Apple hangs on as others go rotten

Most tech companies have had fairly steady years. A top executive or two may get replaced, some products will come out (mostly without problems), share prices oscillate gently up and down …

This last year has been exceptional. Exceptionally bad, for most – and for Apple, it should have been dirge-like.

Apart from the Recession, Apple was without its charismatic and visionary leader, Steve Jobs, for a full six months. Even in a good year, some thought Apple could not weather the absence of its CEO. Jobs is credited not just with forming Apple (with Steve Wozniak), but then with coming back and saving a company driven by internal disputes while proliferating confusing and moribund product lines. This was over a decade ago.

By presiding over a powerful simplification of the Macintosh computer lineup, starting with the release of the first iMac (a colourful all-in-one consumer Mac with a CRT monitor), Jobs set the company back on track. Then he oversaw the introduction of the iPod music players and the release of the much-admired OS X. During this time, there was a huge growth in sales of Apple laptops.

During the Noughties, Apple Computer became Apple Inc.

Then came the introduction of the ground-breaking iPhone, the king of smartphones that knocked the executive Blackberry off its perch.
How many ordinary people have Blackberries? How many have iPhones?

Meanwhile, iTunes grew into an online store and media conduit. Even a PC version was released (but maybe Pat Pilcher should get a Mac?)

Most of his problems seem to come from running iTunes on a PC.

Jobs is not a designer, of course. He seems to decide what he – and the world – needs, then drives his team to produce it. No battery compartment on iPods. Why? Jobs doesn't like them. They're ugly, they catch on things and they're hard to engineer and manufacture. Forget them. This created outrage and concern and … at the end of the day, Jobs was right and it just didn't matter.

Can't produce a strong enough laptop? Redesign the manufacturing process. No worries.

Jobs is single-minded and gets what he wants, true, but he can be influenced – just look how green Apple has striven to become after criticism from Greenpeace and others a couple of years ago.

Who's to say what new device Jobs might preside over next? (Many people say it's going to be some sort of tablet, of course.) Who's to say how many other new devices and technological leaps Jobs will be driving through in the next decade?

Now, all you Apple bashers, I'm not saying Apple (or Jobs himself) invented all of this stuff. Apple just combines it better and deploys it better. Oh, and presents it better. No argument.

For despite the Recession and the long absence of Jobs, Apple has grown. Investors who bought shares early in 2009 were buying them for under US$91 each – they're currently trading around US$195.

iPhone

In Japan, the iPhone has nearly half the smartphone market (46 per cent). In New Zealand, it's the biggest selling model of smartphone, and not because it's the best phone – because it's ridiculously easy to use, and because it's almost infinitely expandable due to the amazing App Store, which has everyone else scrambling to emulate.

I am looking forward to my New Zealand summertime travels with my iPhone GPS, maps, location services, weather predictors, tide charts, Star Walk ($4.19), for identifying planets, stars and constellations, my WhatBirdNZ (free) native bird identifier … not to mention my music collection, of course.

A lot of Apple's overall strength in '09 came from the launch of the new iPhone 3GS. People stood in line and bought one million iPhones in the first weekend. As developers complained about, mostly, the iTunes Store app approval process, Apple worked to improve it.
Tens of thousands of iPhone apps were approved in 2009, and over two billion apps were downloaded. Two billion …

Macs

Perhaps strangest of all, Apple refused to cut prices yet still clocked up record sales and record profits on hardware and software. This became such a powerful feature that Macs figured significantly in the recent overall rise in worldwide PC sales. Apple noted in October that its record-setting third-quarter sales topped 3 million. And that was before the new iMacs were released.

PC sales (worldwide) grew 2.3 per cent year over year in the third quarter of 2009, after three consecutive quarters of decline. Globally, though, the
Mac saw a 16.4 per cent increase compared to the third quarter of 2008.

What's ahead? Competition:

Apple set the standard with the App Store and applications, so other companies are setting up competing ventures. The most powerful of potential competitors are Google and Microsoft, both of which have a somewhat schizophrenic relationship with Apple.

Microsoft was there at the start, with Bill Gates appearing in the original Mac Plus brochure in 1984. Microsoft seems to learn a lot from Apple and has a top Mac development team. Apple, in turn, serves Windows networks at system level and has deployed cloud computing, which Microsoft had a big hand in developing.

A series of recession-era ads put out by Microsoft portrayed Macs as overpriced pieces of art. PCs were 'affordable workhorses'.

Microsoft then went further and opened its own retail stores. They look just like Apple stores.

But the two companies could cooperate more. As this ReadWriteWeb article states, Microsoft could develop applications for the iPhone that serve its customers, since its Exchange Server and Office products still dominate the enterprise. Microsoft shoukd develop applications for the iPhone that support its customers and protects its market base.
Google looked like Apple's best bud for years - and it's headquartered nearby. Google even had someone on Apple's board. But Apple and Google began to compete directly once Google starting making headway with its mobile device operating system Android. Google has even announced a desktop operating system.

Still, Apple has over $30 billion US in the bank. It's still growing, it's still innovating. It still has Steve Jobs and his crack team of top execs.

I predict next year is going to be insanely greater.

- Mark Webster mac.nz