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> but the odds are on the German and Japanese incumbents in the long run I'm not so sure. Toyota and Volkswagen are huge multinational organisations with extre
by MarkMc 9y ago
> but the odds are on the German and Japanese incumbents in the long run
I'm not so sure. Toyota and Volkswagen are huge multinational organisations with extreme beurocracy and institutional inertia. The history of large incumbents facing small nimble upstarts doesn't bode well for them: consider Walmart vs Amazon: Sony Pictures vs Netflix; Nokia vs iPhone; Toyota vs General Motors
Last year Tesla produced 84,000 vehicles. Next year they aim to produce 500,000. For reference, Mazda produces about 1.5 million and Toyota 10 million cars per year. Traditional car companies are standing on a burning platform and have only a few years to act.
- handsomechad 9y agoHow can you call "iPhone" a nimble upstart and compare it to Nokia, the multinational corporation. Wouldn't "Apple" be more of an apples to apples comparison?
- JVIDEL 9y agoYep, in fact I think apple might been bigger than nokia in 2007
- adventured 9y agoNokia was twice as big as Apple. Nokia's sales for fiscal 2006 were close to $50 billion with $5 billion in profit (in 2006 Euro/Dollar terms). For fiscal 2007, their sales jumped to closer to $60 billion (for 2008 as well). Apple's sales for fiscal 2006 were $19.3 billion. Apple didn't pass Nokia in size until the end of 2010; as Nokia began the drop that saw 40% of their sales disappear in just four years.