Next from Apple

I think this was well said by Tom Krazit @ CNN about Apple:

“Its secretive nature creates a mystique around the company when the products are excellent, but that same communications strategy makes it appear aloof and indifferent when customers are angry over product glitches. (link)”

That is exactly how it works.

On a related note, Daniel Lyons (aka Fake Steve, now a retired blog btw) who recently moved from Forbes to Newsweek, writes that Steve Jobs is a monopolist at heart. Someone told him so. But I think it makes perfect sense. It’s the flip side of doing everything yourself so the results can be perfect. In marketing, Apple often uses the claim that it makes both the software and the hardware, and therefore they can offer a unique and smooth user experience. As long as their marketshare is small, this seems fantastic, but as they grow larger – and they do, now besting Google in market cap – they start to look more and more like a monopoly.
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What’s going to happen next Monday, at Apple’s WWDC 2008?

Ok, it’s as certain as it can be that a new iPhone will see the light of day. It will have everything the previous one was critizised for not having: video calls, video recording, 3G with fast HSDPA (maybe even the superfast HSPA+), GPS, better battery life, slimmer form factor (not that the first iPhone wasn’t slim, but everything in electronics just keeps getting smaller), Exchange support (promised by Apple as part of the new firmware 2.0), and support for third party apps & widgets sold at the new App Store. All this, and worldwide availability.

But what else? Read the rest of this entry »

Well, chalk one up for Apple’s creative moves. It really seems like they are going to have a full month of no iPhone sales, incredible as it may sound.

So I was definitely wrong on this one. Sorry about that.

iPhones have been unavailable at the US Apple Store for a couple of days now. There is no question new phones are right around the corner. My guess is tomorrow, Tuesday. New iPhones immediately for the US, and a trickle to the rest of the world soon after (”in coming weeks and months” or something like that.)

Some believe that Apple is just clearing the channel, but that they won’t release the new phones before the keynote on June 9. That’s a month from now! I don’t believe Apple would be so careless with their logistics that they miss a whole month of sales. That’s just not going to happen.

I can’t remember Apple ever clearing channels that much in advance. And they have had excellent timing for years now. Here’s what I think. Read the rest of this entry »

Apple seems to love trying things out in public. They launch a technology and then sit back and see what happens. They watch and learn. Later, you will almost always see that technology develop and spread to their other products.

Apple has realized that the next battle is the user experience. Circumstances have played into their hands on this one, since they have always been about the user experience. They were definitely before their time, kind of prophetic, but now their time has come.

Microsoft is still bigger, but they are struggling. Dell has the server advantage, but they are already a lesser company. Google is Apple’s friend and a very interesting ally, but they are on different paths. Nokia has lost the game, I doubt they will be able to rise above this, but who knows. (more on this in other articles)
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Sorry to say so, but that’s the truth. And if not going down, at least they are in trouble.

I don’t think I will be buying a Nokia again. Actually, the Nokia phones I’ve had have all worked pretty well. There might be exceptions, but at least all the Nokias I’ve used have been sturdy and even battery life has been ok.

The problem is not the hardware, but the software. Or actually, it’s not even the software that’s the real problem. It’s time. Nokia hasn’t been moving fast enough. And now it might be too late. To be a market leader makes you arrogant, it seems, and sooner or later arrogance will cost you. It’s just a law of business.
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Would it be worth it for Apple to start selling “regular” TV sets?

There’s one or many TV sets in pretty much every home in the western world, as well as in Asia and other parts of the world. Many may have already updated their sets with nice new flatscreens. But the whole TV scene is going to change a lot more in the coming few years. It would be a huge opportunity for Apple to get into every livingroom.

First of all, TV is dead. Or it will be, as we know it, in a few years. After you’ve downloaded the videos you really want to watch to your computer and watched them right there on your computer screen, or on Apple TV, you’ll know what I’m talking about. TV is old. Even watching TV on the computer gives you so many more features that there’s just no fun going back. Read the rest of this entry »

Popular Mechanics has a story about a modular MacBook Plus. I’ve been toying with a similar idea myself, only I think they will rather make a big iPod Touch, with everything inside the screen and a slide-out keyboard at the bottom. Then again, that would be very sensitive to scratches, unless they managed to make non-scratchable glass. Why not? Stuff the thing with 3-4 Flash memory slots and make one embedded to host the OS. Also add the expanding out-popping port dock they recently got a patent for. And they really need to do something about those heat emitting batteries. If anything needs a breakthrough it’s the battery.

The Boy Genius Report has a story on Apple launching a record label together with Jay-Z. Sure, that would be cool, but I don’t think it fits Apple’s business model. They don’t produce content, they make stuff that others produce content on. If they do something new with Jay-Z, it might be some sort of enhancement on the distribution model they now have, where they buy from existing record labels. Imagine if they started their own now, do you think the other record labels would keep selling their music in iTunes? I just don’t see how that could work.

Apple keeps adding more studios to iTunes. They seem to be thinking that it’s best to get the stuff from the producers.

The economics in the tv & movie industries are quite complicated. Someone has a good idea for a script, someone else writes in, again someone else pulls a crew together, one person directs, etc. Lots of people are always involved. And someone has to pay for the project up front.

Distribution is what brings the money back. And distribution is very hard to do well since the market is so incredibly competed. So you need muscle. The guys with muscle can pay for the production and gets a very good cut (if not all) from the distribution sales.

Networks make some shows themselves, but usually they buy them from smaller production companies. At least the ideas for the shows. Then they can cash in.

When people started to watch tv shows and movies over the internet, a shift was beginning to show in the marketplace. Digital distribution is much much cheaper, it’s global, and you need to be big. If people know you have the biggest store, they will come to you.

And that’s where Apple comes in. They could be the new major distributor of movies. First they befriended the networks and big movie studios that owned and sold all the blockbuster productions. But in the end, they are going to compete with these guys. What Apple really wants is get the rights to sell the productions as cheap as possible, so it’s becoming time to go directly to the production outfits. Of course, among these are also the current big networks and studios, so they are welcome too. NBC realized what was going down, they saw the future coming, so they left iTunes (maybe wanting a bigger cut, who knows, but clearly not getting it). Fox, both a network and a big studio, thought it best to be friends with everybody at the moment, so they stayed on in iTunes but also joined Hulu.com, NBCs new online distribution hub. Fox doesn’t stand to loose as much as NBC if people would increasingly get their content from the web instead of watching TV, since they produce more content themselves that they can sell through iTunes. Sure, NBC has a few hit shows now, but in a few years things might look different.

We’ll see how it goes. Some people don’t give Hulu.com a chance of surviving even a year, even if it’s well executed and good looking. But Apple badly needs the content. They might have to make a compromise. And it is not a farfetched idea that they could become a very dangerous competitor to the TV networks in the future.

Movie rentals are a step closer. Says WSJ:

In an effort to jump-start the market for online movies, News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox and Apple Inc. are preparing to announce a deal in which Fox movies would be available for rent digitally through Apple’s iTunes Store, according to people familiar with the matter.

This is good. To buy movies is not as interesting as buying and owning music. Not many movies I watch twice, I can say that.

What’s also interesting in the article (you need a subscription to read that part) is that Fox will start including an iPod version of the movie with DVDs they sell. They will use Apple’s FairPlay DRM to encode the files.

Update: Sony, Paramount and Warner Brothers are also said to be joining.