The Power of Apple

You know, it's funny how things change so much at times. There was a time when the power of Apple was in providing an alternative. They have never been first to market, but so what, they have something different to offer! Or at least, they did, and they made a good deal of fuss about how different it was. Then something happened.

First, it was the mobile music player market. It was a minor market, hardly anyone was there, just a few mp3 players and CD players, which had their places, but they weren't tremendously popular. Then Apple jumped in to provide an alternative, and everything went crazy. Suddenly they became the dominant player, because it hadn't been developed. The iPod was revolutionary, not because it was the first, but because it penetrated.

Next was the smartphone market. It was a nominal market, split primarily between Blackberry and Palm Pilot at the time, with some interest from Nokia and Windows Mobile. But it was still a tiny, developing market until Apple came along with the iPhone. They didn't dominate it the way they dominated the mobile music player market, but they were the ones who really put the market on the map. Now they have competition from Android, while Blackberry struggles to stay in the marketplace.

Finally, there is the tablet market. Until Apple's iPad and the various Android tablets, there were a couple of tablets on the market, but the market never stuck until Apple released the iPad. Now they have dominated the market, although Android is competing with them, the iPad is the dominant player. So in all of their new ventures in the past decade, they have not been in the position of alternative.

Why is it that they never succeeded in laptops and desktops as they did in mobile, portable devices? Why have they not managed to dominate the market? They have the power to do it, when it comes to those devices, whether they are the biggest player or not. They aren't just a minor alternative, yet they let their laptops slide.

The reason, in the end, is simple. They failed to appeal to businesses at the beginning, and so businesses ignored them. Developers found a different place to take their apps, and we are still struggling to recover from that. Apps are stuck in Windows, and only just starting to expand beyond that. As the software world expands, the dominance of Windows on traditional computers will subside, and alternatives will begin to be considered.