MobileME is "Exchange for the rest of us", says the polonecked messiah of the Apple cult during the extravaganza at which he announced the new, cheaper, 3G iPhone. He was talking about the company's revamped data synchronisation website, but the reference to Microsoft is not accidental. Apple is the new Microsoft, but sexier.
The company's lead singer, Steve Jobs, is proving that you can get geek crowds screaming and fainting about old technology (remember the first 3G phones in 2003?), a website upgrade (remember .Mac?) and something named "ME" (remember Windows ME?), as long as it's got a slick look and must-have brand name.
"He's really pulled a rabbit out of the hat," gushed one unapologetic Apple fanboi, an avid follower of the video streaming, twittering, text messages, IM chatter and live blogging that attends every occasion on which Jobs descends from the mountain.
Every year, Apple's followers party like it's 1999. Jobs' annual product announcements are reminiscent of the coke-fuelled hype days of the Windows 95 launch. Fans hang on every word their high priest utters. Like poseurs in Levi jeans, driven to defend their brand slavery by saying that the exorbitant price really does buy better bum-huggers, Apple acolytes defend the greatness of their hero and the superiority of their brand-name gadgets like true believers. Not even the twee graphics - have you seen the MobileME logo?! - can put them off.
The company is today worth about the same as Google, and is nearing two thirds the size of the 800-pound gorilla from Redmond. This despite sporting orders of magnitude fewer customers than either. While Microsoft's share has been stagnant for nigh on a decade, and Google's price has merely doubled in the last three years, Apple has increased shareholder wealth more than seven-fold during that time.
The Apple product range is the stuff of marketing dreams. No rival has even managed to copy, let alone better, the beautiful packaging and slick user interfaces. Apple's proprietary lock-in strategies rival the best efforts Microsoft ever foisted on its customers.
iPhones come tied to long-term contracts with hand-picked telecommunications operators - Vodacom, in our case - and famously become "bricked" if a user is careless at breaking those shackles.
Authorised Apple distributors like the Core Group in South Africa overtly collude with their vendor to maintain regional monopolies, and once established, jealously protect them by railing against "grey" importers.
Ivo Vegter is a freelance journalist and columnist.
Authorised Apple distributors like the Core Group in South Africa overtly collude with their vendor to maintain regional monopolies, and once established, jealously protect them by railing against "grey" importers. Instead of offering more competitive pricing and service, a recent advertisement by the Core Group names a dozen non-authorised competitors, and goes as far as accusing them of being able to undercut the high pricing of authorised dealers only by evading import duty. One wonders why it doesn't just report these companies to the police. Could it be because there is no such thing as import duty on computer equipment and cellular handsets? With such shameless slander, in the finest tradition of monopolists, Core defends its profit margins and inefficient sourcing.
Some new features to Apple products threaten to destroy entire markets - another technique Microsoft perfected. The GPS navigation industry must be terrified about the possibility of widespread market acceptance of the new iPhone, since it includes a GPS receiver. This not only makes standalone devices from the likes of Garmin and TomTom look incredibly expensive, but makes them obsolete. Both will no doubt supply their navigation software for the iPhone, but becoming mere software vendors will severely compromise the revenue potential of such companies and surrenders pricing power to Apple.
Like both Google and Microsoft, Apple wants to become an operating platform, and is offering a powerful and easy-to-use development environment for iPhone applications. Though the platform is open to approved free applications, commercial software vendors aren't so lucky. Apple maintains tight control over applications through an extension of its iTunes Store, and it uses this monopoly control to extort a whopping 30% of the sale price from its pet software vendors.
You have to hand it to Steve Jobs. Having lost out during the dot com boom, Apple is out-Microsofting Microsoft and out-Linuxing Linux. It is profiting handsomely in the process. Far from complaining about lock-in, profiteering, and neglectful service, fans lap it up and beg for more. Shareholders, not customers, should be worshipping at the feet of the Apple cult leader.
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Ivo Vegter is a freelance journalist and columnist who blogs at http://ivo.co.za/. Much to his dismay, he owns no Apple shares.
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