Yesterday I finally got my hands on an Apple iPad for the first time and was amazed by the cult status it has. Brandishing this beautiful object in a crowded pub resulted in whispered adoration from the surrounding tables. After more than two decade of designing silicon chips for the consumer electronics industry (including mobile phones and computers) I still struggle to understand what is going to become popular. I always like to believe that the clever bit is what I do: getting the maximum computing power, lowest power consumption, longest battery life, most functionality and cramming the highest number of transistors onto the smallest piece of silicon etc. Academically, I suppose that is the clever bit, but these days the money is made as much from the beautiful case, innovative ergonomics and most of all, the marketing and the cult status of owning a particular brand. Functionality is important, but fashion and being seen with the right gadget is more important. How times have changed. Gadgets used to be just for people like me (unkindly referred to as "geeks", although apparently even that is fashionable now too)
These days I am just as interested in which stock to buy as to which gadget. Apple seems too expensive, but then I am predominantly a value investor. Its price is huge because Apple can apparently do no wrong and even if they did people would still buy what ever they produce. The only way to grow from here is to continue dominating the ipod, ipad and iphone markets and invent new markets to expand into despite the new worldwide austerity measures being imposed. I can't guarantee that Apple won't do this, but it sounds like quite a risk. What about the competitors? Palm has recently been taken over by HP and they invented and dominated the touchscreen PDA market and the Android operating system seems to be the one to go for for anyone who really cares about such things.
So why is Apple so good? Is it just that the Apple fan club will buy whatever his company comes up with and Steve tells them to buy? Everything by Apple is a guaranteed success even before any of us have seen it. The iPad has already become the benchmark for this "new" type of device. I have heard several people say "I really want one. I don't know what I will use it for though". After my encounter with the iPad I must admit that I want one too, but I will check out the competition: Android devices and what ever the new Palm/HP coalition come up with before I take the plunge.
The interesting thing for me is how many people think Apple invented these new kinds of device and the concept of an App. Palm had hand held touch-screen devices a decade before Apple's iPhone and there are applications (mostly free) which work on all Palm devices until the Palm Pre, Pro and Pixi came out. The Palm Treo phone looks like a Blackberry and does everything a professional user needs (although the internet is a bit slow) including editing documents and spreadsheets and if you want to read documents on a reasonable sized screen or surf the internet with WiFi what's wrong with an old Palm TX, T3 or T5 (with a WiFi card)?
Will the austerity measures across Europe force people to spend less on expensive Apple products and internet contracts and opt for Android devices or even dust off their old Palm PDAs or will Apple continue to dominate the market? I'm not buying any more Apple stock right now, but almost everyone still seems to love Apple.
0 comments:
Post a Comment