in line, paying for the person behind us, we are reminding them and ourselves in even this small way that each of us matter, and that none of us should ever be reduced to a score. We are alike and we are together.
Which makes me wonder if those investors relentlessly pushing the sharing economy forward have it all wrong. Clearly, there’s an opportunity to connect us not to a platform but to one another. Who will build this?
Thoughts On iPhone Inc
The iPhone is bigger than McDonald’s. That seems a useful demarcation for how we should view the iPhone in particular and Apple in general.
The iPhone is that once-in-a-generation product that alters daily reality for at least a century. The Model T production line, overnight shipping, indoor plumbing and the credit card are other such examples. I fully expect the iPhone will enable Apple to become the world’s first trillion dollar company.
There is a cost however, at least for we users. Almost certainly, iPhone will diminish Apple’s ability to create new game changing products.
Why? Because being irrational is hard, really hard. It’s rational to do everything in your power to maximize a product that has the legitimate potential to help you become a trillion dollar company. To do anything — anything at all — that might alter that path is irrational. Steve Jobs could be irrational at times. Tim Cook cannot. At least, I have witnessed no evidence of this. Apple is now iPhone. iPhone is now Apple. Just like Windows is Microsoft.
The Long March
No one ever got fired for buying Apple computers from IBM.
An iOS-based, touchscreen-enabled laptop, priced around $799, and sold by IBM to the enterprise seems an obvious product Apple should offer. It also seems like the kind of product that could destroy numerous existing giants.
For too long, iPhone users have not had their much desired iPhone “phablet.” A reason for this is because an iPhone phablet would gut iPad sales. Considering the iPad sales numbers for the past year, this is a fear Apple no longer possesses.
You will not give up your iPhone. You will not give up your Mac. You may give up your iPad. At this juncture, iPads are simply not must-have devices for nearly anyone. That’s the primary reason for the diminishing sales gains.
Easy prediction: We will almost certainly get an iPhone phablet this year and, likely by next year, a larger iPad.
I am regularly surprised at how bad Apple is at app discovery. That Facebook app ads are my current best source for app recommendations is a clear market failure. I hope the purchase of Beats, Swell and BookLamp signal that Apple is finally willing to get serious about content curation and recommendation.
I have no idea if Swift is a superior language. I am not a developer. I do know however, Apple is big enough to demand its use.
Despite the iPhone’s incredible array of features and functions, we mere mortals no doubt spend far too much time obsessing over which apps belong on the home screen.
Bugs And Features
The smartphone is the computer. Your app is your business model. Every business is impacted by iPhone. Know this or perish.
That Touch ID can’t read my thumbprint if there’s just a tiny bit of water on it seems more bug than feature.
It’s 2014, fourteen years since Y2K. Still, iPhone users can’t have their preferred calendar app list the date on the app icon. This is the equivalent of how the DOOR CLOSE button on any elevator never seems to work.
Samsung ads mocking iPhone users have been brutal and highly effective. Yes, I have had Android users (justly) mock me for having to scour an airport in search of an available outlet. The iPhone battery deserves its poor reputation. However, Samsung’s latest ad where they mock Apple users for not yet having a large display iPhone strikes me as desperation. Almost certainly, there will be a large display iPhone. What then, Samsung?
Amazing iPhone games are available for $5.99 yet millions refuse to pay such ‘outrageously high’ prices. There is much to celebrate and decry with this.
Using the same OS for the iPhone as for the iPad has some obvious limitations. On the small smartphone screen, getting into an app, grabbing the data, then exiting, a singular app occupying the entire screen makes obvious sense. Not so with the iPad. I want at least two windows open on my iPad almost always. Kindle and Twitter are the most common examples. Email and web browser are another. Even while gaming, I prefer two windows open. I can’t imagine buying an iPad until Apple offers this feature.
The Sincerest Forms Of Flattery
The almost laughable copying by Xiaomi of the iPhone and iOS 7 is all the evidence you need as to why Tim Cook must expend significant resources on building the luxury appeal and premium status of the iPhone; all those hard-to-define elements beyond actual quality, reliability and usability.
There are few people better at this, if any, than Angela Ahrendts.
Confession: it’s hard for me to watch the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie and not think of Steve Jobs and Apple.
Rumors Jony Ive was in a Flock of Seagulls cover band are completely unfounded.
Input method is now a more important consideration than processor, OS and software. No one seems to understand this more than Apple.
More Is Less
Lost in the bubbly talk of an Apple iWatch is the fact everything about it seems wrong. We do not need yet another thing. I want my iPhone — or any smartphone — to serve as my ID, car keys, credit cards, TV remote, glucose reader, everything. Apple should focus its genius on making the iPhone devour more of those things, not create new ones.
The newest version of PayPal appears to equal, possibly usurp, Apple’s Passbook vision: Payments, money transfers, loyalty cards, information on nearby shops, it’s all there. Apple certainly wants the iPhone to be used for payments, though maybe they have finally decided enabling payments and not powering them is the way forward. This may also explain the company’s recent decision to once again allow Bitcoin apps in the App Store.
I actually read app update notes. This recent update from Yelp made me laugh.
Jan Dawson made a strong case for why Apple should stagger launches of its major products. Commenters offered additional insights as to why Apple does not (or should not) heed his advice. Not stated, however, but which I think is at least worth considering, are the possible impacts of corruption. Nearly all assembly of nearly all Apple products takes place in China, where there is a less-than-transparent relationship between the government and business. It seems the implications of this should at least be examined.
I am surprised by how few iPhone users seem to ever use AirDrop to transfer files or data to one another. Perhaps personal iPhone-to-Mac AirDrop sharing is the superior use case.
I am unaware of the age, gender, race or LGBQT numbers at Apple Inc., Apple in Cupertino, or of those who work solely on the iPhone. But together, these people have created something positively impacting lives. And they keep making it better. I tip my hat to them all and hope in some way, my words can ever do the same.
Divining Apple’s Wearable Design
Most of the wearables on the market today are an experiment in artificial stupidity. Rather than solve problems, they create them. Using a wearable today is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.
A good design introduces enough unfamiliarity to be interesting, but not so much as to be annoying. ~ John Maeda (@johnmaeda)
Don’t get me wrong. Today’s wearables should not be tossed aside lightly. They should instead be thrown with great force. ((With apologies to the great Dorothy Parker)) In fact, that reminds me of a riddle:
QUESTION: If you throw the Samsung Galaxy Gear off the Eiffel Tower and you throw the Moto 360 off the tower of Pisa, which one would hit the ground first?
ANSWER: Who cares?
CAPTION: Today’s Wearable Marketplace
How do I know Android wearables are a terrible idea? China doesn’t even steal them and make knockoffs. ~ The grugq (@thegrugq) 7/10/14
What’s Missing?
Most companies are full of processes designed to solve problems from a long time ago. ~ John Maeda (@johnmaeda)
Today’s smartwatches are going nowhere because they’re using tomorrow’s technology to provide yesterday’s solutions to problems that no one has today. But what about tomorrows’ wearables? Apple is rumored to be bringing out a line of their own wearables this Fall and Apple is well-known for their design prowess.
Will Apple use design to differentiate their product?
“I think a lot of people see design primarily as a means to differentiate their product competitively,” Ive said. “I really detest that.”
Hmm. Maybe not.
Perhaps Apple’s wearables will be better because they will have better technology.
We don’t buy things because they have better technology; we buy them because they’re better designed. ~ johnmaeda (@johnmaeda)
Hmm. Maybe not that either.
Or perhaps Apple’s wearables will be better by design.
Design is so critical it should be on the agenda of every meeting in every single department. ~ Tom Peters
I love it when you can bring really great design and simple capability to something that doesn’t cost much. It was the original vision for Apple. That’s what we tried to do with the first Mac. That’s what we did with the iPod. ~ Steve Jobs
Ah, design. That’s what’s missing in today’s wearables and that’s where Apple shines.
We’re the only company that owns the whole widget — the hardware, the software, and the operating system. We can take full responsibility for the user experience. We can do things that the other guy can’t do. ~ Steve Jobs
Dieter Rams’s Design Principles
Steve Jobs and Jony Ive were admirers of Dieter Rams, a famous designer for Braun, who had a number of mottos and aphorisms about design. Let’s look at seven of his design principles and see how they apply to current and potential wearable devices.
1) GOOD DESIGN MAKES A PRODUCT USEFUL
A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it. ~ Dieter Rams
Today’s wearables are not very useful. In fact, they’re more work than they’re worth. Surveys show most of today’s wearables end up in a drawer after about three months of use.
If notifications are to be useful on your wrist then they can’t just be a mirror of the ones on your phone. ~ Ben Bajarin (@BenBajarin)
At best, today’s wearables duplicate the functionality of a smartphone on a form factor not well suited for performing smartphone functions. Now what does that remind me of? Oh yeah, trying to cram a desktop operating system into a tablet form factor. How’d that work out?
CAPTION: The first public prototype of a Tablet PC (2001). It ran the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition ((You’ve gotta love Microsoft’s naming conventions.)) operating system ((Bill Gates of Microsoft showed the first public prototype of a Tablet PC (defined by Microsoft as a pen-computer allows hardware in accordance with the specifications made by Microsoft and running a licensed copy of the operating system “Windows XP Tablet PC Edition”) at COMDEX.))
Good design isn’t about being pretty, it’s about solving a tangible problem. Today’s wearables are answers searching for a question. If wearables are to have any tomorrows, it will be because they provide a startlingly good answer to the unidentified, undefined, unmet needs of today.
If we want to forecast what Apple is going to introduce in wearables, we need to stop thinking about what is on the market today. In 2007, what we wanted was an iPod and a phone. What we got was an iPod and a phone and an internet communicator and (a year later) an app store. What we got was a computer in our pocket. The iPhone didn’t give us what we wanted, it gave us what we needed. The same will be true of wearables.
2) GOOD DESIGN MAKES A PRODUCT UNDERSTANDABLE
It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product talk. At best, it is self-explanatory. ~ Dieter Rams
Below is the remote control that came with the Sony Google TV.
— Not understandable.
— Not self-explanatory.
— Not good design.
A well designed product doesn’t merely do your work, it also works the way you do.
There was a debate [on the Lisa] team about the mouse. Was it going to have a mouse, and how many buttons should it have? Steve and I wanted one button, because if there’s one button, you never have to think about it. One of the former Xerox guys argued for six buttons. He said, “Look, bartenders have six buttons on those drink dispensers, and they can handle it.” But that was a failure to understand what Steve was trying to do with user experience. ~ Trip Hawkins, excerpt From: Max Chafkin. “Design Crazy.”
If you’re designing a product and your customer has to think about how to use it, then you’re not done designing.
Design makes what is complex feel simpler, and makes what is simpler feel richer. ~ johnmaeda (@johnmaeda)
If we want to forecast what Apple is going to introduce in wearables, we need to stop thinking smartphone interface on a watch form factor. Think monitor on a computer (Apple II), a mouse on your desk and GUI interface on your screen (Macintosh), a shuttle wheel in your hand (iPod), and a touch interface on glass (iPhone and iPad). If wearables deserve to be a separate category, then they deserve a form of input uniquely suited to their size and form factor.
3) GOOD DESIGN IS UNOBTRUSIVE
Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression. ~ Dieter Rams
Good design gets design out of the way. If it’s done right, it seems inevitable. The best designs feel almost as if they were undesigned because they’re just the way you would expect them to be.
The word that comes up over and over again when describing good design is “disappears”. Here are some quotes, to illustrate:
The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life. ~ Bill Gates
I like things that do the job and kind of disappear into my life. ~ Steve Jobs
If it disappears, we know we’ve done it. ~ Craig Federighi
Technology is at its best and its most empowering when it simply disappears ~ Jony Ive
Herein lies another clue for us all. If we want to forecast what Apple is going to introduce in wearables, we need to stop thinking in terms of what the device can do and start thinking in terms of what the device will allow us to do. A well designed wearable will not make us do more. Instead, it will allow us to accomplish more while we do less. It will not impose its way of doing things upon us. Rather, it will allow us to impose our way of doing, upon those things, that we need done.
4) GOOD DESIGN IS HONEST
It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept. ~ Dieter Rams
Here is Steve Jobs, describing the iMac in 2002:
(Why not) let each element be true to itself? If the screen is flat, let it be flat. If the computer wants to be horizontal, let it be horizontal.
Now compare that sentiment to the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, in one-handed operation mode. Ironically, in the image below, the one-handed mode is being demoed with the use of two hands.
— Not honest.
— Not true to itself.
— Not good design.
Abraham Maslow said: “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.” The same is true of devices. Good design doesn’t make a device better than it is. It doesn’t even make a device better. Good design fulfills a device’s destiny. It makes it what is and what it was always meant to be.
If we want to forecast what Apple is going to introduce in wearables, we need to think about allowing a wearable to be true to itself. A wearable will be small. A wearable may be in contact with our body. A wearable will be persistent. A wearable will be proximate. Does a monitor — which is large and battery draining — work within the constraints of small and persistent? I doubt it.
We need to stop thinking “watch” and start thinking sensors (which are small and in contact with our body) ID (which is persistent) information, payments and security (which is proximate). In fact, we need to stop thinking about what a wearable can DO and start thinking about the WHERE of wearables. Wearables may not need to DO anything at all. They may just need to be in the same place and space that we are. That may be their true calling. And that may be more than enough to make them invaluable.
5) GOOD DESIGN IS LONG-LASTING
It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society. ~ Dieter Rams
There has been much talk in the tech press of Apple becoming more of a fashion shop.
Might Apple have a future as a fashion conglomerate? – CNET
Apple Has Gone Full-Fashion With Its Newest Executive Hire – Refinery29
Apple Looks to Fashion as it Preps for iWatch – Esquire
I think this talk is misguided.
The following epitomizes fashion:
Fashion is something that goes in one year and out the other. ~ Denise Klahn
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. ~ Oscar Wilde
Fashion is made to become unfashionable. ~ Coco Chanel
Apple is a Design Shop. Design is about style. Design is about aesthetics. Design is about long lasting.
Fashions change, but style is forever. ~ Anonymous
Fashion changes, style remains. ~ Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel
Good design doesn’t date. ~ Harry Seidler
Design IS beautiful, not because it tries to be, but because it MUST be:
When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty … but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller
CAPTION: If it looks well, it flies well — aesthetics and performance relate.
I think this may provide us with the biggest clue as to what Apple is NOT going to do in wearables. If we want to forecast what Apple is going to introduce in wearables, we need to stop thinking “watch” and we need to stop thinking “fashion.” Apple will not create a device that is decorative and a slave to fashion. Fashion changes far too quickly. Apple will seek, instead, to make something that is long lasting and enduring. That most probably means an Apple wearable will be restrained, unobtrusive, barely noticeable, virtually invisible.
6) GOOD DESIGN IS AS LITTLE DESIGN AS POSSIBLE
Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity. ~ Dieter Rams
Robert Browning said, “less is more” ((Popularized by the German-born American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe)) and there is a lot of truth contained in that pithy paradoxical platitude. However, when it comes to design, I much prefer Dieter Rams’ “less, but better”. It encapsulates — in three words — the concept of good design being as little design as possible.
Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing… layout, processes, and procedures. ~ Tom Peters
What is left out … is as important as, if not more important than, what is put in. ~ Katherine Paterson
See it big, and keep it simple. ~ Wilferd A. Peterson
‘Think simple’ as my old master used to say – meaning reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms…. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright
[pullquote] Good design subtracts features yet increases functionality[/pullquote]
Features add complexity. Complexity adds functionality. Good design is paradoxical. It subtracts features while simultaneously increasing functionality. A good design finds an elegant way to put all the features you need in. A great design leaves half those features out. ((Inspired by Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW)))
A work is perfectly finished only when nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away. ~ Joseph Joubert
Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away… ~ Antoine De Saint-exupery
The philosophy (at Apple) was never stated, but it was this: Get rid of all the junk you didn’t need. ~ Tom Suiter, director of Apple creative services ((Excerpt From: Max Chafkin. “Design Crazy.”))
If we want to forecast what Apple is going to introduce in wearables, we need to stop thinking “features”, need to start thinking essentials and need to focus on minimalism — doing the most with the least. That’s why I think an Apple wearable will be more like a band than a watch. But no matter what form the Apple wearable takes, look for it to be less than you expect, yet do more than you might initially anticipate.
Conclusion
There are three responses to a piece of design – yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for. – Milton Glaser
There are no “wow” wearable devices on the market today. In fact, I’d venture to say our initial reaction to today’s wearables has been closer to “Yikes!”
The future lies in designing and selling computers that people don’t realize are computers at all. ~ Adam Osborne
Let me repeat that, because I love it so much. The future lies in designing and selling computers that people don’t realize are computers at all.
That about says it all, so I’ll say little more. We won’t have to guess when wearabables get it right. We’ll simply know, because we’ll stop thinking about how much better wearables have become and start thinking, instead, about how much better our lives have become.
Post Script
Thoughts on my thoughts? Leave a comment, below, or contact me on Twitter @johnkirk.
The Smartphone Is The Computer
I have spent the past three weeks in Detroit, a city possessing a rich history and an unremitting present. The vagaries of Silicon Valley count for little here. When I heard a young man ask — for real — if the Samsung Galaxy S5 was an iPhone or an Android, I knew there was much to glean if I simply put my smartphone down and listened.
Here then are my thoughts, insights and observations from the past one score and one day…
There are no smartphone wars. Rather, just amazing, affordable and truly expansive opportunity. Android versus iPhone means nothing to nearly everyone I speak with.
It is hard to overstate just how much television will be disrupted by the combination of children, tablets and YouTube. Free, always accessible content uniquely tailored to their own self-driven interests, available from any location is now possible — and the young will accept nothing less.
Facebook, not smartphones, not telcos, not automobiles, not Disney or ESPN, is connecting the world. Facebook is the new oil. If there is any ‘next Steve Jobs,’ it is Mark Zuckerberg. For whatever confluence of reasons, Zuckerberg divined the power of social media from the start, just as Jobs did with computing. No matter how rich, no matter how many struggles, I expect Zuckerberg to devote the remainder of his life to Facebook and all it represents.
There is middling outrage over the Facebook ‘user emotion’ study. As for me, this represents little more than A/B testing. In fact, I’m more angry over the iPhone keyboard. It’s so terrible. Is this some sort of secret Apple study? I mean, what other possible reason could there be?
I am in the place where cars and mass production altered the course of humanity. Now, it is smartphones, social media, mapping, and code; these are re-making the planet as much as the automobile did in the 20th century. We are at the start of a new future. That’s just awesome.
I was often asked the best way to become a professional writer. It’s such an easy question to answer.
Marry well.
Oh, and should you be so fortunate to have an opportunity to write about what you love, for an organization with no concern for page views and provocation, as I am at Tech.pinions, then do not fritter away such a blessing.
I first learned about the SCiO from Techpinions. Point this device at a piece of fruit for example, and it will tell you what it is and even provide data on its composition, such as how much fat and carbs the item contains. Every single time I read more about this device, I think it is absolute magic. I told so many people about it that I now desperately hope it works as advertised.
I have nothing but good things to say about the Amazon Fire Phone. Yet, I can’t possibly recommend it to anyone. Why would I? In the US, at least, there is almost no reason to recommend any smartphone other than the iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy.
Microsoft’s Windows Phone faces a similar fate as Amazon’s Fire. Fair or not, can you imagine any outcome for Windows Phone other than failure? How does Microsoft start over? What amazing technologies, hardware and combination of services can they possibly deliver to make the world care about a device that is not iPhone or Android? I do not have the answers.
If I were in charge of Microsoft I would simply continue to make quality devices, offering great Nokia design, great Nokia imaging, incorporating Skype, OneDrive, HERE, Office and other Microsoft-owned products and services. Plodding along, hoping more and more Android vendors exit the business, picking up the scraps, all while leveraging my enterprise install base and security, identity and productivity tools, hoping users discover my superior value.
It won’t help. The smartphone market is lost to Microsoft.
The screen market, however, is barely in its infancy. Microsoft should forget smartphones and focus instead on screens. Screens will become like power outlets, we only notice them when they cannot be found.
Perhaps no company — not Apple, not even Google — possesses the breadth of services Microsoft offers. The problem, of course, is these services are not exposed for all the world to use. They are locked inside unwanted PCs, shoved inside tablet abominations, buried beneath the content we actually seek from our Xbox systems, sold mostly to IT directors, attached to products and platforms we do not need, and hidden behind an incomprehensible UI. Microsoft has built an anti-moat around its services, not locking us in but keeping everyone out.
The World Cup has introduced to millions the joys of live sports streamed to our smartphones and tablets. This is so in Detroit and around the country. It has never been more clear we all want to watch what we want to watch when we want to watch it where we want to watch it and on the device we want to watch it on. This is simple, obvious and unstoppable. It’s only a matter of time before we have a difficult time explaining to our progeny how it ever could have been anything else.
Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook very happily took part in the San Francisco Pride Parade. Also, Hobby Lobby successfully won the right to provide only certain forms of contraception for its employees. What do these have in common?
Values equal profits.
Companies are publicly declaring their values, even going to court to defend and promote their values. This is only start. The technologies of Silicon Valley are breaking down barriers, bringing corporations to their knees and empowering individuals and groups around the world. With smartphones in hand, with continuous, real time, location-aware connectivity always available, we become our own corporations — with Uber, AirBnB and others merely pointing the way. We will work for ourselves and we will live by our values.
This is good. But it will be messy. Very messy.
Hype aside, can you envision a situation where you use Bitcoin over, say, your iPhone ‘wallet’ linked to your secure iTunes payment data? iPhone offers ease of use and peace of mind. That’s a powerful combination. Still worse for Bitcoin, is that it is essentially digital cash in a world addicted to easy credit. Learn about the blockchain. Bitcoin itself is merely a bystander.
Given Android’s headstart in wearables, it’s hard to see Apple winning any wearable app wars. Given the limitations of its market reach, it’s similarly difficult to see Apple winning the “smart home” market without buying its way in. Sonos would be a good start.
Smartphones are borderline magical. That said, the iPhone 5s battery and the HTC One (M8) camera are embarrassingly bad.
In the past week, I’ve rented two movies from iTunes. I failed to finish both in the first sitting and was not able to watch either until after 24 hours later. iTunes refused, insisting the rental period had expired. This was true, though did not mitigate my anger. I may abandon iTunes rentals altogether. The lure of non-legal downloading is strong.
How much of Yahoo’s Alibaba riches is Marissa Mayer prepared to spend to get us to visit Yahoo? I suspect all of it. Nowhere I go does Yahoo seem to matter.
Idle prediction: Apple will not kill off the iPhone 5/c/s form factor this year, nor will Apple offer three simultaneous iPhone form factors. Yes, that means I am predicting only one large-display iPhone.
Not a prediction, just a thought experiment: In 2024, when a chid is born, they will be assigned either an Android or an iPhone. This will control everything.
There will be over 1 billion (American) Android activations this year, and several hundred million (Chinese) Android (AOSP) activations. Android is a stunning success story. All those involved in Android have long since earned our respect. That said, some analysts, bloggers and even industry insiders still have not grasped the obvious: Smartphones are the first screen. Smartphones are the primary computer.
The CEO of Yahoo is female. The CEO of HP is female. The #2 at Facebook is female. A man runs Android, the world’s most popular OS. He is from India. The CEO of Microsoft is from India. The tech sector points the way forward not only with its products.
Be smart. Work hard. That’s true everywhere.
Why Do All Of You Hate Windows Phone So Much?
This article is exclusively for subscribers to the Think.Tank.
Has iPhone Lost The Best Value Crown?
This article is exclusively for subscribers to the Think.Tank.
Please Silicon Valley. Do Not Turn The Car Into Another Boring Box.
We stand at the intersection of the Internet of Things and the Connected Car. Soon, Cortana shall summon to us a driverless, fully autonomous vehicle, shared by the community, owned by no one, that will safely transport us to our chosen locale, as we tweet, stream, and tap away from the comfort of the back seat. Mostly, this is good. For most even, it will likely be very good. But I fear one of humanity’s greatest inventions, the car, will be reduced to yet another boring box, stuffed with computer chips, powered by lines of codes, and possessing no soul.
Please Silicon Valley, do not kill my love for the car.
One Piece At A Time
A revolution is taking place within the automotive industry. It began not in Detroit, Germany or Tokyo, but as with all revolutions, from the outside. In this case, Silicon Valley. The spread of computing, connectivity and the cloud has at last reached our cars. Driving — and automobiles — will never be the same.
Per the glorious visions of venture capitalists, the new market dreams of old world automakers and the ceaseless, prosaic functions of the Internet of Things, this is our car’s very-near future: Sensors under the hood, inside the dash, within the tires, sensors embedded in the roads and placed above traffic lights, all pumping out streams of data in real time, sent via telemetry to nearby vehicles, transmitted to the web for processing and analysis, shared with the crowd, then acted upon by the many computer chips within our own increasingly self-aware vehicle, all part of a highly monetizable big data ecosystem.
I am not at all opposed to this. Such efforts will almost certainly lead to faster commutes, a greener planet, fewer accidents and many saved lives. The Silicon Valley vision for the car of tomorrow should be lauded.
I ask only that the very best aspects of the car be carried forward into the future and not de-constructed into little more than a cubicle on wheels.
As a native Detroiter, I know cars are more than just data generators. Cars are freedom, independence, liberty, aspiration, mobility. In so many ways, cars disconnect us from the world as they reconnect us with our primal emotions. Cars are beautiful, personal, powerful. I want this not to go away.
I am not at all convinced we can trust Silicon Valley to transform these glorious mechanical objects into anything other than another node in a data-fueled, globe spanning web.
Let Me Ride
While driverless cars, as Google has promoted, are likely a decade away from practical use, semi-autonomous vehicles should be available in the developed world well before the end of this decade. The Internet of Things will enable these semi-autonomous, ‘situationally aware’ vehicles to keep us properly centered in the lane, to apply the brakes if we, the ‘driver,’ fail to spot the pedestrian in the crosswalk. They can ease off the throttle should they sense another vehicle is too close.
The car of 2020, and probably much sooner, will inform us when we are driving too fast given the current road conditions — and take corrective action should we fail to heed its informed advice.
These semi-autonomous vehicles will communicate with other cars, busses, navigation services and transit authorities as much as they communicate with us. This is good. As a proponent of mobile technologies, the cloud, wearables, sensors, Bluetooth, et al, I fully appreciate the value that comes from the open sharing of our data. If I am stuck in traffic, by all means let my car inform others of a better route. If a driver’s car wishes to inform those of us a few minutes behind that there’s a hidden police stop, good for us.
Above all however, the connected car will make for safer roads. Over 95% of all car accidents are caused by driver error. The Internet of Things will put a stop to this.
According to Intel, which is keen to put still more computing chips into our cars, with a mere one second warning, over 90% of all car accidents could be prevented. A half-second warning will prevent over 50% of all car accidents. Sensors and computer chips can act faster than us. They can also behave far more rationally. If we are being dumb, careless, foolish or simply unaware behind the wheel, our connected car can save us from ourselves — and save many others as well.
Over one million people die each year from car accidents. The benefits of integrating connectivity and computing inside our cars and within our road systems is significant.
And yet…
I still want the car to remain mostly mechanical, always beautiful, powerful, visceral — all those things that are never considered relevant in Silicon Valley.
Where I come from, it was absolutely no coincidence the boy whose father let him borrow the Camaro Z28 happened to be dating the prom queen.
No parallel to this exists for the young man with the biggest PC tower or the newest smartphone.
When it comes to our cars, whether for 2015 or 2025, let us not place clock speed above top speed, throughput over horsepower, or user interface above road handling. Nodes have primal desires, too.
No Particular Place To Go
While few things in life are as joyous as a fast car, top down, the open road beckoning, music blaring, such moments are rare. No matter how beautiful or powerful the car, the daily commute can be a grind. The connected car helps mitigate this, delivering all the comforts of our modern, fully connected world, accessible via a tap on the screen, or a command from our voice.
Stuck in traffic? No worries. The smartphone-like cars of post-2015 will offer:
- streaming music, your favorite podcasts, even videos (for the kiddies)
- news, weather, market data — read aloud, even personalized, as your new car, like a giant rolling Siri, knows your interests
- geofenced notifications
- Twitter and Facebook updates, voice driven, naturally
- the fastest routes to everywhere you want to go
- the nearest gas stations and restaurants
- driving analysis, perhaps even a driver ‘Klout’ score based on your speed, how hard you brake, how close you were driving to other vehicles
- engine diagnostics
These are all good. Silicon Valley is actively seeking to disrupt our commute. I stand with them. As our cars become increasingly more connected, tapping more computing power, more crowd wisdom, more algorithmic analysis, our driving should improve, our commutes should become more enjoyable, and ultimately, personal productivity should increase. Quite possibly, stress levels will all go down.
Again, my selfish concern is that these measurable goods will increasingly lead to an emphasis on “cars” that maximize efficiency, comfort, UIs, and that offer the best search, the most up-to-date data, the sharpest display.
A box.
Help Me, Apple. You’re My Only Hope
Is it possible to have the best of tomorrow with the best of yesterday?
I believe in the beneficent power of technology and innovation. I fully appreciate that Big Tech, Big VC, and Big Government want a lead role in the multi-trillion-dollar Internet of Things revolution. All are eager to remake our existing infrastructure, to place “intelligence” inside our cars, to link driver, car, road, and metro transit system into a cohesive, smartly flowing whole. I accept their work will alter not only driving but possibly even remake our towns and cities.
Why, then, does this make me a bit uneasy?
I do not fear my next car will experience a blue screen of death. Well, not much. Nor am I terribly worried hackers will access my car’s data, which will no doubt be linked to a payment system that lets me speed through electronic tollbooths.
I fear Silicon Valley will fail to divine the value in what makes cars glorious, and reduce the ultimate driving machine to just one more computing device.
Should I be disheartened or joyful that Apple SVP Eddy Cue joined the Ferrari board in 2012? Or that Apple SVP Phil Schiller sees fit to have a Racer X avatar on his Twitter profile?
Will these Apple executives help keep our cars from becoming just the latest personal computer box? I can’t afford a Ferrari, although I can pretend I’m Racer X — or possibly his brother, Speed. The question is, how long can I maintain the dream?
iPhone At 1 Billion. A Tipping Point.
What can you do with a billion iPhones? What can all of us do with a billion iPhones?
Analysts, telcos, networking firms and research consultants expect more than 4 billion smartphones in use by the end of this decade, maybe sooner. I agree. Where I diverge from most other experts, however, is that I believe Apple is well positioned to capture a quarter of this market, possibly more. That’s one billion iPhones.
What then? No, not what for Apple. I am not terribly interested in Apple’s valuation nor its ability to negotiate the best content deals or carrier subsidies. I am, however, extremely interested in what one billion iPhones means for all of us, as nearly everyone of these devices will have similar functions, use the same OS, possess the ability to track us in time and space and, through iTunes, include a user-specific payment service. That’s significant collective power.
Making The Case
Are one billion iPhones in use possible? My math says yes.
There are approximately 1.5 billion smartphones in use today, still far short of the 4+ billion smartphones I am estimating for 2020.
A key driver of smartphone growth is affordable, accessible mobile broadband service (3G/4G). Ericsson estimates that mobile broadband connections around the world will quadruple by 2019. This will result in 5.6 billion smartphone “subscriptions.” Some people may have multiple subscriptions (e.g. using multiple SIM cards on same phone to minimize voice and data costs), so this number is higher than the actual number of individual smartphones in use. Being on the conservative side, I estimate 4.5 billion individual smartphones in active use by 2020, a tripling of what we have today.
What will be Apple’s share of those 4.5 billion smartphones?
Here, I get a bit aggressive. Apple has nearly 20% of the market for smartphones in use — about 300 million iPhones. (Over 500 million iPhones have been sold since 2007.)
If Apple can maintain a global marketshare at around 20%, and the smartphone market climbs from 1.5 billion to 4.5 billion as I expect, Apple has close to 900 million iPhones in use — within striking distance of a billion iPhones.
Confession: I think Apple will do better.
iPhone consistently receives higher customer satisfaction scores than competitive devices. A higher percentage of Android users switch to iPhone than the reverse. These trends disproportionately favor iPhone going forward.
Then there’s Apple’s secret sauce — slowly, slowly improving hardware and features while holding the line on price, even dropping the price at times. We can confidently expect iPhones to get better year after year even as prices fall. In a market that is rapidly expanding, this is a huge advantage.
Imagine if today’s iPhone 5s was faster, simpler, more capable, and Apple cut the price in half. I expect exactly this to happen, albeit in slow motion. When it does, many of today’s very best smartphone makers will be unable to effectively compete. This means even more room for Apple to grow. Indeed, I think most analysts, blindly focused on Apple’s current margins, are wildly underestimating iPhone’s long-term market potential.
Consider the following:
Smartphones and tablets are highly functional, highly personal computers. By this definition, nearly 95% of every computer Apple sells today is priced under $1,000. Note: I derive this 95% figure thusly: Last quarter, Apple shipped 43.7 million iPhones. Their highest-priced version is the iPhone 5s with 64gb hard drive. It retails for $849. Apple shipped 16.4 million iPads. The highest-priced iPad sells for $929. The company sold just over 4 million Macs, most of them priced above $1,000. Add it up and 60.1 million personal computers out of a total of 64.1 million are priced under $1,000.
Given Apple’s commitment to improvement while holding the line on price, I expect that in a few years, certainly before this decade is out, that 95% of every computer Apple sells will not be priced under $1,000, but perhaps even under $500, and far better than today’s very best. How will high-end and mid-tier competitors survive in such an environment? Will there be Panasonic smartphones in 2020? Sony? BlackBerry? Xiaomi? LG? I’m not sure. Apple? Absolutely. Remember, Apple actually earns a hefty profit on each personal computer it sells.
Add it up and a billion iPhones in use by 2020 is an extremely likely possibility.
At One Billion iPhones
Okay, so what then?
First, as this is about all of us, we must consider the potential of a billion iPhones in the aggregate, and not what a singular iPhone in 2020 will offer.
Let’s use Facebook as an example. They have over 1 billion active mobile users. At last week’s F8 developer conference, Facebook offered new tools which enable deep linking and de facto integration across disparate mobile apps — taking you straight from your smartphone map to Yelp to your digital wallet, for example. This should prove useful for users and developers alike. This effort can only succeed, however, if there are enough smartphone users and enough of them have Facebook credentials and enough app developers can directly benefit by allowing Facebook to manage a user’s identity. Now there are.
Absolute numbers at massive scale enable new forms of innovation that otherwise could not exist. I expect the same to occur when we reach 1 billion iPhones.
Crowdsourcing Ideas For Peak iPhone
I am confident in my predictions and so I put it to you: where are your ideas?
My inclination is to focus first on media. The business model that today forces us to pay for content we don’t want simply to get the content we do want — aka cable television — likely fades away. Perhaps Apple offers a “Pandora for television” service, with virtually every TV program and movie available. With 1 billion users, it would be foolish to not let your content participate.
Mix iTunes, AirDrop and a billion users, all with their credit card info on file, and there now exists the potential to revolutionize how we consume and share media — it may become possible that each of us can financially benefit from our various online recommendations.
Entirely new forms of social networking also become commonplace. Apple’s new multi-peer service (“multi-peer connectivity framework”) essentially enables ad-hoc, proximity-based, peer-to-peer networking of iPhones. Imagine watching the University of Michigan football team alongside 100,000 screaming fans. There’s a great play, which is instantly available on your iPhone. Share and discuss the play with thousands of others, in real-time, in physical space, and in forms not previously possible. Now take these tools to a political protest.
A billion users on the same platform, each with their credit card information stored by Apple, will significantly impact the direction of online and offline payments. At such a scale, retailers everywhere might readily accept cash, charge or iPhone. No need for Bitcoin, PayPal or any other digital alternative.
Yes, Apple could indeed roll out its very own search engine with little concern of Google pushback should the company reach 1 billion iPhone users.
Perhaps it also becomes practical for every mall, every college campus, every city to place iBeacons everywhere, creating deeper links between people, place and time.
Of course, if Apple ever does reach a billion smartphones, the company’s value will almost certainly exceed $1 trillion. That’s Standard Oil territory, which resulted in a forced break-up. That idea also doesn’t seem farfetched.
Nokia Has Fallen. America Wins The Smartphone Wars.
Nokia has fallen. Not even the name will remain. America’s victory in the smartphone wars is complete — for now.
Last week’s news from the front lines of the smartphone wars illuminates the scope of America’s rapid mobile ascendency.
From Microsoft:
“Microsoft acquires Nokia’s smartphone and mobile phone businesses, its design team, most of its manufacturing and assembly facilities and operations, and sales and marketing support.”
From Facebook:
Mobile active users are 1.01 billion as of March 31, 2014, an increase of 34% year-over-year.
From Apple:
“We sold almost 44 million iPhones, setting a new March-quarter record.”
And the week before, from Google:
Q1 2014 earnings totaled $15.4 billion in revenue, a 19% increase over the previous year’s $12.95 billion. Oh, and their Android platform is on nearly 80% of every smartphone in the world.
Designed By Apple And Google And Microsoft In America
iOS, Android and Windows Phone – American designed, American-led operating platforms all – account for nearly 98% of the global smartphone market, a truly stunning statistic. There appears no line on the horizon.
As the world rushes to replace their mobile phones with smartphones, even Microsoft, now a distant third, is well positioned to fully capitalize on mobile. Their takeover of Nokia includes the company’s very popular Asha brand of hybrid smartphones/featurephones, as well as Nokia’s traditional handset business, which still ships more than 200 million devices a year. (Second only to Samsung)
Should America celebrate these results?
Yes.
Should the rest of the world take bold, perhaps costly action to limit the continued rise of America’s mobile dominance?
Probably they should try.
The Pivot To Mobile
How did America so convincingly win the smartphone wars? First and foremost by attracting, developing, retaining, and fully incentivizing the best and brightest.
Vision and execution are also paramount. Consider:
- Apple’s relentless pursuit of optimizing hardware while simultaneously improving upon and expanding the modes of interaction with that hardware.
- Google encourages, captures and then attempts to make sense of (and profit from) the multiple data streams we generate.
- Facebook seeks to connect the world on a fully human level.
- Microsoft has spent the past four decades making computer applications more empowering and productive.
Also, and despite their vast size, these companies move with speed. Witness Facebook’s head-turning pivot to mobile. I think Mark Zuckerberg should be hailed for this accomplishment.
Weaknesses Along The Front Lines
Are there weaknesses in America’s smartphone leadership? Several, in fact.
Apple
iTunes is the center of Apple. It’s what locks us in, it’s what helps lure new customers. iTunes revenues are falling on a per-user basis. If iTunes spending falls on a per-user basis, I believe hardware margins will follow suit. Apple is optimized for hardware margins. The iTunes trend line thus appears ominous.
Google still does not have an effective messaging strategy. This is confounding. There may be no more important mini-platform in the near term than messaging. Facebook, of course, battered its way into this critical market, dropping $20 billion on Instagram and WhatsApp in a single year. Google will almost certainly need to do the same. Larry Page has the wherewithal to follow suit — does he have the necessary humility? I am not convinced.
Google’s primary response to date, requiring SMS and messaging to default to Google’s Hangouts service, seems a rather anemic response.
Though it claims over a billion mobile users, Facebook has no smartphone platform. This perpetually locks them out from critical user, usage and location data. That Facebook is now looking to buy its way into the wearables market, which potentially delivers incredible amounts of user data, should be no surprise.
That said, what will Mark Zuckerberg do when the ‘monopoly’ money runs out? Successful businesses aren’t sustained on buying up others’ creations.
Microsoft
Despite the well reviewed Windows Phone 8.1 OS, Microsoft has yet to reveal it can create a thriving mobile-first business.
Manufacturing
Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia notwithstanding, the vast majority of manufacturing of every piece of smartphone hardware is outsourced. The case has been made that regular interaction with new materials and new manufacturing processes will lead to those companies (and nations) becoming the primary source of innovation, thus trumping Apple, Google et al. This idea has not been borne out and I suspect it never will. Shedding our manufacturing abilities has no doubt damaged America’s middle class, but not its technology leadership.
Money and the Snowden factor
Smartphone platforms almost certainly contribute to a nation’s economic well-being and security. Smartphones link people, telecommunications and banking, holds our most personal information, tracks our movements, manages our identity, logs our purchases, connects us to first responders, and provides vital access to news, cultural and learning resources. We have to assume larger nations in particular are keenly incentivized to repel America’s technological reach. This is especially true in a post-Edward Snowden environment.
It’s not simply a matter of geopolitics, of course. Real money is at stake. Google and Facebook are effectively banned in China — and the in-country alternatives are now worth billions.
Over 90 million smartphones sell in China every quarter. China may decide to lock out Apple and Microsoft — or demand unreasonable ‘rents’. If China creates barriers to Apple, for example, or perhaps does all it can to promote or subsidize homegrown companies such as Xiaomi, then certainly Apple’s growth potential will be diminished.
I would also not be surprised if government sponsored firms in India or Indonesia, for example, purchase BlackBerry or commit significant resources to improving the open source version of Android (AOSP), which is free of all Google services. Success by any means necessary.
Why This Matters
Smartphones are the next great phase in computing’s decades long remaking of work, play, learning, commerce, creativity and connectivity around the planet. They connect us with nearly everything. America is in the lead now. Americans may wish to celebrate this. To remain at the top, however, will demand vigilance, daring and vision.
Each phase of the computing revolution appears to come faster than the one before. The smartphone wars will soon be the technology revolution of the past.
Shazam! Why iPhone Integration With Shazam Really Is A Big Deal.
I believe most analysts, including those that monitor Apple’s every move, are seriously underestimating the ramifications of Apple baking Shazam’s music identification service into iOS 8. This is not merely about increasing song downloads. Rather, this move marks Apple’s determined leap to re-position the iPhone in our lives. The digital hub metaphor is now much too limiting. As the physical and digital worlds mix, merge and mash together to create entirely new forms of interaction and new modes of awareness, the iPhone will become our nerve center. It will guide us, direct us, watch, listen and even feel on our behalf.
A bold statement, I know, especially given the prosaic nature of the rumor. Let’s start then with the original Bloomberg report:
(Apple) is planning to unveil a song discovery feature in an update of its iOS mobile software that will let users identify a song and its artist using an iPhone or iPad.
Apple is working with Shazam Entertainment Ltd., whose technology can quickly spot what’s playing by collecting sound from a phone’s microphone and matching it against a song database.
Song discovery? Ho hum. Only, look beyond the immediate and there’s potential for so much more. That late last year, Shazam updated its iPhone app to support an always-on, always-listening ‘Auto Shazam’ feature is no coincidence. Our phones are becoming increasingly aware of their surroundings. I expect Apple to leverage this technological confluence for our mutual benefit.
Today, Song Discovery.
Apple’s move no doubt satisfies a near term need. While Shazam has been around since 2008, and the company claims 90 million monthly users across all platforms, having their service baked into the iPhone will almost certainly spur increased sales. Song downloads have slowed — not just with iTunes, the world’s largest seller of music — but across the industry.
Instead of having to download the Shazam app, iPhone users will now simply point their device near a sound source and summon Siri: “what song is playing?” So notified, they can then buy it instantly from iTunes.
Little surprise music industry site MusicWeek was generally positive about the news. Little surprise, also, the tech industry could not muster much excitement. Thus…the Verge essentially summarized Bloomberg’s report.
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber offered little more than “sounds like a great feature.”
Windows Phone Central readers offered only gentle mocking, reminding all who would listen this feature is already embedded in Windows Phone.
That’s about it. Scarcely even a mention Shazam has a similar, if less developed TV show identification feature which could also prove a boon for iTunes video sales.
Place me at the other end of the spectrum. I think the rumored Shazam integration is a big deal and not because I care about the vagaries of the music business. This is not about yet another mental task the iPhone makes easier. Rather, this move reveals Apple’s intent to enable our iPhones to sense — to hear, see and inform, even as our eyes, ears and awareness are overwhelmed or focused elsewhere.
Tomorrow, Super Awareness.
Our smartphones are always on, always connected to the web, always connected to a specific location (via GPS) and, with minimal hardware tweaks, can always be listening, via the mic, and even always be watching, via the cameras.
What sights, sounds, people, toxins, movements, advertisements, songs, strange or helpful faces, and countless other opportunities and interactions, some heretofore impossible to assess or even act upon, are we exposed to every moment of every day? We cannot possibly know this, but our smartphones can, or soon will. I believe this Shazam integration points the way.
It’s not just about hearing a song and wanting to know the artist. It’s about picking up every sound, including those beyond human earshot, and informing us if any of them matter. Now apply this same principle to every image and face we see though do not consciously process.
Our smartphone’s mic, cameras, GPS and various sensors can record the near-infinite amount of real and virtual data we receive every moment of every day. Next, couple that with the fact our smartphone’s ‘desktop-class’ processing will be able to toss out the overwhelming amounts of cruft we are exposed to, determine what’s actually important, and notify us in real-time of that which should demand our attention. That is huge.
Going forward, the iPhone becomes not simply more important than our PC, for example, but vital for the successful optimization of our daily life. This is not evolution, but revolution.
The Age Of iPhone Awareness
Yes, it’s fun to have Siri magically tell us the name of a song. Only, this singular action portends so much more. At the risk of annoying Android and Windows Phone users, Apple’s move sanctions and accelerates the birth of an entirely new class of services and applications which I call ambient apps.
Ambient apps hear, see and record all the ‘noise’ surrounding us, instantly combine this with our location, time, history, preferences — then run this data against global data stores — to inform us of what is relevant. What is that bird flying overhead? Where is that bus headed? What is making that noise? Who is the person approaching me from behind? Is there anything here I might like?
Your smartphone’s mic, GPS, camera, sensors and connectivity to the web need never sleep. Set them to pick up, record, analyze, isolate and act upon every sound you hear, every sight you see.
This has long been the dream of some, though till now was impossible due to limited battery life, limited connectivity, meager on-board processing and data access. No longer.
Let’s start with a simple example.
Why ask Siri “what song is this”? Why not simply say, for example, “Siri, listen for every song I hear (whether at the grocery store, in the car, at Starbucks, etc.). At the end of the day, provide an iTunes link to every song. I’ll decide which ones I want to purchase. Thank you, Siri.”
Utterly doable right now. Except, why limit this service to music?
For example, perhaps our smartphone can detect and take action based upon the fact that, unbeknownst to you, the sound of steps behind you are getting closer. It can sense, record and act upon the fact you walk faster each time you hear this particular song. Or you slowed down when passing a particular restaurant. What do you want it to do based upon its “awareness” of your own actions — actions which you were not consciously aware of?
Our smartphone can hear and see. It is always with us. It makes sense then to allow it to optimize and prioritize our responses to the real and virtual people and things we interact with every day, even those outside our conscious involvement.
Ambient Apps Are The New Magic
The utility of our smartphone’s responses will only get better. Smartphones sense by having ears (mic), eyes (cameras), by knowing our exact location (GPS) and by being connected to the internet. These continue to improve. It is smartphone sensors, however, that parallel our many nerve endings, feeling and collecting all manner of data and notifying us when an appropriate action should be taken.
Though still a relatively young technology, smartphones have added a wealth of new sensors with each iteration. The inclusion of these sensors should radically supplement the recording, tracking and ambient ‘awareness’ of our smartphones, and thus further optimize our interactions, both online and offline.
Jan Dawson posted this Qualcomm chart which illustrates the amazing breadth of sensors added to the Samsung Galaxy line over just the past five years. What becomes standard five years from now?
Hear, see, sense. The smartphone’s combination of hardware, sensors, cloud connectivity, location awareness and Shazam-like algorithms will increasingly be used to uncover the most meaningful bits of our lives then help us act upon them, as needed. This is not serendipity, this is design. I think Apple is pointing the way.