[RegulatorCountry]

Since the return of Steve Jobs to Apple, Apple strategy has gone well into out years and that remains the case, building layer upon layer on existing product introductions, always with careful consideration of capitalization upon captive content. It’s quite logically thought out and nearly always executed flawlessly.

Without Steve Jobs in the bully pulpit, we’ll see if that near-flawless execution continues. I suspect it will, but if there is to be a challenge that will be it, not strategy or product in the pipeline.

Keep that in mind going forward. They’re just not what any given competitor of theirs thinks they are, and are ultimately not pursuing the same ends that those competitors pursue, but those competitors will be scrambling once again just the same.

Just as the cell phone industry was never the same with the introduction of the iPhone, and just as the music industry was never the same with the introduction of iTunes and the iPod, that same sort of creative destruction leading to an ultimately better experience across the board, is in the works again.

It’s what they do.

[af_vet_rr]

Keep that in mind going forward. They’re just not what any given competitor of theirs thinks they are, and are ultimately not pursuing the same ends that those competitors pursue, but those competitors will be scrambling once again just the same.

Their competitors are shooting themselves in the foot, which helps Apple a lot more than some are willing to acknowledge. Too many competitors want to race to the bottom as far as prices, and it's only hurting them and not Apple since the profit margins on the low end aren't good.

I'm an investor in a small mobile software business my nephew started, and we had dinner last week, and he was talking about why they are staying away from Android for the most part - too many devices with different hardware specs. It kind of surprised me, because there is a wide range of Apple devices - iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad, but he said it was relatively simple to develop and test for Apple devices whereas the Android devices were all over the place. They will only support a few Android devices, and they are only doing high-end hardware.

I wonder what's driving it - either Google doesn't care that much, or the Android manufacturers are just wanting to shove Android devices out with a few apps they know work and then leave it up to consumers and developers to figure out which things work. He's looking into Microsoft's phone software as a future platform to add to their iOS apps because apparently Microsoft is coming around to the fact that you need better baseline standards. But for now they are sticking only to iOS with a few ports to specific Android devices.