Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Why tech companies don't "get" Apple success

Gentlemen, I found an outstanding article which spelled out as clearly as I've seen why companies simply are not competing with the Apple iPod and probably the iPhone. I'd be interested in any feedback!

iPhone success

3 comments:

Stitch said...

This is a good explanation as to why Apple succeeds where others fear to go. It seems most companies look at the history of products and increamentally change features. Mostly by just taking on features and attempting to cut costs. Apple makes a new history by going to a place with there products that others have not tried before. It seems they design not based so much on history of what has succeeded in the past but on what is annoying about the current set of products and fixing these problems with new innovative ideas. Sometimes this turns out to be a dud but I think Apple is getting better at deciding what to invest research and money in than in the past. No wonder Wall Street is in awe at the way Apple has been executing lately. It makes the days of the candy colored iMacs seems juvinile.

Le said...

Gents,

I tell you what's amazing in terms of 'not getting it!' Steve Ballmer, the CEO of MS, indicated in an interview that he thought the iPhone is laughable and that the Zune already has 20% of the market!! Twenty percent?!!! It's like at 3%!!! Their CEO lives in La-La Land!! The CEO should have at least SOME understanding of markets!!

-Le

Stitch said...

I saw another comment he made about open source software. He was asked if he thought that a proprietary software company could make better software than open source software. His reply was that he thought they could make better software compared to "unpaid volunteers" in the open source community but they would have to keep on their toes. The article pointed out that a lot of open source software is funded by large corporations such as IBM, Sun, and Novell. Open source does not equal unpaid volunteers. The author of the article was amazed that Ballmer could be so out of touch as to what open source really is. It is not weather you get paid but how the product is licenced. Can you get acess to the source code and change it if you wanted to. And is the software free! Doh!