Believe it or not, itâs time for another Apple Death Knell ! Writing for Investorâs Business Daily we have one Brian Deagon, a self-described âjournalist whoâs covered tech since the dawn of the PC era.â He tells us that in 2012, the jig is up for Apple [1] .
The Apple Death Knell Bell
Mr. Deagon put together ten predictions for 2012 that include Google+ going nowhere, Twitter âtotteringâ (simply because the company continues to do what it has always done), Steve Ballmer being ousted as CEO of Microsoft (that one seems at least possible), and Groupon losing market share (ditto).
He also predicts that BlackBerry will go the way of Palm, that Ultrabooks will be a big deal, something about cloud computing, and a couple of other things that you can go check out if you really want to.
Number one on his list, however, is the prediction that, âApple will lose its cool factor.â
As with most of the entries in our Apple Death Knell Counter , Mr. Deagonâs reasoning is all but non-existent. To wit:
With the iPod, iPhone and iPad, Apple (AAPL) redefined markets and defined cool. But whatâs left? The iPhone is boxy, flat and feeling stale. The Samsung Galaxy smartphone seems cooler. With Googleâs (GOOG) Android platform now the fastest-growing mobile OS, Appleâs software advantage will diminish. Smartphones and tablets will become commodity items and Apple will be eaten by the collective Android gang. Appleâs next big hope is the TV market, a tough nut to crack and where Samsung is king.
To recap, he argued that Apple defined cool with three products and therefore has nowhere to go. In addition, the iPhone is old hatâ"yesterdayâs news, evenâ"and Apple has ceded the design high ground to Samsung.
The first point is specious, at best. Iâd personally call it embarrassing. If you want to make the argument that Apple has designed itself into a corner, feel free, but you should probably offer a few facts, or at least some anecdotal evidence for making that argument.
The second point, however, requires denying reality. The iPhone 4S is a hot ticket item and demand still outpaces supply almost three months after it was introduced. While âboxy, flat, and staleâ are subjective, we have objective proof that many, many people donât share that subjective opinion.
Moving on to his other points, weâre told that because Androidâs platform is growing faster, Apple will lose its software advantage. There are three aspects of this statement that I found very annoying.
The first is the notion that Android being bigger means that developers will abandon iPhone. Android has been bigger than iOS for a while now, but there are still more iOS apps out there. And, despite the fact that Android is the bigger platform, iPhone owners download more apps. More importantly, they buy more apps. That will keep a disproportionate amount of developer effort on the App Store as long as it remains true.
The second is that both iPhone and Android have enough apps for both platforms to be more than viable. My personal opinion is that iOS apps have higher quality, but even assuming thatâs true, there are lots of great Android apps to keep people happy. As long as developers make money, theyâll make apps for both platforms, and there is zero chance of either of those platforms undergoing a significant enough upheaval to change that in the foreseeable future.
The third thing that annoys me is this: Appleâs App Store has had more apps from the get go, yet Android was able to gain share to become the largest smartphone platform on the planet. Should the day come when there are more Android apps than there are iOS apps, will people stop buying iPhones? Of course not.
The lack of apps didnât stop people from buying all those Android devices in the early days, and despite being behind all these years, it hasnât stopped them since, either. Why would it spell the end of the iPhone if and when the balance of app power flips? Itâs an absurd argument for Mr. Deagon to make.
And then we come to the Death Knell itself, âSmartphones and tablets will become commodity items and Apple will be eaten by the collective Android gang.â
Itâs this kind of in-the-box thinking that lands most people in the ADKC.
Letâs start with the flippant commodity comment. A quick show of hands: who can name another commodity industry where Apple competes profitably?
It doesnât take a rocket scientist to name two of them: PCs and MP3 players. In both markets, Apple has shown that it can hold its own. Sure, it might be different for the smartphone market, but with no supporting reasons, I call balderdash on anyone making this kind of argument. Apple has shown that it can compete profitably in commodity markets with quality products that people want.
Will Android continue to be bigger than iPhone? Of course. But will âthe collective Android gangâ eat Apple? No. Itâs absurd. Both platforms will continue to do very well, and for the foreseeable future. And while they are doing well, I believe that Apple will continue to earn the lionâs share of cell phone hardware profits and that Google will do well selling ads on all those Android devices (and a lot of iPhones, too).
Iâve been arguing for years now that Google and Apple are not competing in a zero sum game. Appleâs goals and business model are different from Googleâs. Both companies can win without the other losing.
The worst thing about this article is the title, which is: âApple, Google Seen Stumbling In 2012; Amazon, IBM Up.â Itâs an editorial, and the person doing the âseeingâ is the author himself. The title makes it appear as if the author is reporting what others are saying. That could have been his editors, of course, but Iâd be pissed about that title if I were Mr. Deagon.
Bryan Chaffin began using Apple computers in 1983 in a high school BASIC programming class. He started using Macs in 1990 when the Kinkoâs guy taught him how to use Aldus PageMaker, finally buying a Power Computing Power 100 in 1995. Bryan is the Cofounder of The Mac Observer and currently serves as Afternoon Editor. He has contributed to MacAddict and MacFormat magazines, and coauthored Incredible iPad Apps for Dummies with Bob âDr. Macâ LeVitus.
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