The Epic Battle Between Apple & Google Is All But Over - Who Won?

[MrDoug]

Well.. I think Samsung is kicking Apples's A.. Big Time.. all around.. Apple is getting yellow.. they have no new ideas and Samsung and others are catching them and even passing them up.. kinda like Oxbow did to the field today in the Preakness Horse Race.. Apple is way behind in up to date inovations.. they are letting the others kick their A.. If Steve Jobs came back to life today.. he would die again by a Heart Attack because of the shock of them lagging so much....
Doug

[MrDoug]

OH.. I was at the ATT store today to upgrade my Mi-Fi card and a lady came in to buy a new phone.. she said her daughter had a iPhone 5 but it was so small compared to what her neighbor had.. her neighbor had a Galaxy Note 2.. she looked at both and bought the Galaxy Note 2.. she mentioned she liked the fact it was larger and could read books better.. I stayed and listened to the whole conversation and transaction.. Go figure..
Doug

[Joseph R]

Originally Posted by MrDoug

OH.. I was at the ATT store today to upgrade my Mi-Fi card and a lady came in to buy a new phone.. she said her daughter had a iPhone 5 but it was so small compared to what her neighbor had.. her neighbor had a Galaxy Note 2.. she looked at both and bought the Galaxy Note 2.. she mentioned she liked the fact it was larger and could read books better.. I stayed and listened to the whole conversation and transaction.. Go figure..
Doug

Spoiler:

Bigger is better because you can fit in a big flat screen TV on it and you do not need a guy holding the wire like this and he can't watch the TV!

[MrDoug]

Originally Posted by Joseph R

Spoiler:

Bigger is better because you can fit in a big flat screen TV on it and you do not need a guy holding the wire like this and he can't the TV!

Oh.. I got it..sheesh..

[K. Molen]

I think it's a little too early to declare a winner, but based on my experiences with the iPad 3 and the Nexus 10, I think it's very clear that Apple is at the very least starting to lag behind.

Granted, that's just a revolutionary iOS upgrade away from no longer being true, but even then I suspect the general design philosophy behind iOS could possible keep Apple from dominating the mobile field the same way they used to.

This is obviously only my opinion based on my own experiences as a user. I make no claims of having analysed the market and other user's behaviours or wants.

[MrDoug]

Hey.. I loved Apple.. But since I have new Samsung Note 2 and Nexus 7.. My iPad and my Wife's iPhone are not as Shinny any longer.

One of the things that a lot of Apple advocates fail to recognize is that it's impossible for Apple to take over the market. Companies like Google, Intel, and Microsoft have had a lot of success in market domination because they produce a relatively inexpensive component that other companies integrate into their products. Dozens of companies can make dozens of products that use those components and still come out ahead because they are targeting different segments of the market. Apple's problem is that it's difficult for one company to target those different markets. Part of the reason is that one market segment can dilute the value of another market segment (e.g. budget phones make high-end phones less valuable). Part of the reason is that it's difficult for a corporation to understand all of the needs of different markets. (Consider who Microsoft, Blackberry, and Apple serve. The different markets have different needs and the businesses only seem to understand one market well.) Of course, Android has flexibility because many vendors are contributing to it. The same can't be said for Apple.

[forsooth]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fat Abe View Post
Apple's long term survival depends on establishing a line of cheaper products. The compter device market is not like the automobile market. A company can't expect to prosper like Mercedes in a business where the products are eventually commoditized.

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

I don't see why they shouldn't be able to keep on coming out out new improved models, every year, for decades if not centuries. Even without Moore's law, Mercedes has been making frequent product improvements since 1901, or since 1886 if you count Benz.

Apple is a luxury brand. As such, they aren't going to keep a big market share on any newly introduced product for long. If computers, handheld or otherwise, become truly commoditized, Apple is toast. So why should they even worry about it?

Like any successful tech company, they will have bigger ups and downs than in most other industries. And, with ups and downs, they've done quite well with a high-price high-quality model. I don't think they would do better by cheapening their brand.

I don't buy what I perceive to be luxury goods. Consistent with that, the only Apple products I have bought are used Apple II series machines. But, hey, they didn't get where they are by catering to me.

Mercedes is expensive auto. average new cost more than 50 times cost of new Apple phone (30K, 40K, 50K, 60K to 600 USD)
will be maintained. will have average life at least 10 years
no proper comparison for Apple phone to Mercedes.

Mercedes like boats
rich people buy a few new
as years pass and price "slowly" drops, less rich people buy the old ones
while same rich people buy other new ones

[ghero]

consumers shall win.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by forsooth

Mercedes is expensive auto. average new cost more than 50 times cost of new Apple phone (30K, 40K, 50K, 60K to 600 USD)
will be maintained. will have average life at least 10 years

We bought this phone, new, about a week ago:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/360575496932...84.m1497.l2649

It's not a smart phone, but has a number of personal digital assistant features features such as calendar, notepad, and simple games. When you consider the free minutes included, the price was maybe one percent that of an Apple phone. And it runs on the same AT&T network as the first few iPhone models. I don't know the profits for this model in particular, but LG is profitable. Probably they will remain profitable five to ten years from now when I'll expect to get all of today's smartphone features from LG, or a similar maker, for about the same price.

If Apple wants to compete with that, they'll have to layoff a lot of designers and programmers. Much better to keep their high-end cachet. Even people who can't afford their products will benefit when the high-end features get passed down to the international mass market five or, at most, ten years later.

I still think there are good analogies with Mercedes Benz. Benz started out with a 100 percent market share as the inventor of the automobile. Their company culture was to make the best car they could, so eventually other brands undercut them. They are still big, although not the biggest. That's fine. I can't afford a Mercedes, but benefit when Mercedes comes out with new features which, years later, I enjoy in a bottom-of-the-line Ford or Toyota. The alternative is never getting those features because the high-end company laid off the employees who would have first engineered them.

[John Carroll]

My teenagers have made it very clear to me that they'd rather have the iPhone.

[Canuck_in_Japan]

I didn't read the article because any article that claims that the battle is over is obviously not worth my time.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

One of the things that a lot of Apple advocates fail to recognize is that it's impossible for Apple to take over the market. Companies like Google, Intel, and Microsoft have had a lot of success in market domination because they produce a relatively inexpensive component that other companies integrate into their products. Dozens of companies can make dozens of products that use those components and still come out ahead because they are targeting different segments of the market. Apple's problem is that it's difficult for one company to target those different markets. Part of the reason is that one market segment can dilute the value of another market segment (e.g. budget phones make high-end phones less valuable). Part of the reason is that it's difficult for a corporation to understand all of the needs of different markets. (Consider who Microsoft, Blackberry, and Apple serve. The different markets have different needs and the businesses only seem to understand one market well.) Of course, Android has flexibility because many vendors are contributing to it. The same can't be said for Apple.

You seem to be misunderstanding what is being said. Apple doesn't try to take over the market. They establish markets with new products (iPhone and iPad) and they make money by selling quality products with a big profit margins. Companies that try to take over markets sale typically at a loss or a small profit margin. That simply isn't Apple's game.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Sony used to be the same way, but look how fast they fell after basically getting the whole ball rolling with ereaders. While they are still in the game, they certainly aren't at the top of the majority of peoples lists when it comes to getting a reader. And yet they make some of the nicest ereaders around at what most consider premium prices.

Everyone eventually gets their turn at the top of the pack and all of them eventually drop down once the thrill has worn off of the name. So Apples drop is coming, we just don't know when.

Sony dropped the ball on eReaders by putting out superior hardware without the supporting infrastructure. Customer support was non- existent and their ebook catalog was much, much smaller than Amazon's. An eBook reader without ebooks isn't terribly useful. So they dropped the ball on the customer side. Apple doesn't have that problem. Where they really shine is the customer experience.

Rather obviously, if Apple doesn't continue to put out new products that appeal to customers, then they will be in trouble. Of course, the same could be said for any other company. Any company that rests on it's laurels or loses focus on what makes it successful is going to have a big fall. This happened to Apple early on when they fired Jobs and brought in the Pepsi salesman. We will see if Apple can keep it's focus without Jobs. It's way too early to know.

[Penforhire]

Competition is good. But calling a winner right now? Too early. Apple never wanted the "whole market." If they do start going after the low end then I would call that the beginning of the end. How do you figure they made the mountain of cash they are sitting on now? It was partly by staying far away from the low end of the market and focusing on obscene margins.

Dell is a nice foil for Apple's story. Dell tried to sell to everyone and they are on the verge of dying. Gateway didn't do much better with that approach. I expect HP's PC's to move away from the bottom eventually. A profitable niche beats losing money on higher volume.

The mobile market is fickle. It wasn't that long ago that HTC was at or near the top. Now they're playing a second-fiddle to Samsung. I see one key to Samsung's popularity is making a wider spread of models. I don't know if they address the low end but they sure have a lot of form factors at the high end. Kudos for the engineering and manufacturing talent to bring THAT much to market. Oh, and don't forget how much money they are spending on advertising. For the last year or more Samsung's ads are everywhere.

I'm a happy owner of a higher-end Samsung washer & dryer set for years now so I've got nothing against them as a brand. A few friends have Samsung's recent 'smart' TV's and they look very good to me.

I'd like to see Google exert more control over hardware requirements for Android. Even their own development team mentioned that as a regret at the recent I/O conference. Not too late to see a course correction in the next major versions.