There are certain universal rules: birds fly, politicians lie, Apple makes money. In the last three months of 2014, the firm behind the iPad and iPhone increased its profits by 37% to $18-billion (R209-billion) or $8.3-million (R51-million) per hour – the largest amount ever recorded by a public company.
Where to from here?
THE question is: where does Apple go from here? When the iPad was launched, many derided it: what use did we have for an iPhone that was too large to fit in our pockets, and didn’t actually work as a phone?
Jobs proved the doubters wrong, filling a niche that we never knew was there. But can the same really be true of the forthcoming Apple Watch?
Part of the problem in keeping up the momentum is Apple’s sheer size.
A product that would be a blockbuster for any other company will register as barely a blip on its earnings chart. To keep its growth going, Apple has to place its new devices – whatever they may be – in tens of millions of homes (and then persuade those customers that, actually, they weren’t that good after all, at least compared with the shinier, newer model released six months later).
It also prefers to dominate a market segment, as opposed to just competing in it.
Yet there’s also a widespread feeling that the tides of technology are turning against Apple – that its business model sits uncomfortably with the way the web is going.
The big idea now is that the internet is basically disappearing, moving from something accessed via bespoke screens to something embedded into everything around us, with fridges and phones and ovens and televisions and kettles constantly talking to each other in an invisible babble of Wi-Fi signals.
Alternatively, Apple’s dominance could be disrupted by new innovators. People are talking glowingly of Xiaomi’s new phones, for example. And the foundation stone of Steve Jobs’s success, Apple’s control of the music market via the one-two punch of iPod and iTunes, is weaker than ever, as streaming services such as Spotify or sites such as YouTube render its pay-per-song model passé.
But people have been predicting Apple’s long-term demise for quite a while. Jobs, for example, was told that the web wanted to be open – and that his “closed” model, in which Apple devices only talked to Apple devices and Apple-compatible software, would be anathema to consumers.
Instead, like Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, he profited from the fact that people were willing to sacrifice freedom for seamless convenience.— The Daily Telegraph
- Apple was not the only tech company to boast healthy profits as Facebook on Wednesday reported that its quarterly profit jumped 33% from last year to $696-million (R8.1-billion) as ad revenue and membership grew at the leading social network. — AFP
Apple’s bite rules market as smart moves bear fruit
Where to from here?
THE question is: where does Apple go from here? When the iPad was launched, many derided it: what use did we have for an iPhone that was too large to fit in our pockets, and didn’t actually work as a phone?
Jobs proved the doubters wrong, filling a niche that we never knew was there. But can the same really be true of the forthcoming Apple Watch?
Part of the problem in keeping up the momentum is Apple’s sheer size.
A product that would be a blockbuster for any other company will register as barely a blip on its earnings chart. To keep its growth going, Apple has to place its new devices – whatever they may be – in tens of millions of homes (and then persuade those customers that, actually, they weren’t that good after all, at least compared with the shinier, newer model released six months later).
It also prefers to dominate a market segment, as opposed to just competing in it.
Yet there’s also a widespread feeling that the tides of technology are turning against Apple – that its business model sits uncomfortably with the way the web is going.
The big idea now is that the internet is basically disappearing, moving from something accessed via bespoke screens to something embedded into everything around us, with fridges and phones and ovens and televisions and kettles constantly talking to each other in an invisible babble of Wi-Fi signals.
Alternatively, Apple’s dominance could be disrupted by new innovators. People are talking glowingly of Xiaomi’s new phones, for example. And the foundation stone of Steve Jobs’s success, Apple’s control of the music market via the one-two punch of iPod and iTunes, is weaker than ever, as streaming services such as Spotify or sites such as YouTube render its pay-per-song model passé.
But people have been predicting Apple’s long-term demise for quite a while. Jobs, for example, was told that the web wanted to be open – and that his “closed” model, in which Apple devices only talked to Apple devices and Apple-compatible software, would be anathema to consumers.
Instead, like Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, he profited from the fact that people were willing to sacrifice freedom for seamless convenience.— The Daily Telegraph
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