Today we have a guest post (of sorts). Last week, a good friend of mine, David Lee wrote some comments for a couple of posts I wrote last month on Apple and Nokia. (See While Nokia loses market share Apple chases profit share and What’s on Apple’s Radar?)
Now I know that a lot of you are following this blog on RSS and so I asked David if he would allow me to re-post his comments so you could all see them and he agreed. But before we start I would just like to point out an article in the New York Times today: Can Nokia Recapture Its Glory Days?.
[according to Gartner] Nokia’s problems are especially acute in North America, where its hold on smartphones equals a barely visible 3.9 percent, compared with 51 percent for Research in Motion and 29.5 percent for Apple.
OK. Here is David’s take on the Nokia vs Apple smart phone play…
Interesting reading can be found at Michael Gartenberg’s Entelligence blog on the future of Nokia
The real worry for Nokia is that they just cannot seem to get traction in any market outside of the bread and butter handset business.
Looking at their offerings – Symbian is way long in the tooth, especially when compared with iPhone OS and Android. The Ovi Store and ‘Comes with Music’ ventures seem to be heading the way of N-Gage. Also they’re closing the flagship Regent Street store.
When they try to open up new channels they don’t seem to have much success either. Their latest non-handset offering seems to be an overpriced netbook (the new Nokia Booklet). Hardly innovative.
Have you ever seen an N800 Internet tablet in the wild. Though not.
The contrasts with Apple couldn’t be greater – whose soon to be announced Tablet MID will likely corner the market in the way the iPod already has with numbers and the iPhone has with mindshare.
Apple certainly is no Microsoft but this graph makes interesting viewing.
Also the PSP was the wake up call that [Sony] the Japanese giant had truly lost its way. [ See What's on Apple's Radar?]
Clearly Apple are in a unique position. They have the brand, following, leadership, talent, kudos and capital to move in any direction they want.
The key to this article and the heart of the question you ask [in What's on Apple's Radar?] is what does Apple want to be? Furthermore, which competitors will it face along the way? Microsoft, Google, Sony, Nokia, Palm, Dell, Amazon.
My belief is that Apple will remain at its core the world’s leading industrial design shop and a very, very good software house. So yes, a maker of ultra cool gadgets if you like. All the rest (iTunes, AppStore, whatever next) remains the icing on the cake – the killer apps – if you like for their core business – devices.
Many make the mistake of thinking that Apple is an innovator. In truth they haven’t innovated anything since the Newton PDA, a device five years ahead of its time which cleared the way for the Palm Pilot to clean up later on. History shows us when Apple innovates it largely fails to leverage those advantages. Today’s Apple is has learned to become an exploiter of weak or poorly served markets.
For example, Apple didn’t invent the MP3 player it just made entered a poorly defined market the best device, the best UI and the best end to end experience with iTunes. Apple didn’t invent the mobile phone. In this case it entered a mature market with the best mobile convergence device, best UI and best end to end experience with the App Store. In other areas Apple has had less success. The jury is still out on Apple TV. Whether this product line will be improved if Apple enter the mainstream TV market beyond the current set top box into an Apple branded television next year is to be seen.
What really excites me about Apple’s short term push will be their push into the Tablet Computer/MID space next year. I believe the product line has the potential to be as big, if not bigger than the iPod and iPhone. It could also mark the return of Apple into the business space it gave up to Microsoft fifteen years ago.
The Tablet Computer is ideally placed to clean up in new markets as yet untapped. Think of the opportunities:
- Medical – Staff could easily carry 7″ to 10″ slim, lightweight tablets. IBM predict that by 2012 70% of the worlds disk storage will be used for medical imaging.
- Media – Recent reports indicate that Apple has been rattling around the content providers trying to tie up deals for media content. Imaging paying a small subscription to your favourite newspapers/magazines to get them online. We’re not at thet Minority Report stage yet but surely this argument is more convincing than Amazon’s Kindle.
- Education – The Australian Govt has embarked on a Digital Equipment Revolution which has the stated aim of providing all Year 11 -14 students with a netbook. All very clever, Mr Rudd, but its the wrong device and the wrong OS. The school Technical Support Officers will be very busy.
- In the home – How many people buy PC’s when all they really need is a browser, email, media player and maybe some video conferencing.
- The workplace – How many people actually need a full blown PC on their desks anymore. What are the apps that most in the business need. For many it’s Email, a Phone, a Browser, a word processor, spreadsheet, some dashboarding or report viweing capability. Many of these apps are browser delivered now anyway. This argument was just as valid when Larry Ellison backed the Network Computer and is similar to the one Larry and Sergei are pushing with Chrome.
I think that Bill Gates was correct when he prophesised that everybody would be using Tablet PC’s. His timing was just a bit out.
You can read more of David’s posts on Apple TV, Tablets and other things right here.
No comments:
Post a Comment