121–130 of 190 posts
In India, dual SIM support is the best advantage Android has over iPhone. That holds many people away. People are not letting ONE of their number go away.
What do they use the second phone number for?
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They're not competitors in the segment of the market providing macOS , because they don't run it. Some people will be willing to look past it, but it's still a huge advantage for Apple. When I'm choosing my next laptop, though the Surface and the Dell XPS might seem nice, neither of them run macOS, and that's probably a dealbreaker for me unless Apple's laptops get really far away from my needs.
> neither of them run macOS, and that's probably a dealbreaker for me I strongly suggest that you give Linux a shot. Depending on the distro, it can be very nice, and it means that you get to keep both your money and your freedom, which I really appreciate.
I switched to OS X after having switched back and forth between Windows and Linux for several years, always getting upset with each other's deficiencies.
Interesting. This shows that Apple don't compete properly and only achieve high sales through monopoly. That probably explains their general nasty attitude to many things, and really sick lock-in mentality.
> None of that lock-in exists in China: Apple may be a de facto monopolist for most of the world, but in China the company is simply another smartphone vendor, and being simply another smartphone vendor is a hazardous place to be. To be clear, it’s not all bad
Why is it bad? Being "simply another smartphone vendor" is the right situation. What's bad are monopolistic markets.
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What do they use the second phone number for?
(1) It's often cheaper/free to call numbers on the same network. (2) Business phone/family phone. Edit: speaking from my experience in Eastern Europe. I assume it's similar in India.
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If you think brand is the reason Apple succeeds, you simply are way over-discounting or don't understand unique platform features/benefits. Brands become powerful only when they are true. All the marketing in the world can't successfully position your products as valuable and unique, if they aren't. You can't fool people for long. The gods of the advertising industry want you to believe they can sell ice to eskimos,…
Branding isn't the sole reason for Apple's success. But it is probably an important one. As for the general power of branding: many commodity like products make lots of money through branding, be in the fields of luxury or fashion.
Example: Coca-Cola. People don't buy Coke because advertising tells them to, people buy Coke because advertising reminds them to. Coke has a strong brand because Coke consumers prefer it's taste.
Numerous taste tests have shown this. Sam Walton spent millions on a better tasting drink than Coke, proved it was better in every taste test, and Walmart's coke bombed when it was released despite a heavy marketing push and excellent product placement. It bombed because despite the results of taste-tests, customers had developed an affinity for Coca-Cola. It was always good, they could trust it's consistency and flavor, and they really weren't motivated to gamble on something new.
In the cases of luxury or fashion, their unique benefits may be subtle, so subtle you don't even notice them. But their customers do and once they experience them they continue to buy from the same vendors. It can be as simple as a purse that is extremely attractive, yet durable, yet useful with the perfect number of pockets for your needs. Once you have that pleasing experience you are far more willing to buy future products from the same vendor, thinking, they know what they are doing, they think like I do, etc.
In smartphones and Macs, Apple has consistently provided high quality hardware with innovative features, and powerful but easy to use software. That's built up a brand where Apple customers have high expectations for their Apple product experiences, and that brand can only remain strong if Apple doesn't disappoint them.
Chinese people want the Apple brand they don't care about iOS. If iOS was the status symbol it would get pirated and installed elsewhere. Apple has a strong brand because of it's history as a premium device company internationally, that's all. Their brand was their first mover advantage in China but now Chinese companies are closing that brand gap and since WeChat rules the software side Apple is going to have a hard…
There is still a significant difference in quality! My girlfriend's Samsung phone has a lot more battery problems. The interface for changing settings isn't as nice. Changing the battery in a Samsung is a bit of an adventure, even for someone who has serviced his own Macbook over many years.
In terms of experience, Apple still has it over Samsung.
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If you don't understand how massively differentiated operating systems are in terms of features, you simply don't understand the concept of differentiation. For example, the number of applications an OS can run is an incredibly important and valuable feature. How well it runs those applications is also an important and valuable feature. There is a reason why Excel users usually pick Windows, and Photoshop users often…
How exactly did Apple and Microsoft create a product which they knew ahead of time would attract specific software developers? Or are you suggesting that third party suppliers turned Microsoft/Apple's offerings into differentiated products over time? And Redhat, one of the main software offerings of a 2 billion dollar public company, can't run the software that 98% of computers can, but they aren't an example of diff…
MSFT's developer arm has always been central to providing tools and support to developers wanting to build applications for it's operating systems.
You don't think both companies realized that an operating system with many available applications was far more valuable than one without?
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The article contradicts itself; it says there's a problem, but in the long term, that iphone being 'status conferring' will ultimately prevail, meaning nullify the "problem", not become dominant necessarily: > iPhone users very rarely switch to Android, while a fair number of Android users switch to iPhone, which means that even in a saturated market Apple’s share should grow over time. > And to be sure, an iPhone is…
If you think status is why Apple succeeds, you don't really understand the PC or smartphone markets.
While apple had the best hardware untill 2014 I feel they are slipping behind. Two more generations and the iphone system dying overnight is not unthinkable if they dig deeper into mediocrity.
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> neither of them run macOS, and that's probably a dealbreaker for me I strongly suggest that you give Linux a shot. Depending on the distro, it can be very nice, and it means that you get to keep both your money and your freedom, which I really appreciate.
I am bemused by your suggestion I haven't used Linux before. I switched to OS X after having switched back and forth between Windows and Linux for several years, always getting upset with each other's deficiencies.
Same thing happened to me in the early 2000's. I also just bought a Windows gaming laptop with a GTX 1070 GPU to do VR development, but I find I still find my non-VR experience as a dev and a user superior with my 2012 Macbook Pro!
This seems to confuse some people, the author is not saying Apple have a monopoly on smartphones. What the author is talking about is the locked-in ecosystem that Apple owns, iOS and macOS (watchOS/tvOS). > Moreover, the advantages go beyond margins: the best way to understand both Apple’s profits and many of its choices is to understand that the company has a monopoly on not just MacOS but even more importantly iOS.…