Apple is on a roll of unprecedented proportions. Sales for nearly every product are on fire. Meanwhile, Apple’s competitors, all of them, are struggling, gasping for air, desperate, drowning, or on life support. What is going on?
Crazy Is As Crazy Does
If Forrest Gump ran a few of Apple’s more prominent competitors, the end result wouldn’t be worse, but might be better (look at what he did with shrimp).
Here’s what I think Apple’s competitors are saying to themselves. Let me run down the list starting with HP:
We don’t want to sell hardware any more. It’s very difficult to do. Let’s try software instead. It worked for IBM.
That’s the way to get the premium amount for a PC division you’re trying to sell. How about Google?
We’ll never pay that much for patents. It’s absurd. Let’s buy Motorola instead. Then we’ll make our own phones to compete with Apple. Screw all those Android partners. They weren’t paying us anything anyway.
Then, there’s Michael Dell:
Do you think anyone would notice if we sold the company, shut the doors, and gave the money back to shareholders?
How about the executives at Samsung?
Let’s take the Burger King approach. McDonald’s spends a ton of money to find the best locations. Burger King simply opens up next door or across the street. So, let’s copy everything Apple does. No one will notice. They’ll be flattered.
And Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer?
Bill Gates told me not to worry about the iPad. It doesn’t have a stylus. They’ll never get any market share with that. Besides, Windows 8 will be out in a few years, and it will have touch. And a stylus.
How about the executives at Adobe when they learned that Apple would never use Flash on iPhone or iPad and was dropping it from the Mac.
Quick. What else can we sell? What’s this HTML5 thing? Will that sell? Will developers buy tools for that? Quick. Whip something up.
Then there’s the strange management at RIM, the BlackBerry folks:
Two CEOs is the management trend of the future. We know it will work for us. It’s just like Steve Jobs and Tim Cook.
Crazy is as crazy does.
Kate's Comment Policy: Keep your comment on topic, relevant, worthy, and funny. Or, pick any three. Be pleasant, helpful, and only use your real name. Comments are moderated and will not appear immediately.