Monday, June 21, 2004
Competition That Will Not Be
Posted by marlof in "THE COMPETITION" @ 06:00 AM
Recently Steve Jobs at Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital again dismissed the ever returning rumour that Apple is about to release a PDA. But this time, he added some spice to his statement: apparently Apple had actually developed a new handheld device, but in the end they decided against bringing it to market.
Especially now innovating Sony is dropping out of the US market, I would personally have loved to see what Apple could do with the handheld device concept. The Apple products I personally use (iBook, iPod, Airport Express Base Station) all are very well designed both from a hardware and software point of view. Next to that the integration of hardware and software usually provides a great user interface. And when Apple comes to a market they undeniably have a few innovative ideas embedded in their projects. The price (and sometimes Rev A quality) of their products isn't always competitive, but people put up with that since they feel they get a lot in return. And if for instance you look at the current trends in notebooks (clean design, widescreen), you can see that Apple has influenced their competion in a big way.
And now, that competition will not be in the handheld device market. What do you think? Would you personally have liked to use an Apple PDA? Is the fact that Apple is not coming to the handheld market something that we should be sorry for? Or do you think the Apple touch is overrated anyhow, and should we be fine with the current players on this market?
Especially now innovating Sony is dropping out of the US market, I would personally have loved to see what Apple could do with the handheld device concept. The Apple products I personally use (iBook, iPod, Airport Express Base Station) all are very well designed both from a hardware and software point of view. Next to that the integration of hardware and software usually provides a great user interface. And when Apple comes to a market they undeniably have a few innovative ideas embedded in their projects. The price (and sometimes Rev A quality) of their products isn't always competitive, but people put up with that since they feel they get a lot in return. And if for instance you look at the current trends in notebooks (clean design, widescreen), you can see that Apple has influenced their competion in a big way.
And now, that competition will not be in the handheld device market. What do you think? Would you personally have liked to use an Apple PDA? Is the fact that Apple is not coming to the handheld market something that we should be sorry for? Or do you think the Apple touch is overrated anyhow, and should we be fine with the current players on this market?
