Why has Microsoft found itself in third place, behind Apple and now Google, in the mobile segment of computing?

Third place? Microsoft is falling, fallling, fast. Cane pulls quotes from Wall Street Journal reporter David Bank’s book, How Bill Gates Fumbled The Future of Microsoft. In essence, Bill Gates nixed a proposal from a top engineer in 1999 to scrap Windows’ heritage in mobile devices and start over. Gates:

It’s very disappointing you feel that way. We don’t have time to start from scratch.

I would argue that Gates decisions have not fatally wounded Microsoft. Today, Microsoft is just another technology company with a long heritage, a lot of money, and not much else.

For what will be an increasing number, and eventually a majority of users, the basics of personal computing can be covered by an iPad. Email. Browsing. Writing. Reading. Games. Beyond that, iPhone apps will adapt to the larger screen of the iPad and bring more typical Mac functionality to the iPad—photo manipulation, audio and video editing, even video calling.

Sascha Segan writes in PC Magazine, Apple’s iPad Could Kill The Mac.

The secret sauce that will drive Mozilla’s new JavaScript engine engine into the fast lane is some code borrowed from Apple’s WebKit project. Mozilla intends to bring together the powerful optimization techniques of TraceMonkey and the extremely efficient native code generator of Apple’s JSCore engine. The mashup will likely deliver a significant boost in Firefox’s JavaScript execution speed, making Mozilla’s browser a formidable contender in the ongoing JavaScript speed race.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

• Until now, smartphone makers were trying to match Apple’s user experience, and not thinking about patents. Now all the companies are checking patents before proceeding.
• Apple’s legal actions have “temporarily left competitors playing catch-up with their shoelaces tied.”
• Post-lawsuit, handset makers are wondering if Android is the best way to topple Apple.
• That’s leading to a renewed interest in partnering with Microsoft, and its new Windows Phone Series 7.

What goes around, comes around.

A Deutsche Bank analysis of yearly patent filings by Apple (AAPL), HTC and Google (GOOG) reveals that Apple is by far the leader and HTC the laggard. Over the past few years, Apple has amassed some 3,000 patents, HTC just 58.

Ouch.

Sony won’t put up with Apple’s aggressive expansion into its own turf anymore.

Uh oh. Here it comes again. Another Apple iPhone, iPod, iPad killer. Do you mind if I dismiss Sony’s efforts to get back in the game?

Anyone dismissing Sony’s renewed attempts to slow down Apple needs a reality check. Yes, one could say that Sony lost its touch with consumers by allowing Apple to take over the music space. You could also blame them for losing ground in just about every consumer electronics category except gaming.

One could argue that Apple’s iPod touch success, in heavy use by casual gamers, is as much a game success as Sony’s recent gaming efforts. Alright. I’ll bite. Apple’s products have been kicking Sony’s products—hardware, software, online—since the iPod debuted in 2001. So, why should Apple quake in fear of Sony’s newest renewed efforts?

Sony has been around since the end of World War II, long before Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created the first personal computer in Jobs’ parents’ garage.

And that’s an argument how? How many of Sony’s executives from before Apple’s birth are still at Sony? My guess? Zero. Surely there’s more to this effort to pump up Sony’s repeatedly anemic efforts to reclaim past glory.

Sony commands vast categories, unlike the self-proclaimed consumer electronics giant Apple which only plays in phones, computers, and music.

So does Microsoft, yet their efforts to venture into portable media players, game consoles, and smart phones have met with terrible financial losses. I see more of a Sony comparison to Microsoft than to Godzilla awakening to reclaim his island from Apple.

Sony is one of the world’s largest media conglomerates and a top player in electronics, games, and entertainment. While Jobs boasted the fact that the $15.68 billion revenue in the last quarter made Apple a $50 billion company, Sony’s fiscal year 2008 revenue exceeded $78.88 billion. Although down from $90.5 billion a year earlier, it’s still way more than Apple raked in.

So, we’re to believe that Sony will rebound because revenue fell by $12-billion last year, but Sony still has more revenue than Apple? Gimme a break, Christian. Have you ever heard of profits?

While Apple’s influence in entertainment stems from the iTunes and iPod ecosystem and the fact that Jobs is the largest individual shareholder in Disney, Sony owns several movie studios and record labels. And just like Apple, Sony designs its own hardware, software, and services that work together.

Sigh. This is too easy. Chris, how well do Sony’s own hardware, software, and services actually work together. Oh. That’s right. They don’t. Maybe that has something to do with Apple’s success. Unlike Sony, Apple made things work together.

See, if anyone can take on Apple, it’s Sony.

How’s that working out so far?

Christian is writing for Geek.com. Ostensibly run by, and read by, well, you know—geeks. Where’s the math? Exactly how is Sony going topple Apple’s position? How will Sony’s new products and services line up and compare against Apple’s current line? I’m a non-geek and I want to know. Where are the iPhone and iPad killers? How will they be better than Apple’s products?

Here’s a painful truth. Market leaders are terribly difficult to unseat. Saying so doesn’t make it happen. Strutting and posturing does not bring customers in the door. Quality products and services that work well together actually matter to customers.

Here’s another painful truth. Knocking off a market leader has requirements. If Company B wishes to sell more gadgets than Company A (taking away their customers), Company B must have a much better product, or a much less expensive product, or a much easier-to-use product. Any two will help the effort. In the end, it’s math. Sony can’t do the math. Neither can Geek.com.

Geek.com + Sony - Apple = Fail.

Speaking unto an audience of anti-immigration advocates, global-warming deniers, and members of the Tea Party Nation, former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin gave forth utterances Monday that reportedly opened the sixth seal of the Book of the Apocalypse.

And:

“Small town folks—the folks who grow our food, run our small businesses, and teach our kids—are getting pretty riled up by President Obama’s big socialist ideas,” Palin spoke as the stage upon which she stood was rent apart by an unseen hand, opening as unto a great chasm, whose gaping void she narrowly escaped by clinging to the podium.

And finally:

Chaos and disorder then spread across hill and valley to every corner of the earth, eyewitnesses reported, and as the minions of the Antichrist prepared for their millennium of world dominion, even the teeming masses of heathens could not in their hearts deny that the final phase of Armageddon was close at hand, and that you’re darn right Joe Six-Pack pays too many taxes already.

In 1998, Apple killed the floppy drive. It took a few years for the rest of the industry to catch up, but the handwriting was clearly on the wall.

It took 10 years to eliminate the floppy disk drive.

Segue to 2007. Apple introduces the iPhone without support for Flash. People complain, but iPhones sell at ever-increasing rates. Today, with some 40 million of them around the world, and the iPad on the immediate horizon, Steve Jobs has made it quite clear that Flash is the floppy drive of the 21st century. It’s time for it to go.

When? How? Soon is rather ambiguous.

Flash will be history, and Adobe is just going to have to adapt to the situation and let those other products keep them in business. It’s not as if Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign are going away any time soon, even without Flash support.

Start-up airline Virgin America has decided HTML is “good enough” for animating online content on its brand-new website, which went live Monday, dumping Flash.

Virgin CTO Ravi Simhambhatla:

I don’t want to cater to one hardware or one software platform one way to another, and Flash eliminates iPhone users. This year is going to be the year of the mobile [for Virgin]. When I looked at the Flash on our site, we weren’t using any Flash features except transition from one ad to another. When you use a technology, you want to use 70 to 80 per cent of the functionality.

The days of dominant, proprietary technologies on the internet are over. Goodbye Flash.

We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it.We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.

It should be noted that HTC is the largest handset maker for Windows Mobile phones, and has made a large commitment to produce Google Android phones. John Maczkowski has a list of the complete court filings in AllThingsDigital.

Named as exhibits in the litigation, a handful of Android devices including Google’s (GOOG) Nexus One, the T-Mobile G1, the HTC Hero and the Droid Eris.

Jason Mick in DailyTech:

Apple also has a pending countersuit against Nokia for similar cell phone patent infringement.  In that suit, filed in December, Apple accuses Nokia of stealing technology covered by 13 iPhone-related patents.

Besides HTC, who is the lawsuit actually aimed at? Microsoft? Or, Google? Why not attack Google head on? Mick’s summary:

Is Apple a dreamy inventor turned innocent victim, exploited by greedy handset makers like it suggests?  That’s open to debate.  But it’s clear that Apple is eager to use litigation as a tool to try to knock down obstacles to its iPhone’s dominance.

It isn’t clear that the iPhone is in a dominant position in anything except mindshare, but it is clear that Apple will go to significant effort to protect the profitable device’s future.

I think Apple is aiming at Google, not Microsoft. Windows Mobile is dead in the water. Windows Phone Series 7 won’t be a marketing reality until 2011, when Apple’s iPhone is well into version 4.0. The real target here is Google’s Android.

Colin Gibbs in GigaOm:

Today’s filing appears to be an attempt to slow Android, which has gained remarkable momentum in recent months. HTC offers the widest array of Android handsets of any manufacturer… and its Nexus One is the latest handset to be dubbed a potential “iPhone killer.” Throwing a legal hurdle at Android’s most prolific manufacturer appears to be an effort to slow Google’s roll in mobile.

Amen. If Apple can stop HTC’s Android from moving forward, what happens to other smart phone manufacturers who plan devices on Google’s fledgling but growing platform?

Former Mozilla security chief Window Snyder has been hired by Apple. Snyder started her new job Monday, where she’s now working as a senior security product manager, according to sources familiar with the situation. Apple is the third browser-maker in the past five years that has employed Snyder, who previously had worked as a security strategist at Microsoft where she managed the company’s relationships with security consultants and had worked on the Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 operating systems.

Scary, considering all the problems Mozilla and Microsoft have had with browser security issues.

Apple products are made in factories that regularly employ young teenagers, constantly work people more than 60 hours per week, and falsify records to cover up their misdeeds.

The only problem with Tate’s statement? Facts. What’s his source?

That’s according to the shameless gossiping muckrakers at… uh, Apple Inc.

Apple released a Supplier Responsibility 2010 Progress Report (PDF) which disclosed three instances which violated Apple’s policies.

Apple discovered three facilities that had previously hired 15-year-old workers in countries where the minimum age for employment is 16. Across the three facilities, our auditors found records of 11 workers who had been hired prior to reaching the legal age, although the workers were no longer underage or no longer in active employment at the time of our audit.

From that, Tate castigates Apple by writing that the company regularly hires underage workers, and constantly work them beyond 60 hours a week.

Tate’s accusations put Gawker Valleywag clearly in the category of Fox News. What’s fair and balanced is really inaccurate and distorted for the sole purpose of sensationalizing issues.

Apple did not say that there wouldn’t be a smaller supply, they only said that the late March introduction is on schedule. They did not rebuke the claim that they would have only far fewer units than first planned, nor did they comment on a limited introduction to the US. If that is in fact the case, then the iPad will be delayed for many, many people.

Apple had originally planned to deliver 1 million at launch but will only be able to deliver 300K. I would call that a delay for 700K people!

So, Apple is sharing product delivery information with Ernie Varitimos? I don’t think so.

Publishers should think twice before worshipping the iPad as the future platform for magazines and newspapers. That is, if they value their independence from an often-capricious corporate gatekeeper.

I love a well turned phrase, but it’s hard to imagine print media publishers worshipping anyone other than themselves. Apple has a commanding presence in digital music downloads but do record company executives worship Jobs and Company?

On the other hand, is Apple truly a ‘capricious corporate gatekeeper?’

capricious |kəˈpri sh əs;-ˈprē-|
adjective
given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behavior :
a capricious and often brutal administration | a capricious climate.

Is that Apple? Certainly. Do publishers need to be aware of Apple’s nature? Certainly. Will Apple’s iPad be the delivery mechanism for publishers in the 21st century. Certainly not.

The past week’s controversy swirling around Apple’s retroactive ban of sexy apps in the App Store seems trivial, but the implications of Apple’s arbitrariness should be disconcerting to members of the press and those who rely on the media for unbiased information.

Though Apple is being arbitrary, the controversy is trivial (except to the soft porn industry). And since when did the media provide unbiased information?

While it may initially appear publishers are more shielded from Apple’s ban hammer, the severity of the retroactive ban should be concerning for freedom-of-speech advocates.

Suddenly, Apple’s porn-purge-o-rama has become a freedom-of-speech issue. If I cook up honey coated turds and want Whole Foods to sell them, and they don’t, can I use the freedom-of-speech angle to get my way? It’s Apple’s store. They can sell what they want. And not sell what they don’t want. It’s not a freedom-of-speech issue.

Apple can do whatever it wants with the content in its App Store. Apple is not government, and thus it is not governed by the First Amendment. In light of the recent ban, many have correctly compared Apple’s App Store to Wal-Mart, which also doesn’t allow porn.

See? Brian agrees with me. So what’s the real issue?

It’s the fact that Apple has so much market power, combined with the fact that magazine and newspaper publishers are getting pumped to produce apps for Apple’s iPad, which will be served through Apple’s tightly regulated App Store. The iPad could very well play a major role in the future of publishing, with several of the biggest book publishers already on board to sell e-books through the iPad’s iBooks store, and major publications, including Wired, already working on iPad apps to launch in the App Store.

Market power? Think about that for a moment. Microsoft has market power over the vast majority of the world’s personal computers. While that may not bode well for users, it doesn’t endanger the endangered species of print publishing.

Likewise, Apple’s iTunes Store maintains a dominant position for digital media downloads. But Apple’s devices, and customers, make up but a small sliver of the world’s media-ingesting carbon-based creatures.

Assume for a moment that Apple’s iPad takes a 20-percent share of the sub-$1,000 computing devices market segment. Is that 20-percent dominant? Still, without a single iPad sold, Chen worries for his print media brethren.

What will happen when a journalist writes a controversial story about abortion or vaccines? Will displeased readers skip writing angry letters to the publisher and go straight to Apple to get the article pulled? And would Apple then comply?

Will that same controversial story show up on the general world wide web? Yes. Do angry readers or ambulance-chasing attorneys seek to shut down Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (the browser which displayed the offending story)? Of course not.

This whole argument is silly. But Chen persists:

I’m optimistic that Apple will eventually create a separate section in iTunes for digital newspapers and magazines, giving publishers a platform to distribute their digital content based on a strict, contractual agreement that prevents their content from being arbitrarily removed at Apple’s discretion.

Isn’t it likely that Apple wants no part of managing the content? They have a store. They stock the store with what they think will sell. They sell things. If some of what they sell impedes their ability to sell more, they’ll take it off the shelf. It’s business. Not free speech. Chen thinks not:

Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, said he understands Apple’s intention to keep its App Store immaculate, but its censorship — and the rise of more open alternatives such as Google Android — will drive loyal customers away.

It’s a store. If it doesn’t have what I want, I’ll buy what I want elsewhere. A pristine store without customers is not what Apple wants. That’s not what they have, either. Scheer:

What you’re limited to right now is Apple wants you to see in its little neighborhood, and it doesn’t want you to go into other neighborhoods. Eventually you embitter a lot of people who don’t understand why they’re being denied access to something they’d like to have on a device they have and they own.

That’s just silly. Does the lack of soft porn apps in the App Store prohibit iPhone or iPod touch or iPad customers from viewing soft porn on their respective devices? Hello? The last time I checked my iPhone it still had the Safari browser on it and it was still capable of viewing pretty much anything the internet provides.

So it will be with print media publishers extending their brands, their content and their customer base via the iPad—one of many distribution and display devices they need to conquer.

What’s not clearly understood by Chen or Scheer is that this whole process is a constantly evolving dynamic. Apple will adjust according to market requirements, not the unreasonable demands of freedom-of-speech and sky-is-falling fringe elements. Finally:

One thing’s for sure: With the iPad looming and the iPhone continuing to grow in popularity, Apple has to make some dramatic changes to the way it handles apps and runs the App Store. For now, the iPad and the App Store are hardly an ideal environment for newspapers and magazines to be reborn.

Dramatic changes? Or, mere adjustments to match the evolving landscape? Newspapers and magazines won’t be reborn on Apple’s iPad. The iPad is merely another corner newsstand, albeit a very cool one. If I can’t buy what I want there I’ll exercise my freedom of speech and tell the newsstand owner. If the owner doesn’t respond appropriately, I’ll go across the street.

Apple has nothing to worry about. The dinosaurs of print media need to worry about other issues. I hear there’s a chilling frost this weekend.

Our softer than expected performance is due to slower than expected customer adoption of our products, which in turn has prompted our U.S. carrier partners to put additional orders on hold for the time being.

Translation: ‘Sales really stink.’

On a positive note, we expect to exit the quarter with over $500 million in cash on our balance sheet.

By comparison, Apple, Inc. has over $40-billion in cash; 80 times that of Palm. Palm is not ‘Apple, Jr.’ as Dan Frommer says. At best, Palm is an Apple miniscule wannabe.

Palm slashed its guidance today and shares are down 20%, as the company’s comeback attempt in the smartphone market hits a brick wall.

What’s the brick wall? Apple, of course. The iPhone continues to sell strongly despite a weakened worldwide economy.

In the short term, that’s good news for Apple, whose iPhone has been able to gain ground despite increased competition.

In the short term? Does that mean that Palm or Android or Microsoft of whomever will be the cause of Apple’s downfall without Steve Jobs?

But in the long term, it’s more evidence that Apple is screwed once visionary CEO Steve Jobs eventually leaves the company.

It’s difficult to say that a company with $40-billion in the bank and record sales and profits and market share would be screwed once the fabled leader is gone, but, I’m listening. Just how is Apple screwed?

Palm is basically Apple, Jr. And if a bunch of Apple geniuses can’t kick butt on their own at Palm, how are they going to kick butt without Steve at Apple?

WTF?

Dan, are you serious? That’s a nicely turned phrase on an interesting premise, but how in God’s name is Palm equated as Apple, Jr? A bunch of misguided former Apple employees at Palm do not an Apple Jr. make.

That’s ludicrous on its face.

Palm does not have, and has not had for many years, a single capable product that has an Apple counterpart. Not one. There are substantive differences between Palm and Apple, even with the former stealing executives and engineers from the latter. Palm is short on resources. Apple is not. Palm is short on talent. Apple is not. Palm is short on leverage (one product helping to launch another). Apple is not. In fact, everything Palm is, Apple is not (and the other way around).

Palm’s previous management completely screwed up everything as smartphones began to take off, requiring a complete reboot. That’s not Rubinstein’s fault, and you could argue that the deck was stacked against him from the beginning. But the big idea was that Palm was supposed to be able to make and sell something better than the iPhone. And it has failed to do that.

Duh.

But why? And how is the why of Palm’s disaster similar to an impending disaster at Apple when Steve Jobs leaves?

Steve Jobs is still the one calling the shots—making both big decisions and tiny ones. So far, he’s mostly made the right decisions, as far as which products to go after and which to avoid, user experience, acquisitions, strategy, features, pricing, etc. As a result, the Mac is growing, the iPhone has been huge, the iPod drove the company for years, and now the iPad could be a cool rival to netbook PCs.

Alright. I get it. Apple’s success rests completely upon Steve Jobs’ shoulders. And, when Steve Jobs leaves Apple, and someday he will, Apple immediately reverts to being like Palm—populated with bright engineers and executives who can’t design or engineer or market their way out of a paper bag.

I don’t buy it.

Steve’s successors might have the same string of luck. But given Apple’s experience with and without Steve Jobs, and the futility of companies like Palm that try to clone the Apple magic without Steve Jobs, this seems unlikely.

There’s a big-assed fly in the ointment of that analysis.

Apple tossed Steve Jobs out the door back in 1985, and the company continued to grow and prosper for half a dozen years; increased market share, revenue, and profits—well beyond what the co-founder left. For the first half dozen years after Steve Jobs returned to Apple the company was definitely not in kick-ass mode. Market share, revenue, and profit growth at Apple were, uh, to be kind, modest—definitely less than stellar.

Was that Steve Jobs’ fault?

Back in 1997 Apple bet the farm on OS X. It took many years for that bet to pay off. The iPod venture begat the iTunes Store which begat a growing halo effect on the Mac which begat the iPhone which begat the App Store—all of which combined to form huge growth in market share, revenue, and profits. Jobs’ fingerprints are all over the Apple of today, and we may worry about what will happen once dear leader is gone.

Palm is not the Apple of seasons past. And the Apple of today is not Palm. Saying that Apple is screwed without Steve Jobs because Palm is screwed without Steve Jobs is to forget history.

Quicken’s history with the Mac is long and spotted. It’s been ages since there was feature parity with the Windows version of Quicken. Quicken Essentials for Mac will continue that time-honored tradition.

Sigh.

Apple is a strange and dastardly company which, sooner rather than later, we’re going to regret pledging our allegiance to.

I’m probably like most of Apple’s customers. I have no allegiance to the company. I like their products, though I’m more of a techno voyeur. I like to watch the company’s antics.

The latest bit of no-good business is its arbitrary censoring of iPhone apps. This may be piddling, but it’s obviously part of the major control-freakishness that has always lurked below the surface in Cupertino, but which has now become broad-based corporate policy.

Except that by exercising such control Apple simply remains Apple. It’s what the company has done for many years. It’s not even news. It’s the way Apple does business. And it seems to be working rather well.

Just weeks ago there was the iPad rollout and its transparent designs on controlling the woe-begotten world of printed material.

If it was transparent then so much for Apple being a secretive company, right? Does anyone really think Apple would control print media with an iPad? What if the iPad gains a 20-percent market share of sub-$1,000 computing devices? Since when does 20-percent become control?

And need we forget, there’s the music business, fully occupied and colonized by Apple.

The iTunes Store has done well. It’s the biggest online retailer of music, TV shows, and movies. Yet, it does not dominate the market for media. If you don’t dominate how can you colonize? Wolff can turn a phrase. It would be nice if he could handle facts the same way.

Microsoft has come to seem eerily benign. Indeed, Apple becomes the poster child for a really sinister corporation. There may not be any corporation as militantly determined to have its way as Apple.

Wolf seems to be talking mind share vs. market share. Microsoft’s Windows remains on nearly 90-percent of the world’s PCs. Apple’s highly touted iPhone owns a tiny sliver of the cell phone market; a larger chunk of the smart phone segment. But control? Are there any facts and figures to back up the assertions, Michael?

Most companies can only dream of building a brand as strong as Apple’s, whereas Apple’s brand has reached a level where nothing it might do seems to hurt it. Apple has become the opposite of what it once was and somehow we don’t know it.

I’ll take that as a no.

Here’s where typical technology journalists—particularly the hit-whoring type—fall on their collective faces. Or, is it feces? That assertion would have been a good opportunity to describe in some detail what Apple was, and compare and contrast it what what Apple is. Somehow Wolff skipped over the opportunity. Why?

It’s all about sex.

After all, why would Apple purge these adult-themed apps? What sense is there to that? And, apparently, it isn’t all sexy stuff. It’s just some sexy stuff, arbitrarily. It’s not even consistent, it’s just weird, unnecessarily, and mean-minded.

Without saying so, Wolff gets to the heart of the matter. For him. Apple has purged the iPhone’s App Store of sexually suggestive apps; clearly some of which Wolff spent his lunch money to purchase. Now, he can’t get his groove on with his phone and a fist, so he’s going to blame the mercurial Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs may be the oddest fellow able to hold a full-time job in America and hardly anybody even makes fun of him. In fact, everybody’s afraid of him, not least of all because he is so strange and mercurial.

Steve Jobs and the Apple story are precisely what makes following Apple so much fun. It’s a better story line than soaps, or Lost, or politics, plus we get to play with all these cool toys and apps. And talk about Apple. But to accuse Apple of being a hard-nosed business, or to accuse them of being secretive or controlling, is to accuse the Pope of being Catholic, or to accuse the sun of being warm.

The iPhone itself is a beautiful tool, locked up tight and full of draconian protocols—with a little AT&T sado-masochistic abuse thrown in for good measure.

Great. Now let’s bash AT&T. I’m game.