There is a school of thought that believes...

[Guest valueInv]

 

I see people mostly downloading apps as needed and discarding them as better ones come up. There is very little lock in with apps. So any well funded competitor (Microsoft) can have a viable OS/Dev Platform in the future.

 

Vinod

 

Vinod, time to get up to speed with the news:

 

http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/14/its-not-just-about-price-nokias-elop-says-theyre-not-getting-the-retail-traction-they-prefer/

[Guest valueInv]

Vinod, those are very valid points about RCA and millionaire employees who exit for more fun elsewhere. 

 

What would you do? Work with the most talented people in the world and make history or join a startup allowing teenagers to send cute pictures to each other?

 

http://startupgrind.com/2012/06/how-apples-internal-secrecy-really-works/

 

Do you know which company is facing a big employee retention problem - Apple or Google? Do you know which company spends 100s of millions in talent acquisitions?

[rkbabang]

Despite Android's problems (e.g., fragmentation), it's still a great OS, and most in the tech world would agree.

 

Apple may upgrade all of their devices to the new version, but when the older devices have the new features unavailable to them, is that not fragmentation?

 

Is Apple fragmenting the iPhone?

iPhone 4 won't get the new turn-by-turn features in iOS 6, just like it didn't get Siri. But it's still for sale, and so is the iPhone 3GS. Is Apple committing the Android sin of fragmentation, and will users rebel?

 

"Way down in the fine print about Apple's upcoming iOS 6, you'll find a little note that says new features like Flyover and turn-by-turn directions are only available on the iPhone 4S, or the iPad 2 or higher.

A note immediately below that says Siri is only available on the iPhone 4S or third-generation iPad.

Since the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPad 2 are all actively for sale and still being marketed by Apple, I have to wonder: is Apple on the road to fragmenting the iOS experience? Could there come a future when not only do certain Apple apps and services run on some devices and not on others, but when this problem will start to plague third-party developers, as well? And even if app incompatibilities don't result, is Apple risking Android levels of user confusion as it continues to withhold features from its legacy -- but still for sale -- hardware?"

 

 

[txlaw]

Agree it is not exactly an apples to apples comparison :)

 

Nice one. ;D

 

What I am questioning is how big of a lock the OS/Development platform poses. To me, even though OS might not exactly be a fungible product, the presence of an Android and its rapid rise suggests that the OS/Dev Platform might not allow Apple to extract the rents that Microsoft did with Windows. I do not know if Google/Apple go the route of Fedex/UPS earning high returns or the route of Car manufacturing reducing returns for all parties.

 

I see people mostly downloading apps as needed and discarding them as better ones come up. There is very little lock in with apps. So any well funded competitor (Microsoft) can have a viable OS/Dev Platform in the future.

 

Vinod

 

I agree that it will be difficult if not impossible for AAPL to extract the rents that MSFT did.  Thankfully, society has learned that we cannot allow that to happen (there's a reason why we have antitrust authorities).  Additionally, various constituents in the ecosystem (e.g., the carriers, Hollywood, etc.) know that they cannot allow AAPL to be the new MSFT, or much of the value that they want to capture will accrue to AAPL.

 

One of the interesting shifts will be the ability to run apps developed for one operating system across others (just read the other day that some guy got iOS apps to run on a Playbook) and the increased ability to develop for multiple platforms using common languages (for example, HTML5 apps with wrappers for particular OS's).

 

I still think, though, that AAPL's UI team will continue to churn out design innovations that make them one of the preferred OS providers.  There's a reason why both GOOG and MSFT are increasingly focused on UI.  Even RIMM bought TAT so that they could build their new platform so that it would be usable.

 

 

 

[Guest valueInv]

 

Note that nowhere I have mentioned sustaining innovation as a threat. There are a number of reasons for this. I haven't seen it become a threat. People are not going to switch to other phones because Google introduced a feature a few months before Apple. In fact, I would prefer it did. I want Apple to look at what Google did and improve the design and release a better version. In fact, that's what Apple has always done. They have looked at other products and said, "This sucks, lets build a better one". They were not the first with mp3 players, smartphones, tablets or even pcs. They just built better version of all of those after looking at the mistakes in others product. I'd rather Google take the risk of introducing a new feature first. Because once you release a mistake, its impossible to take it back. Over time, your platform accumulates cruft and becomes untenable. Take a look at the Android ecosystem to see what I mean.

 

As I've said before, Apple does not need to win the feature race. They just need to be better:

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304830704577493261395358658.html

 

Looking at who is out first with feature X is looking at the wrong thing. Apple is not playing that game.