Every empire crumbles
Artykuł pochodzi z pisma "Guardian"
Apple is losing its hip and unpredictable edge as it risks being left behind by the very technology it helped to proliferate, says Victor Keegan
Wednesday September 13, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
It looks as though Steve Jobs, boss of Apple, might need a charisma download after what many people thought was a lacklustre performance - by his own high standards - at the company's much hyped developers' jamboree in San Francisco yesterday.
Actually, since he had hardly anything new to say, he didn't make a bad fist off it. What other company announcing a series off minor upgrades to an existing product (the iPod), a film download service with an initial library of only 75 films, plus a new home entertainment product for next year, could have attracted such headlines around the world?
Make no mistake, these are going to be difficult times for Apple. Jobs's resuscitation of the company after it nearly collapsed, is one of the great corporate turnarounds of US business history. But gratitude also belongs to history. From now on, Apple faces stiff competition on all fronts.
The iPod is still a wonderful product and will continue to have a big army of devotees but it has largely saturated the market of people who need 5,000 songs in the palm of their hands. It simply can't maintain the phenomenal growth of recent years (indeed sales have dropped for two successive quarters). Statistics that still give Apple well over 75% of the music downloads market don't include mobile phones which now embrace increasingly big and sophisticated music players. The mobile phone is now the most popular music player with a far wider base than the iPod, as people opt for one, rather than two, devices.
Apple is hoping that downloaded films will take over from music as a big revenue driver. They might but if all that Mr Jobs can rustle up to start off with is less than a hundred films all related to Disney, of which he is the biggest single shareholder, then there is still a lot to play for in what is becoming an increasingly crowded market place. You would think that an iPod-sized device would be much more suited to watching short videos from web sites such as YouTube, rather than full-length feature films, even though the resolution is, as Apple rightly claims, near DVD standard. We shall see.
Finally, Apple announced a forthcoming device called iTV, available next year, that among other things, will be able to transmit video from a computer to a living room television screen. Leaving aside the question of why we need an extra intermediary to get films to our television sets, the mere fact that he announced it at all, was a sign of weakness. It was done to prevent people buying a rival device from Microsoft. Or whoever.
This is an inversion of the normal paradigm whereby Microsoft announces unfinished products, months in advance, while Apple maintains complete secrecy until it is ready to ship. Could it be that this was introduced because otherwise the new products would have looked very threadbare indeed?
Meanwhile, Apple is hoping that its user friendly iTunes infrastructure will enable it to be a natural host for the video revolution. It may. No one should ever write off Apple's amazing ability to reinvent itself. But this time it is leading from the rear. Shareholders may have to console themselves with the fact that Apple is now a much more balanced company than it used to be, firing on a number of cylinders including computers, music and video and is no longer a one-product company. But its high-flying days may be taking a vacation.
The only people who will definitely clean up are the lawyers. Apple's decision to call its new device iTV may just possibly produce a thundering legal letter from a certain television company in the UK.
console- pocieszać
high-flying- bardzo ambitny; bardzo zdolny
hip- supermodny, na czasie
hyped- przereklamowany, rozreklamowany
intermediary- pośrednik
jamboree- zlot; huczna zabawa
lacklustre- przeciętny, bezbarwny
legal- prawny
maintain- utrzymywać
make a bad fist off- zrobić coś źle
paradigm- paradygmat
proliferate- rozpowszechniać się, rozprzestrzeniać
resuscitation- reanimacja; wskrzeszenie
revenuedochód, źródło dochodu
rustle up- skrzyknąć naprędce; pozbierać
saturated- nasycony
threadbare- wyświechtany, pospolity
thundering- grzmiący
turnaround
whereby
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