Apple isn’t a hardware company anymore
This was originally written as a response to a blog about Apple’s advertising and privacy although I took issue with calling Apple a hardware company. I think it probably does play a role in how Apple deals with customer privacy issues which I may cover in another post. I find this persistent belief that Apple is a hardware company interesting. In the past I believe this was true of Apple, but it’s changed as they’ve morphed into a consumer device company. I think the change to a more software oriented company happened with Apple bought Final Cut from Macromedia in 1998. Final Cut’s success saved Quicktime which was one of their more valuable technolgies at the time and probably sold Apple on the value of creating their own software. Roughly Drafted has a great article with all the details. http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/8AA115DC-2398-456E-9319-FE584… Up to that time OS companies had depended on third parties to create value for the OS, but for Apple that was the point they took their destiny in there own hands and started to create a suite of high quality software to sell. From iLife, iWork, Xcode and their professional apps and of course OS X and iOS. That software is the key to their success, not the hardware. Of course they make more money selling hardware than licensing their software like Microsoft, but it’s the software that allows them to get the margins they do. If it run Windows, or had the poor integration of Windows software people wouldn’t pay it. I’m not dismissing the hardware side though. The designs are industry leading. Solutions involving both hardware and software have enabled them to get a lot more performance out of limited resources than their rivals. They have a third part to their success too, although you may be able to lump it in with software and that’s the media side of their company. Music, TV, movies, apps, games and now books and even Ads. These don’t drive a lot of profits, but the ease of purchasing and integration with the rest of their ecosystem is why people will pay a premium for Apple products. As a modern consumer device company juggling all three of these areas are pretty important to success. Sony has always had nice hardware designs, but have fallen down with software. They are dependant on Microsoft, but the software that integrates with their own products is difficult to use and bug ridden. For a company that controls a large out of media the groups don’t seem to talk to each other at all. It’s difficult to get even Sony’s own media onto it’s own devices. How this relates to privacy has to do with where Apple’s profits come from compared to Google or Facebook, although I’m sure it’s not the only reason.
1 year ago
