Bobo at 19 weeks.
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I saw on Twitter this morning that Apple has passed Microsoft in market cap. This is a momentous occasion and a testament to the extraordinary talent and vision of Steve Jobs. But the real challenge starts now for both companies. Apple needs to unveil a cloud strategy fast. I have written about…
Dell Streak: Miss. (screen size)
HP Slate: When?
Others?: Nah.
For years, I had the misguided notion that with enough resources, all companies in any given segment can compete with each other. You take a Microsoft and someone like Dell or HP or even IBM for that matter and together, they can do anything. Sure, I was always hopeful that Apple would make a huge investment in corporate IT.
Now? Markets and companies are large enough they can choose a particular market to invest in and hopefully dominate. They can safely choose to ignore certain market entrants How they get there and the choices they make along the way is another story.
If you talk to anyone senior at Microsoft, Dell, HP, or even IBM, they’re going to say that it is the platform that matters. Get customers to adopt major pieces of the platform and just like you in your “dating years’, the rest will come along. It’s not hard to imagine that Microsoft, Dell, and HP stare at Apple’s consumer market share wistfully. Lots of woulda, coulda, shoulda’s happening. Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer is not happy and hopefully made that clear yesterday. Perhaps HP and Dell feel the same way.
Now, Apple is succeeded in getting to second base. The iPad demonstrated that they can be a platform and they can be taken seriously. What’s scary (or at least should be) to Microsoft, HP, Dell and IBM is that the consumer is still excited. Third base? Maybe it’s not too far away.
Who is really to blame? Microsoft. What’s the real problem? When you have a mature company like Microsoft or IBM with lots of long term senior folks still hanging out, there’s little incentive for risk. Let’s face it, there are LOTS of millionaires happily camping out at some of these companies. (Quite frankly, who can blame them.)
How about some woulda, coulda, shouldas?
Woulda: Unified Microsoft consumer platform with Win7, a great partnership with MP3.com or some other likely music store as well as a strong partnership with Amazon for books. HP and Dell.
Coulda: Killed lots of overhead in Win7, came out with a consumer-only version with limited networking. The investment? Perhaps $500M and possibly up to $1B
Shoulda: Spent the money. Long term, there is far too much to lose. Do you envision there ever being a time when they can catch up?
What if Adobe Flash already works on the upcoming iPhone 4G and Apple/Adobe are making a big move by building suspense? Could they be sandbagging the market?
While I can’t find it, a while back Steve Blank wrote a blog post about sandbagging the competition. The company he worked for developed chips that completely killed the competition; yet, to extend the product’s selling life and increase unit sales, they only published modestly superior (not overwhelming) performance statistics; when in fact, it blew the competitors away.
For Apple/Adobe, let’s run it down:
- HTML5 is coming - but it will be a while before entire websites convert. (I suspect it will be another career decision for lots of HTML developers. As I was doing less development, I really had to do some thinking about taking on CSS.)
- There are tons of existing flash apps in games and web pages.
- There are lots of Flash developers.
Now, looking at the benefits from a joint Apple/Adobe’s POV:
- It is very hard to port to different platforms. OS/Graphics/Battery Performance, security, OS, installation, support, are only a few of the considerations. It takes time and lots of resources. Doable but difficult.
- A Flash port to iPhone/iPad represents a second hockey stick and new life for the iPhone. 4G provides increased throughput and access but it’s the features that users want.
- Adobe Air might represent yet another hockey stick.
- If you’re secure in your market, making your competitors think you’re faltering or have challenges is a great strategy even if it temporarily reduces your market share.
Would it be bad form for Apple and Adobe to mislead both their customers and shareholders? Unethical? Would Apple’s shareholders forgive them? I bet they would. Hell, I bet they would love it! I don’t think Apple doesn’t have anything to worry about. There’s no doubt that Adobe would benefit.
Of course, we’ll have to see what happens when the 4G comes out. I have to assume that Apple will release the 4G version just about the same time they release iPad v2 - so both platform sales and Flash developers would benefit. Time will tell!
(On a separate note, why hasn’t Apple purchased Adobe? They’ve had a symbiotic relationship for years.
We’re putting our brains into neutral, and revving the engine. We’re digitally dithering, clicking on links and swimming through a torrent of useless garbage being thrown at us by idiots and self-promoters, pundits and PR flacks and marketing people.
We’re immersing ourselves in games like Farmville and Mafia Wars, obsessing about earning energy packs, spending billions of dollars on virtual gardening tools.
We’re turning the world around us into a videogame, using sites like Foursquare to tell our friends where we’re eating lunch, and competing to see who can become “mayor” of some restaurant.
Meanwhile, in the midst of all this, Glenn Beck has become an influential television commentator, and Sarah Palin is a credible candidate for president in 2012. You think this is a coincidence?
No way. What’s happening is this: we are being so overwhelmed by the noise and junk zooming past us that we’re becoming immune to it. We’ve become a nation of Internet-powered imbeciles, with an ever-lower threshold for inanity.
