Mr. Ben Thompson at his best. The article is so good. Important piece to my business theory puzzle.
You’ve read that software is eating the world, but this goes deeper.
I suspect that nearly every industry will belatedly discover it has a critical function that can be digitized and commodified, precipitating this shift. The profound changes caused by the Internet are only just beginning; aggregation theory is the means.
Ben Thompson writes about Google and what could eclipse it:
I think Google is quite safe when it comes to search, and that they will be a very profitable company for the foreseeable future. I just suspect we will all think differently about that dominance when it’s a small percentage of total digital advertising, just as we thought differently about IBM’s dominance of mainframes in the age of the PC, or Microsoft’s dominance of PCs in the age of the smartphone.
Great commentary by Ben Thompson on the Apple Watch introduction:
The Apple Watch section began with the iconic “One more thing…” at 55:44,1 and these were the extent of Tim Cook’s words before we got our first glimpse of the Apple Watch:We love to make great products that really enrich people’s lives. We love to integrate hardware, software, and services seamlessly. We love to make technology more personal and allow our users to do things that they could have never imagined. We’ve been working incredibly hard for a long time on an entirely new product. And we believe this product will redefine what people expect from its category. I am so excited and I am so proud to share it with you this morning. It is the next chapter in Apple’s story. And here it is.
Then came the introductory video, and we never got an explanation of why the Apple Watch existed, or what need it is supposed to fill. What is the market? Why does Apple believe it can succeed there? What makes the Apple Watch unique?
For even more Ben’s insight listen to this episode of his podcast.
Ben Thompson says it:
Utimately, though, Samsung’s fundamental problem is that they have no software-based differentiation, which means in the long run all they can do is compete on price. Perhaps they should ask HP or Dell how that goes.In fact, it turns out that smartphones really are just like PCs: it’s the hardware maker with its own operating system that is dominating profits, while everyone else eats themselves alive to the benefit of their software master.
Ben Thompson excells again:
But in reality – and this touches on many of the themes of this blog – an overt focus on product similarities misses many crucial factors that, in my opinion, make iPhones and iPads very different. In fact, I believe the business we should be looking at to understand where Apple might take the iPad is the iPod, not the iPhone.
If you are interested in business thinking at all, read it.
I would love for Horace and Ben to do a business podcast together.