“It’s been a rough few weeks for the wireless world, first with a warning from Nokia, then Palm’s dismal news, and now a profit, revenue and margin shortfall coming from BlackBerry maker Research in Motion,” Jim Goldman writes for CNBC.
MacDailyNews Take: Bloodbath in progress.
Goldman continues, “So what might this mean for Apple and its iPhone? Consider that RIM took pains in its release this morning to spotlight macro-economic issues, including an unfavorable currency exchange rate, a global economic slowdown, softer than expected sales, margin issues, supply and component shortages and a bunch of other stuff. Not spotlighted, however, are the ongoing execution issues plaguing RIM as it tries to get its new products on store shelves, but just hasn’t been able to. The Bold was late. The Storm was late. And despite the company downplaying slight delays here and there, in an economic climate like this one, companies simply cannot afford execution snafus. And they’re riddling RIM.”
“That just doesn’t seem to be the case at Apple,” Goldman writes. “Sure the company is at risk from the same economic headwinds, but the more its competition missteps, the more opportunity a nimble company like Apple has to gain market share. That’s a big problem for RIM and any other company trying to stem the iPhone juggernaut. The fact is, Apple has been able to capitalize on competitor problems, most notably RIM.”
Goldman writes, “In this what-have-you-done-for-me-lately kind of world, iPhone’s technology trumps the Blackberry; and thanks to Apple’s meticulous attention to execution, iPhone’s been thumping Blackberry in the marketplace.”
Full article – recommended – here.
Chumbawamba??
What the article fails to mention is that Apple rarely preannounces products. It had to with the iPhone because of FCC approval, but in general we don’t know what execution stumbles Apple has because they don’t announce products long before they ship them like most companies. Most often, they announce something new and update the online store at the same time. There are often delays in certain models but in general they work out all their issues before they lift the veil so that something is ready to go right away.
Companies try to preannounce to steal some thunder from their competitors but then they have to come through for it to work. Apple gets ahead of its competition and then drops a shipping product on their lap – doesn’t give competitors much time to catch up.
Paul
@ NC MacMan:
RIM and Palm are getting knocked down, but there ain’t no getting up again.
It has occurred to me on several occasions that Apple has either incredible good luck or some very savvy advisors, back when the iPhone was first introduced who would have predicted the current crisis. So they got the iphone on the tracks and generating some traction when the economy was still ‘healthy’ imagine trying to introduce the iPhone one year later or even now. Then there’s that cash pile, just the thing all those failing companies are crying out for. Did Apple see the bear market coming and take a long bet? I know there are people back in 2001 who predicted we were in a major cyclical downturn (2003-2007 being the bear rally)
We need a bigger cemetery.
Too many carcasses are piling up thanks to Apple.
Goldman has his nose so far up Jobs’s ass you can see it every time Jobs smiles
Oh No:
Word Finesse Exemplar!
@Robbo
I knew it! Steve Jobs has one of the missing palantiri.
http://www.tuckborough.net/palantir.html
@ oh no
You are a moron. Goldman is a smart man, and a smarter business journalist. I swear, could there be more people jealous of one person. Jobs is obviously great business person, you don’t keep your job this long or bank 25 billion dollars without knowing a thing or fifty.
Quit being mad that you yourself won’t even be known by your grandkids let alone for generations to come.
Paul F.: I’m convinced that Apple learned this the hard way with the Newton.
Nevermore, nevermore!
What Apple does now is smart on many more levels. It even creates buzz.
Paul’s got right.
Ah yes, it’s such a great time to be be an Apple fan, eh? And there’s still sooo many black eyes yet to be dished out… so many lunches yet to be eaten.
First off, good comments by Paul & the Guapo
“The fact is, Apple has been able to capitalize on competitor problems, most notably RIM.”
Yes and no. To use a football analogy, the other guys aren’t just dropping the ball, Apple’s causin’ fumbles. As we all know, the iPhone put so much pressure on the entire phone industry, they’re scrambling and struggling just to catch up.
Dey ain’t gonna. Raise a glass and toast the –bath.
Does this mean RIM will be asking for a federal bailout? So much for capitalism these days.
Yes, what did happen to Capitalism?
I thought all those tough business guys would simply tough it out, but no, they went bleating like the Socialist Liberal Gestapo they despise and begged for money.
Makes you want to become a Lefty Liberal Loony Lesbian worker in a Co-op just so you could laugh at them.
Well almost.
@Roy
What??? Don’t give the Canadian’s any ideas.
Are we that naive enough to consider that the iPhone are the king of smartphones “market” wise?!
@Paul F
I don’t think that pre-announcing or not is much of an issue. It’s simply a choice for the respective companies. It’s a matter of company style.
Some companies prefer to define a road map, showing where they are heading in the near future, others choose to unveil surprises and capitalise on the excitement generated by doing so. There are obvious advantages and disadvantages for both approaches.
The important thing is what they deliver. Apple may indeed encounter issues behind the scenes which we don’t know about, but that’s also going to happen with pre-announced products too. All that matters is the product which appears on the shelves.
There is something of a season to Apple’s products. There are the two major shows in January and June, iPods get refreshed in time for Christmas and Macs get incremental upgrades on a rolling basis. Apple still has to hit those expected release dates.
If they encountered problems with a new iPod model, even though no release date had been announced and no promises to update had been made, it could not be an option to delay it’s introduction for a couple of months. Apple still has to deliver a fully functioning product at a specific time and to deliver them in vast quantities in time for the holiday season. In some ways Apple’s challenges are even greater because the expectations are so much higher for Apple, the customer base has come to expect superb quality.
The fact that Apple has been able to successfully introduce so many sophisticated and innovative products in recent years is an immense achievement. I can’t think of any other company that can boast of a comparable track record.
Even more impressive is the fact that when they announce a new venture, there is never any shortage of ‘experts’ to explain why it won’t work. Look at initial comments made about the iMac, iPod, Final Cut, Safari, iTMS, Apple stores and of course the iPhone. All of them were written off as bad ideas by people who reckoned that they knew what they were talking about.
RIM has always been this bad. It was just never noticed because their only competition was Palm.
@AlanAudio
I think not.
Apple is celebrated because they bring great products to market, when they are ready. Read Goldman’s piece carefully. He isn’t saying storm is good or bad, only a misstep by RIM because it was late to market, must have had “Problems” with the technology. Negativity around a product / company is tough. You are correct saying that Apple has to hit preestablished marks, but, the key is Apple is in control of what it delivers on those marks, and if something isn’t ready, they don’t go forward with that feature, but do go forward with others. It’s a controlled market and controlling market expectations that frankly, nobody else can do like Apple. Good buzz vs negative buzz, it has a huge impact in the market.
Just like foreign cars, most people think they are smart for buying them because the buzz is they are better products. Frankly, the foreign and domestic brands aren’t much different, statistically irrelevant, when looking at the quality measures. Yet those Detroit boys can’t get over the negative buzz.
Reality is, 70% of people are sheep. They pick up the buzz and follow it. Apple understands this very very well. With their technology compared to Microsoft and getting less than 10% of the market?,oh yes, I think Apple gets it.
What the hell are you talking about?
@AlanAudio, I agree to an extent but by keeping things under wraps, Apple can have a “plan B”, which if chosen for low risk, will hide the failures and missed deadlines. A company of Apple’s size can have more than one pipeline.
So plan A might have been to release the new ipod touch, and plan B might be to release the ipod nano in 17 new colours and a new form factor. Obviously plan A has much more risk associated with it (a new form factor has far fewer challenges than a new UI, HID, CPU, OS, etc); but if Apple can’t deliver, plan B still looks like it was the intent all along.
Secrecy gives apple a lot more flexibility than companies who release road maps.
@chaz
Quality aside, what is killing the American Auto Industry is the unions. They hamper true competitive spirit because the other automakers, particularly the asians, don’t have do deal with these unions that are killing the very thing they were supposed to protect. Jobs and workers.
RIM was really dumb to invite head to head comparison between iPhone and Blackberry by making an iPhone-a-like. Whereas before it was hard to compare the two companies’ product lines… now it can easily be seen that RIMM does not have the technology edge of Apple and they’ve released a loser.
It’s not necessarily unions per se, but the number of retired workers on pension that are being carried along by active workers. That might be related by union contracts, but it’s not necessarily automatic that a unionized workforce would have this happen.
@Mac-nugget
It’s the easy thing to do, blame labor… a common excuse to cover up for the fossilized thinking of management. The big three auto companies here have taken the easy way out by making $20,000 vehicles and selling them for $40,000. Big trucks, SUVs, anything that can make huge profits per vehicle without much development costs, and skirting the regs on safety and CAFE standards. Management really didn’t want to make small cars. It’s something they could have easily done, and they could have made good ones. Ford in Europe is the top-selling brand. It’s quality is great, driveability and fuel-efficiency are great, styling is on a high level. Do we see these cars here? Why not? Marketing… that’s why. We have been sold on size, power, etc. Small cars made in the US are an afterthought by the big three.
So the Japanese put plants in the deep south, pay lesser wages… yet Americans still pay more, willingly for these cars in the showroom. Honda Civic vs. Focus – which sells for more? Why? That’s the problem, not the labor. American brands have created this perception as the “discount” brands. Rebates, high discounts or they don’t sell. Regardless of actual quality. That previously mentioned Focus even has to be made mostly in Mexico, with some versions made in the US, but it’s quality is really on a par with the Japanese brands, yet it can’t overcome the perception that it isn’t worth as much. It’s got nothing to do with the labor. It’s management’s lack of vision. Wrong products at the wrong time, and they got caught with their pants down when fuel doubled in a few months and buyers abandoned their trucks in the dealers’ parking lots and switched to smaller, better built, more fuel-efficient cars/crossovers, etc… and found few choices from the big three to pick from that were truly competitive. If Ford sold the same cars here it sells in Europe, they wouldn’t be losing money at all. Think about it.