Apple Insider, editorial: Apple’s iOS is the new Windows

Interesante, pero larguísimo articulo en Apple Insider: Apple iOS is the new windows.

Un repaso a la historia informática de los últimos 30 años y los retos a los que Apple se enfrenta …

“… Once reason why the Old Apple could survive through the Windows era of the 1990s was because Apple had already created a niche status among customers ready to pay for premium hardware. While many PC users scoffed at anyone who’d pay more for a Mac, the reality was that those premium consumers kept the platform alive. Once Apple began trying to chase pure market share with low end models like the mid 90s Performa line, it began collecting an audience of low value customers that did little to shore up the value of its platform. …

Apple, like Microsoft, has a huge platform advantage that it could lose if if fails to keep the iPhone a product with clear value to a large audience, and iOS a platform that makes it sticky and resistant to competitive erosion. It’s also at risk if it loses the ability to fuel the auxiliary sales among supporting partners. There’s no indication that Apple is yet slipping in any regard, but its clear that its competitors are aware of these factors, and are working hard to chip away at public perception.

Microsoft is actively losing its Windows platform dominance as the iPad erases the Windows PC’s status as a product with clear value to a large audience. Windows itself is also losing its position as a platform that makes it sticky and resistant to competitive erosion. And increasingly, Windows is losing the ability to fuel the auxiliary sales among supporting partners. Apple now has a roadmap of “don’ts” to follow if it wants to avoid Microsoft’s fate.

These include ignoring problems like Windows XP’s security flaws until they became massive distractions; failing to update the platform for years and then introducing massive changes like Windows Vista; and spending billions copying competitors efforts (Zune, Slate PC, Surface) rather than identifying new, original businesses. So far, Apple has avoided these particular traps while Google’s Android has fallen for each of them.”

 

How Apple’s Pain Is Intel’s Gain

Summary

Intel is entering a period of powerful new product launches in the coming year which should increase its growth trajectory. The company is all set to launch its most energy efficient processors for the PC market in June. It will introduce one of the most efficient and powerful chips for the tablet market in late 2013 and will have a new generation of processors with integrated 4G LTE functionality in early 2014. The stock has already started to show signs of life as the market has started recognizing its potential. The stock is still quite cheap and gives the highest dividend yield among large cap technology companies. The company has impressive competitive barriers and is increasing its technological lead over competitors in semiconductor technology. Intel remains one of my favorite buys in the technology industry.

Seeking Alpha

 

iPad y Sistema de Archivos … ¿falta de empatía?

“… The drive to “pervert” the iPad is unmistakable. I think it will prove irresistible in the end. But I have trouble forming a coherent picture of an evolution that would let Apple open the iPad to more demanding users — without sacrificing its great simplicity and falling into the fridge + toaster trap.
It’s a delicate balancing act.”

Jean-Louis Gassée en Monday Note

 

El ABC de los inversores, aprendiendo de APPL

“… Apple’s stock collapse teaches us many valuable lessons, but four in particular. The first is to treat investing as if we’re lending money – in a way, we are; second, to ignore our egos and fashion trends, and dispassionately examine the market and the company’s fundamentals. The third lesson is to follow the advice of experts only if it makes sense to us, and fourth, to invest no more than we can comfortably afford to lose. Only when we’ve taken those four lessons to heart and done our homework, can we make an informed and independent decision about any potential stock investment. …”

Investing 101: Apple’s Lessons for Investors

Algo más de un año, ya el autor tenía dudas sobre la valoración de Apple: Has Apple Reached the Tipping Point?

Yo mismo, sin tantos fundamentos, decía algo similar en ¿Cuándo cesará el brillo de Apple?

Habrá llegado ya ese momento? Será este bajón coyuntural?

 

Sobre la estrategia internacional de Apple Retail, asymco

In 2012 only about 15% of store openings were in the US. It would seem reasonable therefore to expect that the priority for most, if not all, future openings should be outside the US to address the current sales/retail presence imbalance and to accommodate the bulk of future growth.

Asymco.

 

Apple nombrada la compañía más admirada por sexto año consecutivo

Noticia de cult of mac citando a Fortune.

 

Después del Smartphone … el Smartwatch

Vía 9 to 5 Mac llego al artículo de Bruce Tognazzini

“… Steve Jobs’s true legacy lies not with his products, but his method, the way he would forge revolutionary products from cold blocks of creativity. I know. I was one of his earliest recruits and watched him develop the method. Steve applied it one project at a time.  My hope is that Apple now has teams applying it across many projects, shortening the historic six years between breakthrough products.

The iWatch will have a few functions it performs entirely on its own, chief among them being telling you the time.  It’s chief role will be that of office manager, facilitating and coordinating your use of your other iDevices and the Internet by gathering data, delivering messages, storing and forwarding, coordinating tasks, and carrying out functions that extend the capabilities of your other devices. The iPhone or other primary device will be the executive in charge, making the decisions, setting the strategy, and apportioning tasks. The watch will have the least energy resources available, so the watch will be used sparingly.  Still, as time goes on, more uses will be found for it, and it will receive increasing amounts of traffic. …”

The Apple iWatch

 

El problema de pérdida de atracción de Apple no es (sólo) la masificación

Advertising Age: Apple’s critics focus on wrong kind of cool

“… For a marketing world that has been hanging on every Apple move for decades, these are huge questions that seem to herald some sort of new brand order.

They also might be the wrong ones entirely. After all, it’s been a long time since Apple has had to worry about issues of cool — it’s a ubiquitous cultural force with little of the underdog feel it had when it was the hip alternative to IBM or Microsoft.

Late last year, Strategy Analytics found that iPhone loyalty dropped for the first time since the launch of the phone. Eighty-eight percent of owners said they would definitely or probably buy another Apple phone, down from 93% the year before. Most companies would sell their soul for these numbers, but for Apple the drop is worth noting.

Ultimately, missteps like the company’s attempt to force its own inferior maps product down its users’ throats last year might end up being more important than abstract notions of cool.

Cool?”

 

What Apple’s earnings really mean (CNNmoney)

En Fortune/CNN

“… First, the bad news: Apple’s profits aren’t growing much. We pretty much know why. The iPad Mini accounts for about half of Apple’s iPad sales—and the Mini is a less profitable product than the Maxi. The other strain on Apple’s profits is its capital expenditures, a forecasted $10 billion this year, up from $8 billion the year before.

Oh, there were other reasons. Personal computer sales are generally weak the world ’round, and Apple isn’t immune. Apple’s quarter was a week shorter than in the year-earlier quarter. Really.

Now for the good news: The iPad Mini’s success is a sign that no matter what CEO Tim Cook implies about not being concerned about market share—he answered a direct question on the subject by saying Apple is focused on building great products, not growing revenues—Apple is fighting to keep its share of the tablet market. He dismissed a question about Apple’s interest in producing multiple sizes of iPhones. All that means is that Apple hasn’t yet introduced multiple sizes of iPhones.

It’s difficult for people to understand this, but Apple thinks of itself as an underdog, not a top dog. It was down for so long that the stratospheric rise caught Apple by surprise. It always believed it was better than the competition, which gave it the confidence—some would say arrogance—to go its own way. If Apple sounds a bit defensive today, explaining itself more than just showing its not-quite-as-perfect-as-we’d-hoped products, maybe it’s a good thing. …”

 

prueba

ola, ke ase!

 

Los secretos (a voces) de Apple Retail

“… Apple Stores are now the highest performing stores in retail history.

It wasn’t always this way. Apple experienced massive failures in the 1990s when selling its products through retailers such as Sears and CompUSA. Its computers were muscled out of view and its brand so weakened that many retailers refused to properly market or stock Apple’s computers.

Even though Apple entered the retail business largely as a defensive move to gain more control of the customer experience, the climate then was anything but welcoming. Gateway was operating direct-to-consumer retail stores and failing fast. Apple had to learn how to do things differently.

Less than two years after Apple opened its retail stores, Gateway shut down all of its shops and laid off more than 2,500 workers. Three years later CompUSA shuttered its 23 year-old chain of stores. So while there was little expectation and no guarantee that Apple might succeed selling its own computers in this miserable retail climate, amazingly, somehow it thrived. …”

Steve Chazin en Marketing Apple nos resume muy bien las circunstancias del nacimiento e increíble crecimiento sostenido de la cadena de tiendas de la marca de la manzana mordida. Nada demasiado nuevo, pero un buen resumen.

 

No es casualidad que me instalara un Linux!!

Aunque fue probarlo, ver que iba el software de la “tienda” de ubuntu a la primera y que otros no eran tan straight forward, y dejar de usarlo porque para el uso casero de navegar, leer, enlazar, postear, twittear el mac no era tan diferente (y sobre todo no es una máquina virtual en un MBAir).

Me comí la libertad a la que aspiraba, al encontrarme con cosillas … pero este chico explica muy bien por qué me sentí con la necesidad de hacer algo así.

I switched from Windows to OS X several years back and fell in love with not only the beauty and elegance of the Apple hardware and software but, mainly, not having to restrict the temptation to annihilate my computer when it succumbed to viruses, malware, crap software, etc.

I recognize that Apple will make its customers pay a premium price for its (mostly) premium products and deliver a (mostly) repeatable/stable experience, and I am OK with that. But its business model is starting to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

I own multiple Apple products including iMacs, MacBook Pros, iPods, Airport Extremes, and Time Capsules. For the most part, they are definitely far more stable than products made for the Windows environment. But they don’t “just work.” Not always.

Should you switch from OS X to Linux?

 

Apple y “su economía”

Un reto

Su presencia en el mercado chino es importante pero queda muy por detrás de otros fabricantes de smartphones. El factor precio sigue siendo importante y un proveedor local con buen precio, producto y mucho servicio a sus clientes (Coolpad, Huawei, Lenovo, Samsung and ZTE) puede ponerle las cosas difíciles. Este proveedor es MediaTek, y digo yo si no serán con quien recientemente han ido a hablar los directivos de Apple si es cierto que piensan en hacer un iPhone barato o hay que salir de Samsung para la fabricación de chips:

“… For now, Apple has signaled that it has no intention of competing on price. The iPhone 5, released in China on Dec. 14, cost 300 renminbi more than the two previous models, the iPhone 4S and 4, on their release days. More than two million units of the iPhone 5 were sold during its first weekend.

By contrast, Coolpad, Huawei, Lenovo, Samsung and ZTE have rolled out new phones with similar performance at a third of the iPhone 5’s price of 5,288 renminbi, and sometimes less. …”

Via Leap 2020.

El potencial del App Store


“… Apple’s App Store is the most profitable application marketplace. Its closest rival, Google Play, generates only a fraction of what Apple does through app monetization. Apple generates $15 million per day in revenue from app monetization, compared to Google at $3.5 million. In 2013, I predict that Apple will continue to generate increased revenues through apps. Developers will be encouraged to create apps for Apple first, and later for Android. This will ensure that Apple continues to stay ahead of all its competitors in terms of app revenue and monetization. This is a great situation for Apple investors.”

Via Seeking Alpha, App monetization drives revenue growth for Apple

Margen, precio y estrategia de producto.

“… investors are focused on the effect of product strategy and, in particular, the mix-shift from the iPhone to products, such as the iPad Mini, with margins that are lower than the corporate average. This note argues that, while these products create challenging margin optics in the short run, they improve AAPL’s pricing power in the long run.

The role of the iPad Mini is to protect the floor in the iPad product line. It turns out, however, that AAPL was able to offer the lower-price product without compromising margins; in fact, the data suggest margins on the iPad Mini are higher than those on the third generation iPad when it was launched. In other words, rather than cannibalizing iPad sales, the iPad Mini may represent an up-sell.

… in a letter to investors of May 29, 2012 from hedge fund manager, Mr. David Einhorn: “Rather than view Apple as a hardware company, we view it as a software company that monetizes its value through the repeated sales of high-margin hardware.” From its own reports, AAPL’s perspective seems to be that it sells a “user experience” which is monetized through the sale of both hardware and software.

There was an interesting change in language in AAPL’s annual report from 2009 to 2010. In the 2009 report, the business strategy places products first and is articulated as: “the company is committed to bringing the best personal computing, mobile communication and portable digital music and video experience to consumers.” In the 2010 report, the customer experience comes first and the product descriptions are more general: “The Company is committed to bringing the best user experience to its customers through its innovative hardware, software, peripherals, services, and Internet offerings.”

The strategic imperative for AAPL is to build pricing power through selling customers multiple devices. This enhances customer loyalty, presumably through engaging customers more in AAPL’s iEcosystem and thereby increasing perceived switching costs. …”

Via Seeking Alpha, Apple: Margin, pricing and product strategy

Así que a lo mejor hay que comprar acciones …

 

La experiencia de trabajar en Apple (cuando ésta te compra)

“… All high-tech companies profess their belief in noble ideals like worker advancement, teamwork, and ‘transparency’ – but on the ground, there can be major differences in culture. Take, for example, the differences between Intel and Apple, according to Ariel Maislos, former CEO of Israel’s Anobit: “They say that Intel is full of paranoids, but at Apple, ‘they’ really are after you.” …


… At Apple, on the other hand, “no one can imagine a future in which the company fails”, and to make sure that that eventuality never comes about, the corporate culture demands much greater levels of personal excellence than at Intel, or any other tech company, for that matter. It’s those standards, Maislos believes, that has put the company where it is today. “Apple has had several important defining moments since that crisis,” he said. “It’s a company that is extremely focused on its goals. Working there was an amazing experience.”

 

En busca del microprocesador de Apple

Entre las muchas (quizá demasiadas) noticias relacionadas con Apple que leo y que suelo guardar en mi delicious cuando me llaman la atención, siempre hay noticias y opiniones sobre el próximo procesador de Apple, si intel en los tablets, ARM en los ordenadores … y, en esta entrada de Asymco se plantean posibilidades y dudas que abre el cercano final del contrato de fabricación de los procesadores con Samsung.

En busca del microprocesador de Apple siembra estas dudas a raíz de los datos que descubre:

  • Does Samsung’s microprocessor production exceed that of Intel?
  • Who will produce Apple’s processors after 2013. Will it be one or more suppliers is also an open question.
  • Is Apple’s CapEx (est. $10 billion/yr.) being spent on some of this future capacity? A modern fab costs about that much.
  • As the iOS processors are Apple’s own designs, will Apple be integrating production and design?

Time will tell

 

¿Puede Apple seguir innovando con poco dinero?

Vía BBVA Innovation Center un artículo original de Technology Review.

” …  Apple podría enfrentarse a nuevos tipos de presión por innovar ahora que sus plataformas de computación móvil están bien establecidas, según señala el profesor Jason Davis desde la Escuela Sloan de Administración del MIT (Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts, en Estados Unidos). Para la I+D, estas presiones podrían significar un enfoque de “investigación traslacional”, para que Apple pudiera integrar rápidamente avances procedentes de sus proveedores en áreas fundamentales como la banda ancha y las redes, la potencia de procesamiento y la resolución de pantalla, indica Davis. Quizá lo más importante sea que podría significar su interés en la promoción de tecnologías de software -como el procesamiento de imágenes, voz e imágenes en 3D- y en la búsqueda de usos destinados a los consumidores, indica Davis. “

 

Cuando hagas clic sobre una dirección de correo que se abra Gmail

Gracias  a los chicos de Canal Mac, una interesante entrada si están pensando en salir un poco de la manzana …

 

Apple y el baile de directivos … Browett

Leo en Asymco unas interesantes consideraciones sobre las razones que podrían haber causado el despido fulminante de Browett, que más que con una disminución en los resultados de las tiendas (porque no se dió esta condición) parece tener que ver más bien con su incapacidad para ver en las tiendas la vía de comunicación de Apple con sus clientes.

“… If stores did not show any effect of poor management, then why was Browett fired? I suspect it had mostly to do with a mis-match of understanding of the job the stores are hired to do by consumers and by Apple itself. The company treats the stores as a sales channel but also as a communications channel with its customers. Recall when Steve Jobs was asked why they stopped attending MacWorld (and any other trade show) he answered that they had the dialog they needed with customers through their stores making.


That dialog is engaged between 100 million visitors and 42,000 employees every three months. The average time spent with each visitor is 13 minutes. Each visitor also leaves about $45 behind. As I put it earlier, the stores are the face of the brand.

Whoever is in charge must understand this special relationship. The surprise for me is not that Browett was fired, but that if he did not understand this relationship, how was he ever hired? …”

Y una razón más de regalo, aunque seguramente sea una parte del problema más bien, por Gassée en Monday Note:

“… ‘Now you know the real reason for Browett’s firing’, a friend said, half-seriously.‘How can you spend North of $15M on such a strategically placed, symbolic store, complete with Italian stone hand-picked by Jobs himself…and give no consideration to the acoustics? It’s bad for customers, it’s bad for the staff, it’s bad for business, and it’s bad for the brand. Apple appears to be more concerned with style than with substance!’ …”

Cierto es que si el problema de la acústica no se da en New York en la tienda en el West Side … no tiene porqué darse en la de Palo Alto ¿no?.


 

Otra posible explicación a la bajada de las acciones de Apple

Vía Mac Daily News, leo “Apple’s instituional slingshot”  de Jason Schwarz, en Seeking Alpha.

“… Suppose you were a mutual fund manager and your strategic models allowed for a maximum 8% allocation in any individual stock. What would have happened to your Apple holdings in 2012? As of September 21st, Apple was up 74.9% year-to-date. Apple allocations at the largest mutual funds had grown to between 13% and 15% of total holdings with the fiscal year end approaching on October 31st. Because of Apple’s strength, because it was such an outlier when compared to the rest of the market, these money managers were forced to re-balance their portfolios in order to comply with their risk models. The Apple slingshots, or in other words the deeper than unexpected selloffs, are caused by systematic institutional re-balancing. This is the unintended consequence of Apple’s status as the most widely held stock of most hedge funds, indexes, pension funds and mutual funds. Apple’s slingshot selloffs occur because of its strength, not because of its weakness. Apple is an outlier.…”

Más sobre Apple y su comportamiento en bolsa, en Asymco.

“…At least since the iPhone launched, every dramatic drop in share price was followed by a surge in earnings growth. One could even say the worse the bear, the better the growth.

Sounds completely counter-intuitive, but there is some perverse logic in this as well. The market reflects crises (as well as over-abundance) of confidence. Unforeseen growth is what creates wealth and the crisis in confidence is a reflection of the improbability of continuing out-performance. When Apple’s performance is foreseeable the stock moves slowly upward. When its performance is unforeseeable the stock moves dramatically downward.

A pithy way of putting it is: No news is good news. Good news is bad news.

When a product is understood the stock is mildly desirable. When a new product appears the future is hazy and the stock is undesirable. But that haziness hides potential but up and down. New products is what innovators produce. Bizarre new products is what disruptors produce.

In other words, the paradoxical observation in the chart above of “the more drama in the market, the more success in the marketplace” makes sense when inverted.

For disruptive companies, it should be “the more success in the marketplace, the more drama in the market.… ”

Y una visión más negra en yahoo finance.

“… Long-time Apple bull Todd Schoenberger, managing principal at The BlackBay Group is concerned. “Apple is a true proxy of the global economy,” he says in the attached clip. If Apple is slowing down it could be an ominous sign for spending worldwide.

To be sure, the world should dare to dream of having Apple’s problems. The maker of all things that start with a lower-case “i” is still growing at a more than 20% pace, amassing cash faster than ever before seen in corporate history. But that growth has begun disappointing analysts. Too many of what Schoenberger says are derivative “me too” products, like the iPad Mini, have some wondering if Apple’s best days are behind it, spectacular though they were. …”

 

Apple, Tim Cook y lo que no ven los analistas

Apple, Tim Cook y lo que no ven los analistas, en Information Week

“Apple, as well as most companies producing consumer-oriented products in China, have a much larger problem looming: Will they be able to produce their products to meet market demand?”

“This is where Tim Cook comes into the picture. Cook’s skill set is unique among CEOs of high-tech consumer product manufacturing companies. A master of logistics, he’s credited with reengineering Apple’s supply chain to increase profit margins while allowing for more flexibility to produce new products and make changes on the fly. His educational background in industrial engineering, coupled with an MBA, provides him with a toolbox the average CEO doesn’t have… The pundits and experts wanted the next CEO of Apple to be just like Steve Jobs, who was always ahead of the pundits and experts. Perhaps Jobs looked into the future and saw the challenges and opportunities that Apple faces. Keenly aware that Apple had grown into a large and complex company, Jobs knew better than anyone what skills the next CEO would require. And he groomed Tim Cook for the job.”

Read more at http://macdailynews.com/2012/10/25/apple-ceo-tim-cook-what-the-pundits-and-analysts-miss/#6ZGpQYsIzkQ6Xjcb.99

 

Obviamente no debo entender una palabra de economía ;-)

¿Por qué baja Apple en bolsa habiendo vendido más que el mismo trimestre el años pasado (igual que los tres trimestres anteriores)?

“… The Company posted quarterly revenue of $36.0 billion and quarterly net profit of $8.2 billion, or $8.67 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $28.3 billion and net profit of $6.6 billion, or $7.05 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.

“We’re pleased to have generated over $41 billion in net income and over $50 billion in operating cash flow in fiscal 2012,” said Peter Oppenheimer …”

Apple reports 4th Quarter results

 

La lucha de clases existe ;-P

Y es mucho más seria que ésta ;-)

 

El esqueumorfismo trae “bandos” a Apple

El esqueumorfismo que los diseñadores de interfaz de usuario de Apple han decidido utilizar ampliamente en los últimos tiempos está levantando ampollas entre los diseñadores de la compañía de la manzana, menos proclives a esta orientación del diseño. El artículo entero en Business Insider (en inglés).

Vía Mac Daily News es como he llegado al artículo y allí el pulcro Ive es citado opinando sobre el asunto:

“My focus is very much working with the other teams on the product ideas and then developing the hardware and so that’s our focus and that’s our responsibility. In terms of those elements you’re talking about, I’m not really connected to that.”

Y también lo es Frank Lloyd Wright, muy brillantemente:

True ornament is not a matter of prettifying externals. It is organic with the structure it adorns…

Ampliación sobre el esqueumorfismo en “el UI de ordenadores” en Fast Co Design.

 

Leading apps for Mac business users

En Tech Republic (english):

Office Productivity, Design and Layout, Financial management, Contact management and CRM, Antivirus, Web browser & Virtualization software

 

Hay trabajos y está el trabajo de tu vida

“Hay trabajos y está el trabajo de tu vida.

El tipo de trabajo en el que dejas tu huella por todas partes. El tipo de trabajo del que nunca querrías renunciar. El tipo de trabajo por el cual sacrificarías un fin de semana. Puedes hacer ese trabajo en Apple. La gente no viene aquí para jugar sobre seguro. Ellos vienen aquí para llegar a lo más profundo. Ellos quieren su trabajo para sumarse a algo. Algo grande. Algo que no puede suceder en otro lugar.

 Bienvenido a Apple.”

No se de dónde salió esto … pero me parece bien :)