BIRDSFeathered Friends

Lessons learned: what Apple has gained having lost the PC war to Microsoft

The unleashed war actions like Apple’s suit against HTC which is a Google’s partner, Adobe-Apple tension, and many other minor signs all that gives certain ground to view the relations between Apple and Google as a full-scale war similar to that Apple had in the past with Microsoft. Google being a relatively new company can hardly boast of big expertise in building an overall marketing and promotional product strategy, while Apple having suffered in the past a bitter defeat had to get some useful experience. And it seems that it really has learnt something.  

Consumer-oriented distribution channels. During the PC Wars, PCs were delivered through a rather limited retail shelf space. There was a range of branded stores. To be successful one should place its products there along with products of other manufacturers. No technical support was guaranteed. Today the situation is completely different. Apple runs a range of stores that provide a superior environment for consumers to experience hardware hands-on and learn about the full line-up of Apple products. By contrast, Google is absolutely lacking that consumer cooperation feature while Apple has learnt its lesson.

Pricing. Apple used to price its Mac products at a higher range, pointing at a unique nature of their devices in comparison to Windows-based PC offerings. People turned out to be more saving –oriented and chose cheaper Microsoft-IBM products. Now Apple is leading quite a reasonable pricing policy, not leaving a sufficient pricing gap between its products and products of its major competitors. Besides, iPad is the cheapest new product category delivered by Apple.

Development environment. To have a quality platform can be good but it is definitely not enough. It must attract developers who will enrich its content with diverse apps focused on different target audience. While competing with Microsoft, Apple forgot this, launching and abandoning technology initiatives, co-opting and competing with their developers and at times missed promised milestones. 
By contrast now Apple is following the path Microsoft routed almost 20 years ago. It integrates core technologies across all products (moving on to the 4.0 stage of its mobile platform at all devices), made sure developer tools readily support these core initiatives (SDK kits which are updated on the regular basis), has consistently hit promised milestones, and has ensured that the iPhone application development process makes money for the third parties engaged. 
That’s why the number of iPhone only apps has past over 140 000, and iPhone and iPad developers all over the world are eager to be engaged in the pious activity. 

Target audience choice: PCs first came to offices of large enterprises giving them a possibility to dictate standards or types of solutions. Common users kept to the same hardware they used at work. Moreover, a more conservative nature of Microsoft was a safe harbor when compared to weird Mac products. Microsoft managed to straddle enterprises which were the key audience and drove the company to success. Today Apple is good at defining its target audience and making its products mass-market friendly. Though the slogan “Think different” seems to be out-of-date, as Apple products are in the consumer mainstream now, while Google occupies the niche Apple had many years ago – tech focused adherents. 

To sum it up Apple’s market success is evident and undoubted though the company itself is becoming that powerful evil enterprise Microsoft was in the previous decade. And it is that resilience and all embracing reach that has averted many prior adherent Microsoft’s followers. Can the scenario repeat?

About the Author

Dave Gahan – Bitter Apple ( Basel, 2003 )

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