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I'm have to sort of disagree, not a decade but easily half a decade lead. Source: I worked in this space years ago with what was, at the time, the leader in the
by sQL_inject 5y ago
I'm have to sort of disagree, not a decade but easily half a decade lead. Source: I worked in this space years ago with what was, at the time, the leader in the space, and remember how many of my coworkers laughed at the Apple Watch unveil. Now Apple is the one laughing with a girthy, multibillion dollar schadenfreude.
Apple has leads in silicon and cross-platform integration which is inarguably led to a better user experience, extended battery life, and smaller form factor. Try piecing together an Airpods Pro grade product with 'off-the-shelf' parts and half the firmware engineers.
Apple has orders of magnitude greater scale through their supply chain, and a real clincher: technological mastery of material science; from CNC milled aluminum to tooling for high grade plastic resin, and can shoulder out competitors from even touching the raw material once they've even realized they need it.
Apple has solid brand cachet, which drives loyalty which drives revenue.
Apple has (last I checked) the highest revenue/sq. foot retail space in the world. Yes, the rest of retail is dying, but Apple controls the image, experience, support, and purchasing of all it's own products. Check out an Apple store on a Friday night in the Bay Area, it's incredible how packed they are.
Arguably the most difficult thing for competitors to copy is the culture of industrial design and UX prioritization backed by engineering. Every other major competitor in their spaces shamelessly copies the externals without the same cohesion and mastery of internals -- it's embarrassing frankly (checkout the Oppo 'Enco X' earbud site, it's a poorly made rip off of the Airpods site).
I don't own any Apple products, and I don't endorse their labor practices, but I respect their brand, products, and patience in releasing GOOD things at the right time. Consumers do too, judging by revenue.
Apple's weakness is now their precarious position in bed with China, which will take decades to undo.
- orev 5y agoI’m glad you highlighted the materials/manufacturing component, which I think is frequently overlooked by tech people (who mostly focus on the chips and software). Apple’s ability to build millions of devices with such precision and tight tolerances is really a huge accomplishment.
- mmmmmbop 5y agoJust to clarify, Apple doesn't actually build any devices. They are built by Foxconn, mainly. It's still very impressing, of course.
- stingrae 5y agoTo be clear. Apple provides the designs, the build procedures, fixtures, and test stations. Foxconn provides the facilities and workers.
- scarface74 5y agoAnd Apple spends billions a year to design and create the manufacturing equipment that Foxconn uses.
- amelius 5y ago> Apple's weakness is now their precarious position in bed with China, which will take decades to undo. But this holds for the entire world economy.
- snowwrestler 5y agoKind of, but among the largest tech companies, Apple uniquely runs most of its revenue through the hardware category, and gets a lot of revenue from China. Google (Alphabet), Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook all use hardware from China, but most of their revenue comes through software interactions. Google does not officially even operate in China. Amazon has a limited corporate footprint in China. I think it’s reasonable to say that Apple has higher risk related to China than many of its competitors.
- disgruntledphd2 5y agoBoth Google and Facebook have substantial proportions of their revenue from CN based advertisers.
- scarface74 5y agoWhat happens to their services if they can’t procure hardware?
- fomine3 5y agoServices could be sold to existing customer with existing hardware at a moment.
- scarface74 5y agoBecause hardware never fails and needs to be replaced… You do remember the disruption when the earthquake in Japan caused hard drive failures? Can you imagine what would happen if the entire supply chain gets disrupted?
- 5y ago
- alpaca128 5y ago> Apple has (last I checked) the highest revenue/sq. foot retail space in the world Does this also correctly count the area of all Apple partner stores? In some countries they sell Apple devices but don't operate a single store themselves.
- dhosek 5y agoThe revenue/sq foot ratio is based on the sales from those square feet, not the total revenue. They measure sales at each individual location for location revenues/sq foot and all locations for overall. Revenue from partner sales, internet orders, etc. are not counted in that (although they might include deliver to store website orders, I don't know). It doesn't hurt that they're selling products with a high price-volume ratio.
- smoldesu 5y ago> Apple has leads in silicon and cross-platform integration I stopped reading after this part.
- user-the-name 5y agoBoth are simple, factual and true statements? Why does that make you stop reading?
- coldtea 5y agoBias
- user-the-name 5y agoTowards truth, or?
- coldtea 5y agoBias "against X" (here: Apple). Whether the fact is true or false makes no difference. The person with the bias will cherish both true and false statements if they are against X, and reject them if they are in favor of X.
- yoz-y 5y agoIf you read the post from the bottom you would start with: > I don't own any Apple products, and I don't endorse their labor practices, would you have stopped reading it because of anti-Apple bias?
- canadianfella 5y ago> Apple has orders of magnitude greater scale through their supply chain Than... Google? Samsung? Do you know what orders of magnitude means?
- scarface74 5y ago> I don't own any Apple products, and I don't endorse their labor practices, So which labor practices does Apple engage in that every other phone manufacturer doesn’t - using the same factories and supply chain?