Apple is in the position Sun Microsystems was 20 years ago. They supplied finished, working solutions, which were really "just" high-quality versions of what the other guys did. Eventually, services got so widespread (Lintel) that customers got less picky and Sun's peculiar quality didn't matter anymore.
However, that won't be how Apple will die out (if they do...), because there is already a huge market of people with lesser quality standards than Apple (Android). Instead, Apple's threat is another company who takes the time to give extraordinary quality for novice users. This isn't happening right now, b/c everyone is fighting for the disruptive (low) end of the market.
So, Sun could have extended their business by diversifying to serve specific high-volume customer markets. Java was an epic half-step. They gave away their ability to add value to customers for nearly free, while focusing ever harder on custom unix hardware and software (UltraSPARC!).
If Apple wants to avoid a Sun-like fate, they'll need to properly diversify beyond custom hw and sw and extend into the spaces of large customers where they can add value. You see _some_ of this in their supporting multimedia Bitflingers, but they'll need to incur much deeper and much more specifically into the multimedia and small office spaces.
Perhaps the Cyanogen corporation could morph into a "luxury" distro?
Hah. Those of us who spent the late 90's deploying on Solaris boxes instead of the Linux or BSD hardware we wanted know that's not true. Middle management has the same brand loyalty mania as phone-jealous teenagers. And Sun at the time was the face of Unix and clearly the "best" by every metric management cared to look at.
I don't think that's the whole story. It's true that companies often buy cost-effective but unsexy computer hardware for their employees (viz. Dell). But back when the Macintosh was getting its market-share crushed by good-enough Win95 PCs, consumers were behaving in a similar price-conscious way. (Though the crashiness of late System 7 probably helped to loosen emotional attachments to the Mac as well.) In fact the Mac had famous bulwarks of continued demand in the institutional education market and among graphics and other "creative" professionals.
However, the situation is different in some ways that favour Apple this time. The shift to smaller, portable devices like the iPod, iPhone and iPad really seems to help Apple to sell premium products, because probably many more people are tempted to choose their phone on emotional (or quality) grounds than their PC. First, people tend to associate the PC with 'work' - in particular, with grinding office documents for work - or with utilitarian duty as a thinnish client for the Web. And unlike a desktop box which sits mostly hidden under your desk, you touch, lift and look at your phone's hardware many times every day. You also take it to public places where other people will get to know about and admire your lifestyle choice. (A laptop is roughly halfway between a phone and a desktop computer in these respects.) And a smartphone still generally costs less than a PC - the price of a whole iPhone after subsidy can easily be less than the price premium for a Mac over a PC. (Back in '96 a desktop computer cost even more than it does now, and better hardware specs could make a big difference to the quality of the user experience, so buyers had a compelling motivation to save their money and/or spend it on specs rather than OS polish or brand mystique.) In the iPhone Apple can sell a glowing, no-compromises 'perfect thing' and at the same time sell it for a lot less.
Which isn't to say that the march of good-enough Android isn't going to squeeze Apple in future: I think it will.
This is exactly what I was going to say. Apple is a consumer product company while more tech big names are for prosumers(not quite accurate here, but I guess you can get what I mean). When we look at the market this way, the two big segments certainly have different needs. And I guess, if most prosumers here are more related to more or less engineering background, those come from information tech science background might have different needs as well. But compared with majority of the prosumer group, they are just niche. Please take market segmentation into account since information technology market is more accessible. And this is continuing. Consumers and prosumers are all every important in their own context. Hope this helps.
The big difference is that in the enterprise the people who buy the products and the people who use the products are different. In consumer products, they are same, and so the details and the user experience matter.
A lot of the stuff that the enterprise does would be fatal in the consumer business.
However, that won't be how Apple will die out (if they do...), because there is already a huge market of people with lesser quality standards than Apple (Android). Instead, Apple's threat is another company who takes the time to give extraordinary quality for novice users. This isn't happening right now, b/c everyone is fighting for the disruptive (low) end of the market.
So, Sun could have extended their business by diversifying to serve specific high-volume customer markets. Java was an epic half-step. They gave away their ability to add value to customers for nearly free, while focusing ever harder on custom unix hardware and software (UltraSPARC!).
If Apple wants to avoid a Sun-like fate, they'll need to properly diversify beyond custom hw and sw and extend into the spaces of large customers where they can add value. You see _some_ of this in their supporting multimedia Bitflingers, but they'll need to incur much deeper and much more specifically into the multimedia and small office spaces.
Perhaps the Cyanogen corporation could morph into a "luxury" distro?