I think it’s naive to expect that American companies like Apple that outsource everything but design and software and reap enormous profits are going to be able to do this indefinitely. China is getting better fast at doing these things too and will have tremendous advantages when it owns the entire stack. If American companies want to stay competitive in the long run they’re going to have to break their addiction to…
Isn't this ordinary commoditization? Provided Apple keeps innovating, they'll keep ahead. They have a head start, and innovatiin is their corporate organizing principle, from hiring to advertizing. They leave commodity profits on the table. The danger is if China has a monopoly on know-how, i.e. if it's not a "commodity". But that doesn't seem to be the case. However, one day, the iphone will be "good enough", and cu…
The fact is nobody even tries to do the level of integration between software and hardware that Apple does. It's hard to compete with an opponent when you don't understand what they are doing, or why they are doing it, or why it works and it's very clear their competitors don't understand any of those things.
As long as the competition sit on their hands following the 'theoretically' ideal business 101 commodification strategy, which hasn't worked for 40 years now, it will continue to not work. But here we are, generations of business managers at Apple's competitors have come and gone and the wait them out strategy keeps losing.