Why Apple doesn’t care about its competition
blogs.reuters.com
Why Apple doesn’t care about its competition
1–10 of 45 posts
Re: Why Apple doesn’t care about its competition
#2By my back of the envelope calculation, Apple's profit margin is better for the mini than it is for the larger models. This seems silly because the mini is in a much more price sensitive market. But from Apple's perspective, a mini sale quite likely cannibalized a full size sale, so profit per device matters as much as margin.
Re: Why Apple doesn’t care about its competition
#3I would argue that the fact that Apple spent the vast majority of the iPad Mini announcement with a giant picture of the Nexus 7 behind them and comparing/contrasting features would make this article incorrect.
Re: Why Apple doesn’t care about its competition
#4Well, Apple cares about its competition, but I think it cares more about making a profit and they do that by build great products that they can charge a lot for.
Selling a product with a high margin is actually easier in some ways than with a low margin because with a high margin you can afford to advertise, market, and push harder to sell a product.
Amazon can sell the Kindle Fire at break even because it owns its own sales and marketing channel at Amazon.com. Google sells the Nexus 7 with no margin because that is the only way for them to gain a foothold against the Kindle Fire.
A $329 iPad Mini with say a $129 margin means Apple can spend $129 per sale in advertising and marketing and still be as profitable as the Kindle Fire or Nexus 7. We all know it doesn't cost Apple $129 to make a sale, so there's a nice profit left over.
Ultimately, Apple's goal is to be a profitable, sustainable company and they do that by turning a profit on hardware sales. That's their model. Amazon and Google have a different business model.
Re: Why Apple doesn’t care about its competition
#5I would argue that the fact that Apple spent the vast majority of the iPad Mini announcement with a giant picture of the Nexus 7 behind them and comparing/contrasting features would make this article incorrect.
Exactly. Their last two big product reveals have been almost entirely defined by reference to Google/Android products: A 16:9 screen on the iPhone. A 7" tablet. Changing maps providers. And they're not even trying to hide this. (And, I should note, all of this is quite objectively a good thing for the market).
The premise of the article is ridiculous. Sure, Apple has built a great brand that they can leverage into huge sales for the iPad Mini. I have no doubt it will be the most successful tablet in its size class within a few months. But to pretend that this means the Mini's development wasn't driven by the existing competitors is just silly. Apple jumped into this market because everyone else proved it out first.
Re: Why Apple doesn’t care about its competition
#6Even the title of this post smells like "another one of those HN Apple fanboys declaring his adoration". The article itself is even worse:
"The world divides into people who think of Apple as a company, and people who think of Apple as a brand..."
Re: Why Apple doesn’t care about its competition
#7Their former CEO's thermonuclear war is solid evidence that they do indeed care about their competition. You generally care about something before you drop nuclear weapons on it.
Re: Why Apple doesn’t care about its competition
#8I would say this might be true when it comes to creating the initial version of their products. I feel that the way you make an iPhone is not by saying "let's see what our competitors are doing and do the opposite of what they're doing bad". If you do that you ground yourself to at the time what was pretty terrible HCI.
By separating the design of the iPhone from what your conventional competitors are doing and re-imagining things they were able to create something that was very usable. I felt that they did this again with the MacBook Air.
Like others have pointed out I feel that Apple definitely cares about it's competition. That's why you're seeing aggressive lawsuits against it's competitors, swapping out Google Maps, and restrictive App Store policies.
Re: Why Apple doesn’t care about its competition
#9Their former CEO's thermonuclear war is solid evidence that they do indeed care about their competition. You generally care about something before you drop nuclear weapons on it.
Actually, he pushed the red button accidentally while cooking souffle.
Re: Why Apple doesn’t care about its competition
#10I would argue that the fact that Apple spent the vast majority of the iPad Mini announcement with a giant picture of the Nexus 7 behind them and comparing/contrasting features would make this article incorrect.
The announcement is for people in the press who want to hear how the product compares (and will complain if it's not brought up), and secondarily people who love Apple enough to take the time to watch the announcement. You will not see a single mention of the competition on Apple's site or in any of their promotional materials, because of exactly what this article explains: aspirational brands do not compare themselves to those brands beneath them, because it would tarnish the brand.