On the iPhone and Apple's Meteoric Rise To the Top 317
zacharye writes "Friday marks five years since the world first got its hands on a smartphone that would turn the industry on its head. In five short years, Apple went from the ground floor to being the most profitable company in the smartphone business by a staggering margin. Apple and Samsung — two companies that weren't even on the smartphone industry's map a few years ago — are now the only two major global vendors making money, and the split was estimated at 80/20 in Apple's favor last quarter. That's 80% of smartphone industry profits in less than five years with just five different smartphone models under its belt during that span."
Daft Punk, Not Kanye (Score:5, Informative)
"Better, faster, stronger," Apple could have easily lifted those Kanye West lyrics for their press release announcing the coming of the iPhone 3GS in 2009.
*facepalm* Sorry, I know its a minor detail, but Daft Punk originally wrote "Better, faster, harder, stronger", and Kanye sampled it (with permission) for his song. They have a cameo in his video, which is an awesome tribute to Akira for those that haven't seen it.
*watches Daft Hands and Daft Bodies on youtube*
Re:No surprise. (Score:5, Informative)
"Steve Jobs and his team made a damn fine piece of technology"
Copied. they Copied it from the LG Prada.
Re:Will it continue? (Score:4, Informative)
Mac Pro is not as expandable or upgradable as a real PC.
Wait, what? Have you ever used a Mac Pro?
By "not as expandable or upgradeable" do you mean, "just as expandable and upgradable and a lot less bloody knuckling"?
Re:No surprise. (Score:5, Informative)
People forget this now, but the iPhone did not support apps when it launched. Jobs didn't want third-party code on the iPhone, and tried to assuage the demand with web-based APIs for accessing phone hardware. App support was only added over a year later with iOS 2, coinciding with the launch of the iPhone 3G, as Apple and Jobs conceded to the inevitable.
Really? Apple isn't on top (Score:4, Informative)
According to ZDnet Samsung is ahead of apple in the smartphone market.
Samsung’s success in the U.S. is both a blessing and a curse. It dominates the U.S. smartphone market, even outshining Apple’s iPhone. But delays, sales injunctions, and supply chain issues are hampering Samsung’s latest efforts to crank out its Galaxy S III smartphone to the market.
Market research firm
Samsung Electronics' Galaxy series has overtaken Apple's iPhone as the number-one individual smartphone sub-brand in the world.
According to a report published by American market research firm Strategy Analystics in the first half of the year, Samsung sold 41-million units of its Galaxy series, which comprised 28 percent of the global smartphone market.
Apple was close behind, selling 35-million units of the iPhone and taking up 24 percent of the market share.
Research in Motion's Curve was the third-largest smartphone brand, but it only accounted for FOUR percent of the market.
The report said Samsung and Apple are "clear leaders," since they make up over half of the global smartphone market combined.
Re:Really? Apple is on top (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wrong, Apple planned thirty party apps all alon (Score:5, Informative)
It wouldn't be the first time that somebody in Apple went and did something behind Jobs' back anticipating a change of heart. The story of the Sony/Alps situation for the original Mac floppy drive is probably the most famous example.
Jobs loved the new Sony 3.5" floppy drive format, and decided seven months before the Mac was supposed to ship that he wanted to use it... and he wanted that to happen via an Apple/Alps developed-from-scratch clone. The team thought this was insane, so while grudgingly going through the motions with Alps, they secretly continued working on integrating the Sony drive. They kept all the meetings/negotiations/hardware secret from Jobs, to the extent that they would hide the Sony engineer visiting Cupertino in a closet whenever Jobs was nearby. This obviously greatly confused the Sony engineer, but he went along with it.
Later, when Alps told Apple that they needed eighteen months to get the thing ready, the team revealed to Jobs that they had gone behind his back and kept the Sony deal alive, and he ended up thanking them for their little rebellion.
I'm not saying that this is the same situation here, only that what Jobs was convinced was the right approach and what the Apple engineers working on the internal SDK were convinced was the right approach may not have aligned. It's pretty well documented from multiple sources internal to Apple that Jobs was obstinately refusing to consider third-party apps. He didn't want other people messing with his perfection, and he didn't think his team had the bandwidth to figure out how to make it work (in terms of reliability and integration) on top of their existing workload.