It Can’t All Be True

Re:It Can’t All Be True by LekkoscPiwa on Monday April 22, 2013 @06:22PM (#5592093)

You said:"The market wants to know: what is Apple going to really do about competing with Android / Samsung / Kindle Fire / very low cost, high value smart phones and tablets."

Somehow, the answer is obvious to me. Continue making superior products. Apple creates expensive better desktops and laptops than Win/Linux/Lenovo/Samsung that do it at very low cost. That's how it won that market. That's how it's going to win smartphones/tablets. I switched from iPhone4s to Galaxt S3. Can't wait to switch back. If I can compare the experience to anything it would have to be akin to switching from Mac OS X back to Windows Vista/7/8/whatever. After 4 years of using iPhone I wanted a change. Now I just want a smartphone that doesn't suck. And it's not only me. People will keep buying BMWs even though there are cheap/better alternatives like Toyota. Once you got spoiled by BMW handling or iPhone user interface, you won't simply go back. Unless you're tired of buying product from the same brand all the time, so you will switch, get disappointed (like me!) and then switch back again. Look at S4 sales and reviews. People just wanted the change and Samsung did a great job with marketing S3 and got lucky with timing too. At that point last year people were just tired of iPhone, they wanted something new. They got it. They discovered it sucks. And big news for you - they will go back to Apple. There is now way in the world I'm going to purchase an Android device in the near future. And there is no way I'm going back to Toyota.

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Re:It Can’t All Be True by adventured on Monday April 22, 2013 @07:04PM (#5592274)

I believe Apple can absolutely hold onto some market share with their model, assuming they keep making great products.

But how much market is that? 5% won't facilitate the network scale they need to encourage developers to focus on their app ecosystem. And as the iPod sales continue to evaporate, Apple will lose its music dominance to the smart phone market (which would remove another key moat in their overall ecosystem).

The question in my opinion is, how much of the smart phone market can Apple retain. If it's 5%, they're screwed. If it's 15%, I think that would work.

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Re:It Can’t All Be True by rimantas on Tuesday April 23, 2013 @12:55AM (#5593348)

You are conveniently ignoring iPad.

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Re:It Can’t All Be True by LekkoscPiwa on Tuesday April 23, 2013 @06:08AM (#5594219)

This has always been a "problem" for Apple. And argument against their business model. That they were able time and time again prove to work. Because of the product/service/overall experience superiority to any and all competitors. You have 1000s of PC manufacturers and still Mac is better. Because they don't just assemble parts. They understand that the money in this business is in value added stuff, like user interface, like looks, like service, like uncompromising quality. Others seem to think that what they sell is just all about assembling together great hardware. Apple understands that there is more to it. That's where their value has always been and I don't think that this changed a bit with Samsung introducing S3 to the market. Samsung (and other smartphone manufacturers) is just an assembly plant. They may have better hardware in their smartphones, true. The same way you can build a "better" PC with better hardware than Mac Pro. The problem with this approach is that there is so much more to building great product than assembling parts. Customer service, software, user interface, looks, etc, etc. That's why S3 with better hardware in it sucks comapred to iPhone. Even though iPhone has smaller screen. The same way a PC with better hardware running on Win8 is worse than Mac Os X.

Again BMW is more profitable than Toyota. And Porsche is more profitable than BMW. Porsche makes on average $20k on each and every car sake they make in Europe. GM in Europe has a loss of nearly $2k on each car they sell. You tell me GM business model is somehow better? S3 is a commodity compared to iPhone and that's Samsung's problem not Apple's.

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