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> Which is foolish; they have the resources to devote to both, but they don't know how to do more than 1 thing at a time. Lack of focus has a real cost, even t
by scott00 9y ago
> Which is foolish; they have the resources to devote to both, but they don't know how to do more than 1 thing at a time.
Lack of focus has a real cost, even to large companies. It's the difference between polished slick software, and a design-by-committee mess.
- mcphage 9y agoAbsolutely, and I have loved Apple's focus. But I think that as their product line has expanded, they've devoted the same amount of focus to more things, rather than increasing the "overall focus", if that even means anything. So they're doing more things, more poorly, instead of when they had a smaller list of things they were doing. And I don't think they can really get by these days doing fewer things; I think they're right that an integrated ecosystem is the right answer, but part of that is, ecosystems are large. So they do need to do the more things, but they just don't seem to be doing the more things that well.
- foolrush 9y agoExcept this plays into the mythmaking. Apple would very likely _love_ to have a second or third profit generator. If you examine the profits taken on iPads, MacBooks, and everything else Apple does (see http://www.asymco.com http://www.asymco.com) relative to the iPhone, it is a one trick pony. Hard to peel apart your "focus" when 85% of your business relies on it.
- eastWestMath 9y agoApple is still the most profitable laptop/desktop producer in the world, but that market is dwarfed by the smartphone market.
- srssays 9y agoApple is $750b company built on one product (iPhone). Their business hangs on a thread. What happens if they have a big recall like Samsung had?
- mcphage 9y ago> What happens if they have a big recall like Samsung had? They have enough cash reserves to keep going for a long time, as well as other product lines that were successful enough to get them to where they are.