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Apple is also mostly a hardware company.
by chinathrow 9y ago
Apple is also mostly a hardware company.
- empath75 9y agoAll four of them build hardware, to one degree or another and apple designs it’s own chipsets.
- skywhopper 9y agoApple is almost entirely a hardware company, revenue-wise. Microsoft is almost entirely a software company. Amazon is a retail (revenue-wise) and IaaS (profit-wise) company. Facebook and Google are advertising companies.
- skinnymuch 9y agoApple has been aiming for 20% of their revenue to be services. Though really they are mostly tied to their hardware. Much like Microsoft hardware, Surface, which is doing better than I was expecting, is there for their software like you state. And Google's successful ventures like Android and Chrome are there for keeping their data and advertising going.
- foobarchu 9y agoEven if they achieve that, they are still a hardware company, because those services are linked to the vendor lockin they've spent years cultivating. Nobody would use any of their services without the hardware, so they will always be a hardware company in the end.
- skinnymuch 9y agoYeah for sure.
- leggomylibro 9y agoYou could argue that Apple's software, or more specifically its design and user interface, is what really launched it out of the park. Online-connected keyboard phones did exist when the iPhone came out. So they make their money selling hardware, but who would buy that hardware if it weren't for the ecosystem? Their software is pretty shite now - major OSX upgrades have the stability of old Windows ones nowadays - but they still take their users' privacy and security seriously, and they have platform lock-in. Their hardware still isn't what REALLY makes them money.
- warrenm 9y agoApple is a media company that happens to sell phones, tablets, laptops, smart watches, and desktop computers