Wednesday, August 14, 2013

"Shut Up and Take My Money" - The fall of Apple

It wasn't that long ago when Apple Fan Boys lined up for nights on end just for the privilege of overpaying for the newest version of the same device Apple sold them just months before. Apple was the most dominate technology company in the world and their fanatical customers wait to throw money at them.


Apple has already seen it's share of the global smartphone market fall to 13% while Android has just under 80% of the market. At the same time Apple's share of the tablet market from 60% in 2012 to 32.5% in 2013. These Tablet figures do not include the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 line that was released in July two months ahead of the expected announcement of the new iPad. Just as with the iPhone 5 last year the new Apple products will merely be catching up to Samsung products already available in the marketplace that are less expensive.

The real issue that will affect Apple going forward is integration of media in the virtual environment. Because Android is so far out in front of Apple in global market share it means that Google Play is out pacing iTunes for media sales and rentals. As people more and more use their tablets and phones to watch movies and television or listen to music the only way to be profitable is to control the means through which they experience their media. iTunes only works on 13% of the world's smartphones and 32.5% of the world's tablets, I expect that number to drop for the 3rd quarter, therefore Apple's share of the media sales is extremely constricted.

Smartphones and tablets aren't the only threat to Apple's existence there is also the Google Chromecast. The Chromecast along with the full integration between the Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets with the Samsung smart TV's is placing Google is a very strong position in terms of media sales. These devices run Google Play not iTunes therefore should you desire to watch a movie and you own these devices you need to rent it on Google Play. 

What has happened is that Google by allowing other companies to use their Android operating system and their Chrome browser, which also streams media to the Chromecast, has seized control of how people consume media. In a leisure based economy this is how companies succeed.

No comments:

Post a Comment