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Apple's major competitive edge right now is supply chain and economies of scale. They are able to source materials far better than basically anybody else. This

Apple's major competitive edge right now is supply chain and economies of scale. They are able to source materials far better than basically anybody else. This has always been Tim Cook's strong suite. Another competitive edge is chip design. Apple's A9x has a custom PowerVR implementation that blows its competitors out of the water in terms of power and efficiency. They seem to be consistently ahead in this regard. Apple's major R&D investments right now are in Music, VR/AR, and the car project. They're working on some cool things in music that I can't talk about, but IMO music is too small of a market with too small margins, and Apple is putting way too much effort into it. Apple has made some really good VR/AR hires, but Facebook, Microsoft, and Alphabet have better teams. Who knows how the car project will turn out. Apple is currently investing more in R&D than they ever have before. This scares me because their successful projects have almost always been on the thin side investment wise. Apple has traditionally launched products with the bare minimum of features and built up from there. People hate them for it, but it works. I hope they're not moving to a more monolithic model. Lastly, Apple seems to have had a collapse in quality in the past year or so, especially with phones. This is anecdotal as I haven't seen any actual data on it, but I know so many people who have gone through numerous iPhones (for the most part 6s's and 6s Pluses) that have had one problem after another. I've been pretty lucky, but I have a 6, not a 6s. My previous 5s, however, barely lasted a year.

tonyedgecombe 11y ago
"Apple's major competitive edge right now is supply chain and economies of scale." This is interesting because it wasn't why people started switching in droves, it was because customers perceived the product to be much better than the competitions.
- fleitz 11y ago
  Part of that IS supply chain... You can't make a great phone with shitty components. Many things that Apple does in the supply chain are completely out of reach for it's competitors either because of resources or culture.
  - vixen99 11y ago
    'its competitors'
- jinushaun 11y ago
  Their supply chain is why competitor can't make phones that come close in terms of fit, finish and quality. Everyone else is stuck with second rate parts because Apple has the supply chain on lock.
HappyTypist 11y ago
I think that's just a result of technology getting more complex and complicated. A light bulb is pretty reliable for its lifespan, and my Commodore 64 still works fine. The latest iPhones have curved glass displays, even more accurate color reproduction retina displays, much more advanced baseband and OS, multiple microphones, etc, not to mention it's thinner. These advances come with trade-offs - the more parts there are, the more likely it's to break.
Nr7 11y ago
Supply chain was one of Nokia's competitive edges when they were big and it didn't do much good to them in the end.
- nodamage 11y ago
  Absolutely. Supply chain doesn't mean anything if no one wants your products anymore.
- coldtea 11y ago
  Nokia was never that big. We're talking hundreds of billions money reserves big and tens of billions orders to suppliers big.
adventured 11y ago
Another advantage that goes in line with the scale issue. "Mess" Billions of smart phones, dozens of smart phone makers, dozens of different operating system customizations and problems, dozens of different environments to get used to. Will HTC's lineup be any good this time around? Motorola? Apple solves all of that for consumers. They remove the swamp of potentially bad choices. Apple so far has done a tremendous job of reliably delivering a high quality product each generation. Only Samsung can claim that in the Android world. I've had a good experience with the Galaxy S line of phones, most of the other Android phone makers are very hit or miss year to year.
tdkl 11y ago
> Apple's major competitive edge right now is supply chain and economies of scale. They are able to source materials far better than basically anybody else. This has always been Tim Cook's strong suite. Sadly the software quality and leadership needed to ensure it isn't.
cromwellian 11y ago
I'll bite, what is customized about the PowerVR implementation in the A9? How does it compare to whatever PowerVR's reference implementation is?
- Steko 11y ago
  I'll bite, why do we need to know Apple's trade secrets when we can arrive at grandparent's conclusion by glancing at GPU benchmarks? http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph9820/79253.png http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph9820/79253.png http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph9878/78726.png http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph9878/78726.png
  - cromwellian 11y ago
    Because you're comparing Apples to Oranges, comparing PowerVR to Adreno/Mali chips. The original post claimed Apple modified a way to make PowerVR much faster than the off the shelf PowerVR IP that any phone manufacturer/SoC supplier can access. But the reality of the 'secret sauce' is pretty a banal. They basically just stamped down more clusters, and introduced an interconnect. This is not something other vendors haven't done in the past. They didn't make major architectural changes. It would be like claiming that taking two Intel CPUs, and arraying them with a custom bus means you've changed the design of the CPU cores.
dba7dba 11y ago
Funny to read the quote about Tim Cook being able to source materials so well. He apparently caught Jobs' attention when he worked with samsung to ensure steady supply of RAM and display for Apple.

tonyedgecombe 11y ago

"Apple's major competitive edge right now is supply chain and economies of scale." This is interesting because it wasn't why people started switching in droves, it was because customers perceived the product to be much better than the competitions.

fleitz 11y ago
Part of that IS supply chain... You can't make a great phone with shitty components. Many things that Apple does in the supply chain are completely out of reach for it's competitors either because of resources or culture.
- vixen99 11y ago
  'its competitors'
jinushaun 11y ago
Their supply chain is why competitor can't make phones that come close in terms of fit, finish and quality. Everyone else is stuck with second rate parts because Apple has the supply chain on lock.

HappyTypist 11y ago

I think that's just a result of technology getting more complex and complicated. A light bulb is pretty reliable for its lifespan, and my Commodore 64 still works fine. The latest iPhones have curved glass displays, even more accurate color reproduction retina displays, much more advanced baseband and OS, multiple microphones, etc, not to mention it's thinner. These advances come with trade-offs - the more parts there are, the more likely it's to break.

Nr7 11y ago

Supply chain was one of Nokia's competitive edges when they were big and it didn't do much good to them in the end.

nodamage 11y ago
Absolutely. Supply chain doesn't mean anything if no one wants your products anymore.
coldtea 11y ago
Nokia was never that big. We're talking hundreds of billions money reserves big and tens of billions orders to suppliers big.

adventured 11y ago

Another advantage that goes in line with the scale issue. "Mess" Billions of smart phones, dozens of smart phone makers, dozens of different operating system customizations and problems, dozens of different environments to get used to. Will HTC's lineup be any good this time around? Motorola? Apple solves all of that for consumers. They remove the swamp of potentially bad choices. Apple so far has done a tremendous job of reliably delivering a high quality product each generation. Only Samsung can claim that in the Android world. I've had a good experience with the Galaxy S line of phones, most of the other Android phone makers are very hit or miss year to year.

tdkl 11y ago

> Apple's major competitive edge right now is supply chain and economies of scale. They are able to source materials far better than basically anybody else. This has always been Tim Cook's strong suite. Sadly the software quality and leadership needed to ensure it isn't.

cromwellian 11y ago

I'll bite, what is customized about the PowerVR implementation in the A9? How does it compare to whatever PowerVR's reference implementation is?

Steko 11y ago
I'll bite, why do we need to know Apple's trade secrets when we can arrive at grandparent's conclusion by glancing at GPU benchmarks? http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph9820/79253.png http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph9820/79253.png http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph9878/78726.png http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph9878/78726.png
- cromwellian 11y ago
  Because you're comparing Apples to Oranges, comparing PowerVR to Adreno/Mali chips. The original post claimed Apple modified a way to make PowerVR much faster than the off the shelf PowerVR IP that any phone manufacturer/SoC supplier can access. But the reality of the 'secret sauce' is pretty a banal. They basically just stamped down more clusters, and introduced an interconnect. This is not something other vendors haven't done in the past. They didn't make major architectural changes. It would be like claiming that taking two Intel CPUs, and arraying them with a custom bus means you've changed the design of the CPU cores.

dba7dba 11y ago

Funny to read the quote about Tim Cook being able to source materials so well. He apparently caught Jobs' attention when he worked with samsung to ensure steady supply of RAM and display for Apple.