FaceTime and Why Apple’s Massive Integration Advantage is Just Beginning

TechCrunch ^ | Jul 3, 2010 | Steve Cheney

[stripes1776]

The success of iPhone 4 has been astonishing to witness, despite the antenna issues, proving once again that Apple has a unparalleled ability to differentiate around design and integration, not simply “features.”

Perhaps the best example of this so far is FaceTime, Apple’s take on video-calling. FaceTime makes video-calling on the Android-based Sprint HTC EVO look silly, because the EVO awkwardly requires users to sign up and download a third-party app, then launch it every time they want to talk. Normal people simply won’t do this...

[tacticalogic]

And why not? They're supremely secure devices, as their record of imperviousness to viruses and malware has shown.

They get no better treatment or consideration than any other Exchange client. If anything they're more of a PITA to set up an keep working than the Windows Mobile devices. We've got a CEO that likes his Apple gadgets too, but that doesn't translate to OSX or Linux in the data centers

[driftdiver]

Ping to post 156 re Ubuntu being able to read iPhone

[driftdiver]

Huge difference between an executive having an iPhone and the enterprise using apple. HUGE

Thats why windows has 98% of the desktop market and roughly 60% of the server market.

Macs are not secure “aka arbitary code execution” and are more expensive. Finance won’t go there because of those reasons. Along with the inability to support them in an enterprise environment.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

Other phones and networks already eliminate “the carrier” by being 3G. FaceTime requires you to be on WIFI and if you’re not - well, no FaceTime for you.

I use Skype all the time on my HTC Touch Pro2 on Verizon; VOIP does rock, especially internationally!

[PugetSoundSoldier]

You seem to define success in a peculiar way.

Success is not the question; please see post 7 and subsequent posts in this thread. The question was dominance in the market, not success. ANY company that is making a profit is successful; however, only companies that have a commanding share of the market could be called dominant.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"arbitrary code execution according to apple. so much for the FUD claim."

A hallmark of FUD is scathing claims without backup from actual links documenting real-world exploits. So, put up or shut up.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"No you said the previous versions were the same price"

Actually, if you scroll up, you said that previous versions (plural) had been priced lower. False. Only the first version, for only a very short while. All subsequent versions have been at the current price point, GB-to-GB.

I accept your apology, if not your attempt to rewrite history when it's right there for all visitors to this thread to see.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"Other phones and networks already eliminate “the carrier” by being 3G."

Oh really? Gee, it'd sure be nice if the iPhone was 3G, wouldn't it?

Egad.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"Huge difference between an executive having an iPhone and the enterprise using apple. HUGE"

Sorry if I left the impression that it was just one "executive" doing the iPad thing (note: iPad, not iPhone, in this case). No, his whole operation is moving rapidly in that direction, for many reasons, top among them being security and low support costs.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

No, it would be nice if the iPhone would allow you to do video conferencing over 3G. Or allow you to share that bandwidth like a WIFI point. Or allowed you to make Skype calls years ago, like other 3G networks and phones...

Better late than never, I guess!

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"only companies that have a commanding share of the market could be called dominant"

Disagree. Without profitability, such "dominance" is paper-thin, unsustainable, and doomed.

True dominance is indicated by how much competitors fear, smear and attempt to imitate. Sound familiar?

[PugetSoundSoldier]

Nokia. Sony. Samsung. LG. Which one isn’t profitable?

As far as fear, smear, and imitate, Apple’s doing a good job of all 3 with Nokia, Sony, Samsung and LG...;) Perspective and all.

But I guess if you want to call the 4th or 5th place player in mobile devices the “dominant” player by some newly defined scale, go ahead. Just try to explain how the “dominant” company is so far behind the others in market share, and how it’s being eclipsed by newer technologies (like Android).

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"No, it would be nice if the iPhone would allow you to do video conferencing over 3G."

More attempted rewriting of history. That's not what you said. You said other phones had "eliminated the carrier by being 3G," a nonsensical and clueless thing to say considering (1) the iPhone has been 3G since its second generation, and (2) being "3G" in no way renders the carrier "eliminated." Face it, you really screwed the pooch with that reply, and I called you on it.

Maybe it would be nice if the iPhone would do video conferencing over 3G, and we can be sure that'll come to markets where the carriers have sufficient bandwidth, but my point is that implementing it over WiFi has the immense benefit of rendering the carrier irrelevant on both ends of the conversation. You can now call around, with video, from any WiFi hotspot in the world without being charged for minutes or roaming, without necessitating your recipient be subscribed to any service, and, significantly, without having your chats recorded and displayed on a publicly accessible website as with Android's Qik app.

Funny how you Android folks avert your eyes when that last little bit is mentioned. And yet you prattle on about security.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"Just try to explain how the 'dominant' company is so far behind the others in market share, and how it’s being eclipsed by newer technologies (like Android)."

If iPhone is not dominant, why is everyone trying to copy it?

Including Android. That fragmented, chaotic, variable-quality mobile OS whose (highly arguable) "eclipsing" to which you refer is thanks to giveaway and 2-for-1 phones from several manufacturers?

A bigger mystery to me: Why are certain Freepers so eager to defend and extol the fruit of theft, betrayal and dirty dealing? Eric Schmidt is one untrustworthy worm.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

Funny, would be nice if you can use the bandwidth of 3G for actual video conferencing. I regularly get 1+ Mbps with Verizon, wherever I am. It's plenty to do video conferencing, but apparently Apple doesn't think so. I guess Skype, MSN, and Yahoo know a few things that Apple doesn't when it comes to video conferencing and bandwidth requirements?

But that's OK, you can consider the groundbreaking FaceTime (a me-too feature already out on other platforms) as a big step towards dominance (as the 4th or 5th place mobile device manufacturer who's being eclipsed by a new OS) for their users (provided they only use WIFI and not 3G connections).

And as far as security, well, it would be nice if the app store and iTunes wasn't compromised.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

Funny, HTC’s TouchFLO was out before Apple’s iPhone. The form factor was out well before the iPhone. Nokia pioneered every feature that the iPhone has. What exactly are people copying from Apple, save a marketing scheme?

And at least with Android, you don’t have the false sense of security of that walled garden that was just breached. Oh, and you can run the apps you want. And not worry about Apple retroactively deciding you cannot but the app any more.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"Just try to explain how the “dominant” company is so far behind the others in market share"

Happens all the time in business. When a company jumps into a market and quickly acquires double-digit market share overnight from established entrants, it becomes the horse to beat. It happens all the time. Formerly top players attempt to cling to their position by risk-aversely doing what they've always done, while upstarts saunter in, innovate, change the game and eat their lunch. It's happened to companies I work for, and despite example after example in the annals of business, it seems to always catch the former leaders by surprise.

Let's just pick one of the companies you mentioned. Okay, two: Nokia, for starters. It's nowhere in smartphones. Absolutely nowhere. Now consider Sony. If any company should be Apple today, it's the formerly upscale and stylish Sony. But: it's nowhere in smartphones or personal media (despite defining the term, with the Walkman) or online music distribution, all of which, by rights, it and not Apple should absolutely own. But it doesn't. Instead it's got a brown breeze for market share in smartphones, despite attempts at allying with Palm and Microsoft. It's got bupkes for online music distribution and bupkes for personal media. And so on. Part of its issue is the internal tension between its content-creation acquisitions (e.g., Columbia and Screen Gems, among others) and the demands of new media. Kind of hard to reconcile such opposing internal factions. So today it's a fading company with a self-inflicted strategic chest wound. It's been sad to watch. Then there are even sadder sacks like Motorola, heir to a marvelous tradition (talk about inventing personal media-- they invented the car radio, granddaddy to it all), yet they've been bumping along a step ahead of receivership for years now. Its last, best hope was Android, yet it's been betrayed (like so many others) by its partner Google, when just weeks after it introduced the company-saving Droid, Google stole its thunder with the Nexus One (whose very name was stolen from Philip K. Dick's work).

If there was one company mentioned on this thread that all liberty-minded folks should uniformly regard as detestably evil for a long record of demonstrated behavior, it's Google.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

Let's just pick one of the companies you mentioned. Okay, two: Nokia, for starters. It's nowhere in smartphones. Absolutely nowhere.

Really?

Hmmm, Symbian - NOKIA - has 44% of the entire SMARTPHONE market, about 3 times what Apple has.

When you are SO WRONG with your very first "fact" - and given this VERY TABLE was presented earlier in this very thread - I just stopped reading. You haven't a clue, is all you've shown here!

Seriously, go learn who has what in the market, get a clue, and then come back and admit that Apple is at best the 3rd place player in smartphones, and WAY down the list in the overall mobile devices market.

[tacticalogic]

No, his whole operation is moving rapidly in that direction, for many reasons, top among them being security and low support costs.

Talk is cheap.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"So wrong"? Either you're doing an impression of Kim Jong Il as you exit this thread, or you're seriously out of touch. Nokia is the very personification of the sort of ossified, fading, dismayed former leader that I was talking about. Market share is a lagging indicator when it comes to dominance, friend. But don't take my word for it, try this:

http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2010/01/19/is-nokia-getting-desperate.aspx

Is Nokia Getting Desperate?

By Eric Jhonsa
January 19, 2010

Poor Nokia (NYSE: NOK). It was only about three years ago that the company felt the "smartphone wars" were done and over with. Its favored platform, Symbian, had left Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Windows Mobile and Palm's (Nasdaq: PALM) Palm OS in the dust, and the Finnish giant must have figured that it could just deal with rival phone manufacturers -- who, of course, would mostly be Symbian licensees -- by using its historical strengths in manufacturing efficiency and mass-market phone design.

A stumbling smartphone business
Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) clearly had other ideas. And even now, it's hard to say that Nokia has figured out how to properly respond to the giant monkey wrench these two firms threw into its best-laid smartphone plans. Nokia's attempts to slow down RIM's manic growth among enterprise users and messaging addicts, headlined by its E-Series Symbian smartphones and Nokia Email service, just lacked the punch delivered by the seamless hardware, software, and service integration delivered by RIM's Blackberry platform. And the less said about Nokia's attempts to counter the surging popularity of the iPhone with its N-series phones, the better.

What's especially unsettling about Nokia's smartphone stumbles is the attitude it's displayed as Apple and RIM steadily gained ground -- an attitude that's been equal parts dismissive and stubborn. When the iPhone was first announced, a Nokia exec infamously expressed skepticism about its potential as a mass-market device. It wasn't until December 2008 that the company released its first touchscreen N-series device, the N97. And it wasn't until last year that it realized that just maybe Symbian wasn't cutting it in the eyes of consumers as a rival to the iPhone, and announced its N900 phone based on the Maemo operating system, along with plans for a new version of Symbian to be released somewhere in 2010.

Yet even now, a slow-and-steady approach seems to be the order of the day for Nokia: The N900 is, by the company's own admission, not a mass-market device, and even the head of Nokia's mobile division said that the company won't fully catch up to Apple and RIM until 2011.

All the while, we can expect Apple and RIM to continue gobbling up market share, and create customer loyalty through their growing app bases. And with Google's Android also joining in on the action, and drawing the support of Symbian licensees such as Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and LG, the 3% annual smartphone unit share decline that Gartner believes Nokia saw in Q3 2009 -- a number that's probably higher in terms of revenue share -- could look like child's play compared with what's in store for 2010.

Turning to the courts
It's against this backdrop that Nokia's October 22nd patent lawsuit against Apple -- moves which Apple just returned in kind -- seems perfectly logical. Considering that Nokia has signed plenty of patent cross-licensing deals over the years with rival phone manufacturers, and that Apple apparently has no problem paying royalties to Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) and Interdigital for their 3G patents, you'd figure that these two adversaries would work something out. But with Nokia desperate to do anything it can to slow down the iPhone's momentum, maybe it decided that the courtroom is a good option.

Of course, if Nokia was truly serious about slowing down Apple, the company wouldn't turn to the courts, but to a serious overhaul of its business strategy. It would follow Google's lead and try to quickly bring to market a variety of new Maemo devices, and it might also make a play for Palm, whose WebOS operating system would arguably gives its hardware a better chance of standing out. But Nokia has historically preferred to take a gradual approach to major platform changes, and it's long been wary of North American companies hawking proprietary wireless platforms -- just take a look at the company's historical battles with Qualcomm and Microsoft to see what I mean.

Hence the lawsuits, and hence a smartphone strategy that looks like it's based more on hopes and dreams than on market realities.