IBM never gained control of that market sector though. What happened is that they lost control of the technical standards they created, accidentaly launching an open platform they never intended to be open. If IBM had retained control of the PC and had as a result dominated the desktop computer industry, history would be very different.
I don't think Jobs ever really intended to win the dsktop wars in that way though. He never even tried to compete in every market segment and control every standard. I think his conception of Apple was always (since the lanuch of the Mac anyway) as a premium brand capturing the top end of the market, where the profits are. There would always be a mass market and enthusiast community in a world in which Apple was the dominant desktop brand, because Apple had no interest in competing with it. Conversely Microsoft has always ben about market share first, with an MS computer on every desk running MS software. That's not a Jobsian vision. Even when the iPhone was the only 'modern' smartphone and Android devices were years away from competing effectively with it, Apple never went for the market share play. At the time this was roundly criticised in the media as a grave strategic error, in some circles it still is, but that was to completely misunderstand Apple's strategy.
> That's not a Jobsian vision. Even when the iPhone was the only 'modern' smartphone and Android devices were years away from competing effectively with it, Apple never went for the market share play
Yet Apple achieved a large market share and was perfectly happy with it even when Jobs was on the board. I'd find it hard to believe that you don't want Market Share anyway, even if you target premium users. You don't want to be a Ferrari maker in the end with a minuscule market share. I'd rather say Apple was always trying to keep a substantial market share while having "better" products (just like P&G for example, they win on the market with more expensive products) but failed until they entered the Portable Music Players and Smartphone market.
They did, but profit has always been a higher priority for them than market share and the 'platform dominance' that goes with it. If they happen to get a large market share, or if their platform becomes dominant anyway that's a nice benefit, but it's not a strategic goal.
A good example of when Apple became a market share elader is the iPod. If you look at Apple's product strategy though, they never did anything to gain market share at the cost of profits and premium branding. The combination of devices and services via iTunes created a dominant platform. They didn't do anything to avoid that, it's not that beign dominant is itself a bad thing, it's just that it wasn't a strategic goal. They never under-cut competitors to achieve it. Yet at the height of their market dominance, when they were best placed to use their position to exert market control, instead of using that power against customers to increase lock-in, they used it to force reluctant labels to embrace DRM free content. They then used it again to coerce the labels to sign up to iTunes Match. They did this becaue these moves ease customer pain points and improve the customer experience, making their products more attractive and therefore more valuable.
Can you imagine Microsoft or IBM making moves like that? I can't. As another example, Apple has always maintained that they don't allow third party keyboards, or third party browsers to use the accelerated Webkit engine for security reasons. These explanations were widely derided as fig leaves to cover a lock-in strategy, yet as soon as Apple has implemented controls to open these restrictions securely, it did so. It turns out their stated reasons for doing that really were their actual reasons for doing it. So if you want to make your 'Apple lockin would be worse than IBM' thesis stand up, you need to explain why their actual behaviour when they're in that situation doesn't match the thesis.
Apple dropped DRM in iTunes because of bad PR. Everything Apple have done with regards to content distribution has been a balancing act between industry demands and PR.
Except for Sony, every other media player disregarded DRM. You may not have noticed this if you only had an iPod. The fact that they joined the ranks of their competitors in this regard should not be seen as a positive, it should only be seen as PR.
Wow, thanks for the link. I didn't know about that at all...
Surprising that it's from 2009. I thought that the big players had worked out the public's opinion by then, but it may be that that product was in development during the DRM battles and Sandisk had to either release it, or scrap the product.
Not true at all if you bought a device that wasn't made by the big players (the majority of early media players). They had no DRM, and provided uniform, simple USB removable media access to the media on the device.
The record labels only stepped in when your quoted companies/brands entered the fray.
I think we're talking at cross-purposes about what we mean by 'No DRM'. The devices you're talking about would only run DRM free MP3s so in that respect they 'had no DRM', but they would be incapable of running DRM'd muic e.g. copied from a Zune or iPod.
But then Zunes and iPods could also always run DRM free MP3s copied from other sources as well, so I'm not sure what you think the difference was, or what advantage you think these independent players had with respect to DRM.
> Yet at the height of their market dominance, when they were best placed to use their position to exert market control, instead of using that power against customers to increase lock-in, they used it to force reluctant labels to embrace DRM free content. They then used it again to coerce the labels to sign up to iTunes Match. They did this becaue these moves ease customer pain points and improve the customer experience, making their products more attractive and therefore more valuable.
You almost had me choke on that one. Yeah, yeah, they did everything for the best interests of the customers. Oh wait, like preventing to put your own songs if you did not use their proprietary software (iTunes) that ran like shit on Windows (Hey, even I had to use it) and was impossible to run under Linux or anything else. And let's not forget they did not embrace the non-DRM MP3 until everyone else started to do it - they were far way from leading the trend to benefit customers in providing interoperable devices. As a matter of fact, iPods were locked and you were NOT able to use the songs you licensed on iTunes with any other music player.
Yeah, what a great experience that was. Thumbs up for User Freedom! But I'm sure you will build a case to tell me that Freedom is not good, and everyone is better in an Apple jail.
The scary thing to me is that we're currently seeing a reply of a chunk of history with the worst case alternative outcome, closed silos and tremendous user lock-in, nota-bene on top of an open operating system.
I don't think Jobs ever really intended to win the dsktop wars in that way though. He never even tried to compete in every market segment and control every standard. I think his conception of Apple was always (since the lanuch of the Mac anyway) as a premium brand capturing the top end of the market, where the profits are. There would always be a mass market and enthusiast community in a world in which Apple was the dominant desktop brand, because Apple had no interest in competing with it. Conversely Microsoft has always ben about market share first, with an MS computer on every desk running MS software. That's not a Jobsian vision. Even when the iPhone was the only 'modern' smartphone and Android devices were years away from competing effectively with it, Apple never went for the market share play. At the time this was roundly criticised in the media as a grave strategic error, in some circles it still is, but that was to completely misunderstand Apple's strategy.