NEWS ANALYSIS
things clearly haven’t changed that
much. CEO Tim Cook said in the firm’s
latest quarterly financial call, “...we
really don’t have a significant share
in any market”. Cook was speaking
specifically of the iPhone, which is a
minority in the smartphone market
when compared to Android, but the
same can still be said of the Mac. Yet
the company has always maintained
an outsized presence, even when it’s
in the minority.
Cook continues to see that as an
opportunity for Apple. When most
people in the market aren’t already
your customers, that means they’re still
potentially customers. And that theory
seems to be borne out by the numbers;
for years, Apple has said that around
half of those buying Macs or iPads in
a quarter are new to the product. But
even with such a big potential market,
how do you convince people who
haven’t already made the switch?ICE WATER IN HELL
Even for those who aren’t owners of
Apple devices, it’s become increasingly
difficult to escape the reach of the
Apple ecosystem. With an active
installed base of 1.65 billion devices,
there’s a good chance that at least
someone you know has an iPhone,
especially in the company’s moreestablished markets. More to the
point, with Apple’s push into services
in recent years, there are also more
and more places where the company
has gone outside of its comfort zone
and brought the Apple brand to
other platforms. For example, when it
launched Apple Music in 2015, Apple
not only did so on its own devices,
but also on Android. More recently, it
teamed up with smart TV makers, game
consoles, and competing set-top boxes
to offer Apple TV+, rightly figuring
that it needed to appeal beyond just
existing Apple customers.
Apple has long had a presence
on Windows, too; first with iTunes in
the iPod era, and later with iCloud
for Windows. This is all part of what
Steve Jobs called the “glass of ice
water in hell” strategy – showing
people what life could be like on the
other side of the fence. And Apple’s
continued to extend its reach, as recent
rumours have shown that the popular
iCloud Keychain password manager,
previously exclusive to Apple’s own
devices, may soon make the jump to
Microsoft’s platform by means of a
Chrome extension.WHERE’S THE BEEF?
Once the hook is in, Apple does what
any good company does: it competes.