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Member since:
2011-08-18
We've all talked about a 0 sum game were winner takes all. Nobody ever thought it would happen within our relative life times however it would seem that the economy is spurring things on a little faster than we imagined.
While there are several companies in the personal computer business that are profitable it can definitely be said that each one of them... well all but one is seeing drastically dwindling profits as a result of the PC market place catering to the lowest common denominator... price.
That one exception of course is Apple.
The differentiation by price business methodology is a recipe for disaster. And though every PC fan boy in the 90s thru early 2000s declared Apple's decision to own or control the whole platform a bad business decision it now looks as if Apple was right and is vindicated.
All the previous big time players saw the writing on the wall with the iPod, iPhone, iPad and eventually also the Mac that more and more of them realized their lack of business savvy and tried to buy up other platforms in an effort to copy the obviously (in retrospect) superior business model.
HP was notorious for this... buying Amiga, BeOS and Palm.
When IBM got out of the PC business, I personally saw the writing on the wall while most of the people on this site and others saw it as a failing of IBM. When Compaq merged it with HP, it only furthered this way of thinking. The same people on this site and elsewhere never even considered it as an indicator of things to come.
Apple's rapid growth in every market it competed within sealed the deal in my opinion but the others had their head in the sand. Only now as HP exits the PC business are people even beginning to contemplate that this is an indicator of the 0 sum game argument playing itself out.
Interestingly enough, my prediction is that there will always be a personal computer. There will be no post PC era. I believe there will however be a consolidation of all PC manufacturers and they will merge under Microsoft's brand and will mimic Apple's business model of controlling the whole platform. The two remaining players will be Microsoft and Apple but the disparity in market share will be dramatically different by that time. I think it will be much more equal then.
We'll see.
Edited 2011-08-18 21:06 UTC