Apple gets some of Microsoft’s business wiliness
I’ve long thought that the only innovations Microsoft made were in the areas of business: buying in their original operating system, licencing it at a cost when market norms were that an operating system was bundled free, using their operating system much later as a Trojan horse to eliminate their competitors in the browser market, the media player market, and more.
And now it seems that Apple have some of the same cunning. The iPhone is glamorous, but equally impressive is their ability to wring a great deal out of AT&T in the US for making them the sole US network, and then launch the same product — without the phone element — as the iPod Touch. That’ll be a great seller, as plenty of people seem to love the iPhone but not the network provider (or the phone part). And it seems to have caught AT&T and other operators off-guard, even though, in retrospect, it seems like an obvious move.
As if that wasn’t enough, they managed to secure a deal with O2 in the UK in which that operator gives them a staggering 40% of call revenues — and that was announced after the iPod Touch was unveiled, a point when it was clear that O2’s original market was being undermined by the very company they were making the deal with. O2’s analysts must be wondering how they got themselves into that mess.
And yet I can’t help thinking that while Microsoft’s business nous helped Microsoft at the expense of their customers, Apple’s wiliness does actually help their customers (and themselves, of course).
Meanwhile, although having an iPod Touch would be a wonderful thing, my very ancient Palm Vx trumps it: it has a to-do list. And until (a) my Palm finally gives up the ghost, and (b) the Touch gets a to-do list application, then the Touch will only be a glittery bauble.
