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Comment by Cherian_Abraham | Hacker News Reader

When 27% of those quarterly profits is from the iPhone, the bigger question is how long can apple keep growing in this rate?

IBM has its fingers and toes in a lot of things, including SmartGrid, Healthcare IT to name a couple. It is a good bet to say that it will take more than one bad product iteration to knock them off their perch. Ripping IBM off of the enterprise market will be akin to cleaning crap off of velcro. Not easy.

Apple as it grows defying expectations has to both make sure that future iterations of its products can keep enchanting their customers as well and stay innovative (at their current click) once Jobs is no longer involved in making product decisions.

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What's mindboggling to me (and what should be the day one lecture subject in every Marketing course on the planet) is how Apple can take an increasingly commoditized market, like consumer computing, and whip people up into so much of a frenzy (in either direction) that it seems like every product release is going to start a riot.

Even when you think that selling iPads at Wal-Mart or iPhones at Radio Shack would dilute the exclusivity factor or shift the consumer attitude away from "hip, fresh, and new", it debuts another new thingie and BOOM! The frenzy starts anew.

They sold 18 Million iPhones in three months. They're selling more computers than ever (4 million now). Naysayers went from "they should just close and return all their money back to investors" to "they can't keep growing forever".

"Apple as it grows defying expectations has to both make sure that future iterations of its products can keep enchanting their customers as well and stay innovative"

Jobs perhaps won't be able to see the continued success by thinking up and touting, as if a carnival barker, their "magical" new products, but they can shift into an aggressive expansion into new spaces. Cisco is famous for doing just that, eating up companies voraciously to move into spaces like consumer networking (Linksys) and set-top entertainment (Scientific Atlanta).

If Apple can't out-innovate in the long haul, they could really shake up the consumer space with some killer acquisitions. I see them making smaller buys like TiVo to bolster their Apple TV product, then go after larger (more complicated) buys. I like them acquiring Nintendo, for example. I see them scooping up either Coinstar (for Redbox) or Netflix (or even Blockbuster, but that just has bad memories of VHS and late fees that even Apple couldn't, er... polish).

I could even see them buying a service like Kobo for eBook marketshare. Hell, they could buy Barnes and Noble for their bookstore, ebook marketplace, _and_ the low-end, low cost tablet (Nook Color). Now that would be taking a swipe at Google.

Here's where my crazy theories go full-crazy, though. I see them ridding themselves of the bloat and dependence on iTunes and buying Amazon for both the digital market, the Kindle (which will be rebranded the iBook since they already own that trademark), and the website itself becomes their "iTunes". No more plugging into a device to sync; it's all OTA over Amazon's existing cloud infrastructure. Buy books either on your device or physically. It would be the biggest coup acquisition ever IMO. Too bad it would probably never happen.

I wonder, though, how well such a strategy turns out. Lets take Cisco and Microsoft as examples. Both started with a couple of core products, and quickly saturated their market. After achieving saturation, they both tried to force their way into other markets via acquisitions and organic growth. However, their acquisitions have failed to achieve the blockbuster status of their core products, and, arguably fail to do much in the way of ensuring the corporation's survival in the absence of those core products.

Cisco started out making enterprise routers and switches. They quickly gained dominance in that space, and began expanding into other areas. However, none of their acquisitions or expansions (e.g. Linksys, GoToMeeting, etc.) have achieved the same level of profitability as the core router & switch business. If Cisco loses its core router & switch business, it will still be in trouble, with or without Linksys.

The same principle applies to Microsoft. Yeah, they've expanded into a lot of new markets. There has been success in some (e.g. game consoles) and failures in others (e.g. mobile phones). But none of their expansions have resulted in products that would save the company if the Windows and Office cease generating significant revenue.

In the eyes of many investors, this strategy has actually hurt these companies. Rather than staying focused and building absolute best of breed products in one or a few categories, Microsoft and Cisco have lost focus, and are diluted their talents into a set of mediocre products across a wide range of categories.

Given that, I think it would be better for Apple to stick to making damn good PCs, MP3 players, and cell phones, rather than branch out into a wide number of product categories and lose their reputation for excellence.

"Given that, I think it would be better for Apple to stick to making damn good PCs, MP3 players, and cell phones, rather than branch out into a wide number of product categories and lose their reputation for excellence."

Branching out into iPods (plus music), cell phones (plus apps) and tablets is what turned the company around and sent it into the stratosphere though. Prior to the launch of the iPhone and the launch of the iPad you would be hard pressed to find people who would have thought those products would have gone on to be the blockbusters that they've become.

The only problem I can see for Apple is how to continue coming up with successful products - how many cool, new consumer electronic devices could they conceivably conjure up?

EDIT: typo

While that is true, I do think that Apple runs the risk of becoming another Sony. In the 80s and early 90s, Sony was known for its great TVs and A/V equipment. Then, through the 90s and 2000s, Sony diversified into game consoles, PCs, MP3 players, movie studios and all sorts of other bits of consumer electronics and consumer content. The result was that competing priorities and diluted focus hurt Sony's dominance in its core market (TVs and A/V equipment) without contributing significantly to the bottom line. As a result, Sony has gone from being a big player in few industries to being a middling player in many industries.

The one hopeful difference that I see between Apple and Sony is that Apple is much more willing to kill off unsuccessful projects than Sony, as demonstrated by the EOL of the XServe line.

FYI - GoToMeeting was acquired by Citrix, not Cisco.

Thanks for the correction. Unfortunately, the edit window seems to have expired for my post, so I can't insert the necessary correction.

Yeah, very good points.

Another way to look at it is that IBM is firmly associated with the fundamental technology, while Apple is associated with consumer devices. Well-designed, innovative, but still consumer stuff. It is a principal difference when it comes to the perception, and this makes IBM feel and look more valuable than Apple.

I didn't realize how big the disparity in the number of employees is between IBM and Apple. 426,571 for IBM vs. 49,400 for Apple

IBM is a services company now, though, and Apple is a products company. Those two numbers aren't really, hmm, apples to apples comparable.

There is tremendous growth left in the ARM/smartphone form-factor (not necessarily touch), because it will eventually disrupt the desktop. It would seem difficult for apple to retain dominant marketshare (Android passed it already) once processors get fast enough that apple's ingenious integration isn't needed anymore, but apple will grow with it. Apple will also still have strengths of design, marketing, installed base of apps, AppStore, developers, experience in all of that, lower costs, ahead of the engineering learning curve etc. I agree that without Steve, they'll probably find it hard to pull off the next great revolution (like many companies without their firebrand founders, eg HP).

IBM doesn't need to lose for apple to grow larger than them. You're right that their diversification gives them safety, but as Buffett says of growth: put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket.

Android is only ahead if you don't count ipod touches. I think Apple has a great chance of being the or at least a major player in this market.

once processors get fast enough that apple's ingenious integration isn't needed anymore

It's hard for me to envision what this means...

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