EEveryone wants to be like Apple. The world’s largest publicly traded company, with a flagship product that prints money, a cultural footprint that has reached world-historical significance, and the Ford of the 21st century.
At a surface level, it’s clear which companies get hammered in this comparison. If you send out a well-crafted, smartly designed home appliance in a nice box, someone somewhere will compare you to the Cupertino giant.
Digging a little deeper allows for more meaningful comparisons. Apple isn’t just defined by its style, it’s also defined by its focus. A small number of computers, phones, and tablets in a small number of configurations account for most of the revenue.
That focus has allowed the company to develop a reputation for quality. Of course, it also contributed to its formidable media strategy, making every product launch an industry event in a way that few have been able to imitate before. This is what I was thinking nearly a decade ago when I referred to gaming giant Blizzard, creator of World of Warcraft and Diablo, as “his Apple of gaming.” (Now owned by Microsoft and plagued by allegations of misconduct, Blizzard’s star has since fallen.)
But there’s something else that makes Apple what it is today, and it’s difficult for startups to imitate. The Apple they see is just the latest evolution of a company that was an industry giant before the latest generation of founders were born. The Apple II, Mac, and iMac all shaped computing for 25 years before the iPod turned Apple into a consumer electronics company. And the iPod gave Apple another decade of growth and sophistication, until the iPhone came along and created the behemoth it is today.
Now let’s talk about Nvidia.
$1 trillion is not cool
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Source: www.theguardian.com
