Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Apple a litte under attack

Netgear CEO LO says that Apple does a big mistake to have a close system for their iOS and Steve Jobs ego is too big to fit into a room.


Lo said that the only motivation Jobs had for his high-profile disagreement with Adobe over Flash last year was his ego. "What's the reason for him to trash Flash? There's no reason other than ego," Lo told the newspaper.
Lo predicted problems for Apple with iOS and the iPhone if it continued to follow what he considers to be a 'closed' strategy.

"Once Steve Jobs goes away, which is probably not far away, then 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. If they continue to close it and let Android continue to creep up then it's pretty difficult as I see it," Lo said.
But to be honest it sounds for me like jealousy. Would not every company prefer to have a closed system, even Netgear would, they are just not able to do so.

Even Google would prefer it but the only way to keep up with iOS is to offer an open system free of charge for hardware makers.

Then a lot of companies are complaining that Apple is getting more strict with their in apps purchases. They declined the latest Sony app (Sony reader) because Apple would not make money on the in app purchase.

Is it a good decision? What happens with Kindle and Nook apps?

First of all Kindle and Nook won't go away. The biggest difference is that you can't buy books within the app. You either buy it through a kindle/nook or you need to go to the websites to buy the books. The two readers are on the Apple devices just as you can think of "Readers". Sony tried to do another approach to allow in app purchase.

But of course for a consumer it is not great to hear that the consumer has to leave the app to buy a book. But so is it. IF somebody wants to buy books from Sony, then buy a Sony reader. I am using iBooks, Kindle and Nook app on my ipad and i barley buy anything from Amazon or B&N. Most of the books are available as well in iBooks. Only a few I had to buy somewhere else, and then i did not mind to navigate to Amazon website to buy the book and then sync it with my iPad.

I can understand Apple's decision. They want to go more into the platform business than just hardware/software, but as a consumer i might not like it too much.

But i don't have any alternative right now to switch. No other devices works so well with my iTunes, or can sync so perfect with my Apple. Every other device i tested or saw yet takes either forever to set up because i have too many choices, have too many bugs and or don't perform so smooth or the battery life is much shorter. They are all in some ways better than the iphone or the iPad but in other ways just not as good (BTW the Galaxi Tab got much less sold than they said, Samsung counted sold items to resellers and not to consumers).

Overall the mix of hardware, software, usability, battery life and amount of available apps is not yet given with any other device on the market and this will still taker 12 months, and till then Apple will have upgrades of their current devices.

This week, Motorola started their Super Bowl chimerical for XOOM which is an awesome commercial, clearly against Apple and their 1984 commercial. The commercial is good, it shows that the user should have an alternative to Apple.



A lot of researchers are predicting that Apple will have in 2013 only 40% of the tablet market, and so what?

Let us face. Even if Apple has only a market share of 40% and maybe Android 50% then Apple has still 40% and 30 other tablet manufactures are sharing 60%, this means Apple is still market leader. If we compare by OS then Goolge is the market leader as they will be soon for smart phones (they surpassed already Symbian), but Google does not make any money on the OS or they devices using Android. Google does only make direct money on apps if even.

On the other hand, Apple is selling more smart phones than any other company. They make on each phone $100 (iPhone costs $194 to produce) and 30% of all sold apps through the app store plus 30% from iAds. So if Apple does not make money on free apps it still makes money on the ads.

Google makes money on ads on their Android devices as well, and surely will sell more ads than Apple because of bigger market penetration and bigger ad network, but statistics are already showing that iAds have better click rate than ad mobs ads.

Bottom line is that Apple does not need to be the sole tablet manufacture or the biggest OS distributor to make more money than Google or even Microsoft (Microsoft had higher net profit than Apple last quarter, but less revenue).

Apple has an unique situation. They sell hardware and software combined. This makes Apple so successful and rich because it is closed and because only Apple produced Hardware is allowed to have their OS.

I am sick to hear comparison between Google, Apple and Microsoft. They are three different type of companies. Google, wants or is only able, to make money through advertisement, and therefore is offering a lot of products free. Google docs is great and it is free, but you cant compare with Microsoft. MS has Office and it costs money and guess what it makes money. But MS does much more than Office. They have a lot of services and software they make money with, like SharePoint, Dynamics products and their Cloud Azure. Granted Google has similar products but free or less expensive, however Google has a big disadvantage with service, actually Google has the worst customer support you can imagine. Just try to have help with your Google AdWords account, it is not easy to get somebody on the phone. Instead they have these forums where everybody can post answers and most of the time these answers are not good enough.

In the other hand Microsoft has a very good service and support in place and makes money out of it, who guessed.

Google is not in Apple business neither. Apple builds hardware, sells software, Google doesn't.

There will be for a long time Google, Microsoft and Apple but don't compare them as you can't compare Apples with strawberries. They are both fruits but just different.

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