Six Colors:
I believe Apple is truly a company that is always looking at the big picture, I really do. The iPhone and iPad and Mac all work together, using iTunes and iCloud and even Apple Pay as infrastructure, in a harmonious way. But at the same time, it’s hard not to look at the size of Apple’s iPhone business and wonder how the success of the iPhone affects Apple’s decision-making.
I’ve often made the same point. I don’t think Apple is truly ignoring the the other aspects of their business but the iPhone is definitely the 800 lb gorilla.
I think Apple wanted this. The more iPhone gets stronger the more easier for Apple to build an eco-system around the iPhone. Now its the watch, there is already Car Play, then there are big opportunities with deeper integration with Apple TV; Home automation is another big area.
Ever since I have owned an iPhone, if there is an accessory or gadget that works with it – 50% of my decision making is done. The remaining 50% depends on how good the product is, and when Apple builds something, it takes care of the remaining 50%.
I think the stronger & bigger that gorilla is, the better.
Has there ever been an ecosystem as large as iPhones and associated apps, accessories and cloud infrastructure (which ties into movies, music, storage, etc.)?
Even when Samsung (allegedly) sold more Galaxy phones, their ecosystem was much smaller.
Samsung’s Galaxy success was a different kind of product distortion field. Using the Galaxy brand on everything gave the impression of premium products when their mix was 20-30% premium, 70-80% other, depending on which shipping estimates you believe.
That’s all fine – yet I do think Apple is ignoring its old “core” business. What a shame, it does not really affect their bottom line.
I would say, definitely not. Nothing is really bigger than the iPhone and I think that is the problem. There may be more sales of Android, yet just the iPhone (though that is the biggest chunck) is bigger than Microsoft’s entire business (and this was from a few years ago).
Apple’s old core business was creative professionals. Apple and Adobe were in bed together. Even Apple and Microsoft got together to make inexpensive font types (vs Adobe’s TrueType – iirc). Apple was floundering a bit, yet this core market helped keep Apple alive..
Then NeXT acquired Apple and rebuilt the technology (yes – but this it not actually backwards – like you think). Mac OS was modernized and by the time 10.3.3 was out, OS X was good for desktop publishing – even if you still used Quark Xpress 6.
OS X allowed Macs to do things, previously only Windows NT or other expensive type workstations could do (Solaris, Irix, etc..) and then some – since Apple did a good job of making OS X publisher/creative type/Mac friendly for users, Adobe, printing, etc… Apple even starting building up its pro software with Final Cut, Final Cut Studio, Shake, etc… and I think Apple went after a big chunck of Avid/Media 100/etc.. business – in the profession and pro sumer markets for video. Even Pages was a bit of a page layout program. I don’t think Pages was as good as, say even Adobe Page Maker (which was bad) but i’ve seen people attempt page layout in MS Word – wow – that’s pretty damn horrible – anyway – Apple was building its pro market for over 10 years.
You could even get enterprise level server hardware – RAID arrays and 1U rack mount servers were fairly common. OS X could easily support LDAP, AD and Apple’s (new?) OD … this was actually a great idea, since most media/content creators could take up massive space (tens, hundreds or thousands of gigs – easily – with just a few people) – so these systems could integrate or even ad to the existing network and allow the creators to create – without them having to worry (much) about running out of resources….
Then the iPhone came out and we no longer have server hardware – we barely have a server OS and we now have iMovie Pro – yikes! I do blame Steve Jobs for most of this! (rant over).
Well looks like iPhone is clearly their core business…