Apple's current course will relegate iPhone to the same fate as the Mac OS. The excellent iPhone experience will be available only on the Apple hardware, which only Apple's core fans will have. Mobile phones (unlike PCs or MP3 players) are highly personal devices -- many people see them as a fashion accessory, or a projection of their personality and social status. The idea that a single product (or even a suite of conceptually similar products) will have ubiquitous appeal is silly.
With their historic mindset, expect Apple to own only a tiny fraction of the mobile market. Apple is too closed - they only put their OS on Apple hardware - but in Mobile, there's far too many competitors. (Imagine if Mac computers competed against 4 other OS's in the PC space -- each far more able to innovate and learn from Apple's success than Microsoft. What a world it would be!) But unlike the PC space, Mobile has dozens of competitors, wildly innovative, learning and copying, releasing products annually, and covering divergent prices and styles.
Read the excellent analysis at http://www.broodingsavage.com/journal/2008/2/13/apple-iphones-core-strategy-problem.html
Google is the driving force behind the acquisition. But an index of joint Yahoo/Microsoft assets does not gurantee their ability to overtake the search giant. Both companies are trailing because of poor product portfolios, poor monetization, and a failure to innovate.
The combined company may create a more assertive "also ran" player in the industry, but that player is not much more likely to beat Google.
There's an interesting analysis of what Yahoo's new advertising platform would have to be at http://www.broodingsavage.com/journal/2008/2/11/what-can-save-yahoo-not-microsoft.html
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Apple's current course will relegate iPhone to the same fate as the Mac OS. The excellent iPhone experience will be available only on the Apple hardware, which only Apple's core fans will have. Mobile phones (unlike PCs or MP3 players) are highly personal devices -- many people see them as a fashion accessory, or a projection of their personality and social status. The idea that a single product (or even a suite of conceptually similar products) will have ubiquitous appeal is silly. With their historic mindset, expect Apple to own only a tiny fraction of the mobile market. Apple is too closed - they only put their OS on Apple hardware - but in Mobile, there's far too many competitors. (Imagine if Mac computers competed against 4 other OS's in the PC space -- each far more able to innovate and learn from Apple's success than Microsoft. What a world it would be!) But unlike the PC space, Mobile has dozens of competitors, wildly innovative, learning and copying, releasing products annually, and covering divergent prices and styles. Read the excellent analysis at http://www.broodingsavage.com/journal/2008/2/13/apple-iphones-core-strategy-problem.html
Google is the driving force behind the acquisition. But an index of joint Yahoo/Microsoft assets does not gurantee their ability to overtake the search giant. Both companies are trailing because of poor product portfolios, poor monetization, and a failure to innovate. The combined company may create a more assertive "also ran" player in the industry, but that player is not much more likely to beat Google. There's an interesting analysis of what Yahoo's new advertising platform would have to be at http://www.broodingsavage.com/journal/2008/2/11/what-can-save-yahoo-not-microsoft.html