Last week, I focused on Apple’s product announcement because
as always, Apple was front and center. Consumers have gotten used to Apple
being the most innovative, and were once again looking for something new and
magical. Time to talk about some of the other things that happened in the world
of technology this week and last week.
-Motorola has announced an interesting new project, called
Project Ara, which proposes to build phones out of blocks that are
interchangeable. The hope is to make phones greatly more customizable, and
reduce the amount of cellphone waste. The phone will have an endoskeleton,
basically a core structure, that will hold all the blocks together. Motorola
plans to make this a third-party project, allowing anyone to make blocks and
provide innovation. Basically using the concept of Android, where everyone is
given access and can make changes as they wish, on a physical product. Motorola
has already teamed up with phonebloks, an open source project that has been
working on a similar idea. They have a really great video on their website,
explaining the concept (https://phonebloks.com/).
-Recently, Google joined the $1000 club, their share price
surpassing that mark for the first time. Astounding growth for the company that
debuted at $85 in 2004. This jump came after they announced revenues of $14.9
billion for the quarter, an increase of 12% over last year. They are currently
sitting at $1027.
-And now, back to Apple. They have announced battery issues
with some of the iPhone 5S’s. Some of the batteries drain very quickly, or take
much longer to charge. This comes after they worked to extend the battery life
on the new iPhones. They also announced their earnings for the fourth quarter
of their fiscal year. They increased their revenue, making $37.5 billion
(compared to $36 billion the year before), but their profit decreased to $7.5
billion (down from $8.2 billion the year before). This is very interesting,
indicating that they have lost some of their high operating margins, and
perhaps find themselves fighting to keep up.
Apple has -- compared to most technology companies -- nearly unlimited resources. Billions in the bank and plenty of time between upgrades. If Apple can expend resources to shave thickness in 1/100th of a millimeter increments off the iPad to create the iPad Air, the company sure as heck ought to be able to figure out a word processing application. (Chris Maxcer).
I think this perfectly describes Apple’s problem right now.
They have plenty of resources, but hardly any innovation. They are giving away
their software for free in an attempt to undercut Microsoft and sell more
hardware, but they are quickly losing their high margins.
Lastly, I want to mention an incredible lawsuit that has
just been launched. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Blackberry and Ericsson have filed
a lawsuit against almost every company that has made an Android phone. This means
Samsung, LG, HTC, Huawei, and many more. The lawsuit indirectly targets Google
as well. Having clearly decided that they can’t beat Android in the market (it
currently has an 81% market share), they have decided to try and beat it (and Google),
in the courts. This lawsuit comes from thousands of patents acquired from
Nortel, many of which target Google’s money maker – advertising. It will be
interesting this see this play out. This article explains the situation very
well: http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/01/judgement-day-for-android-apple-microsoft-file-lawsuit-against-google-samsung/
And now time for some Sunday football. Enjoy!
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