KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
While all of the major companies spend huge amounts of time and money suing each other, the most noticeable stories in recent months seem to have centred on Apple's attempt to block Samsung's tablets at every turn. Why is Jobs and Co so hot for the Korean love? KitGuru gets the inside track from a contact inside a major chip supplier.
In November 1995, Bill Gates released a book called The Road Ahead. Alongside his analysis of where computing was in the 90s, he also discussed the regular dinners he would have with the CEOs from Novell, Compaq and the other multi-billion dollar organisations of the day – specifically to discuss the fact that extinction would certain and that none of them could survive long-term.
Prophetic stuff.
Discussing the book, US magazine Time said, “Gates is as fearful as he is feared, and these days he worries most about the Internet, Usenet and the World Wide Web, which threaten his software monopoly by shifting the nexus of control from stand-alone computers to the network that connects them. The Internet, by design, has no central operating system that Microsoft or anybody else can patent and license. And its libertarian culture is devoted to open—that is to say, nonproprietary—standards, none of which were set by Microsoft”.
Tim Berners-Lee's internet was born on NeXT computers from (then Apple reject) Steve Jobs. The same Jobs that delivered the App Store concept to the world. Ironically, while the web remains (largely) open, it is the closed eco-sphere of the Apple OS and App Store that looks set to rule the next decade.
With Apple stock now worth almost $400 a share and an Apple store in every mall across the globe, why is the Jobs mob so interested in Samsung?
Word reaching KitGuru is that the Gates mob has set aside a huge marketing and support war chest to work with the Samsung mob next year, on an iPad killer.
Apple knows what's coming and is defending its look and feel and experience IP as hard as it can – as early as it can.
KitGuru says: Launching an iPad killed in 2012, means an iPad 3 killer. Even with all of the resources available to Microsoft and Samsung, we're not convinced that this can be done. One thing is for sure, when you look at how Samsung has attacked the TV market – and how Microsoft has attacked the console market – neither company is shy of a price fight. No one else has managed to dent Apple's march toward global domination. Can Korean Gates do the impossible? Apple is going to litigate to the full extent of its ability in order to prevent this happening.
Comments below or in the KitGuru forums.
umm in my country of 4million people and many malls i don’t think we have a single apple store. They seem to be a US store
Veeery interesting Mr Bond…. how does this sit with Samsung phones running Android? Is there to be a Samsung/Windows 8 phone? God help them…
I say again, Samsung’s tablet war is too limited to succeed, it needs to be a war on all fronts. Apple are the masters of opening new fronts only when they’re ready to dominate – ipad being the best example of all. You need to use the strength of your company pre-emptively and with all the rumours surrounding some sort of Apple/Sony link up and an Apple move into cameras, their next logical war-zone, Samsung and everyone else should be working over-time on that.
The easiest and quickest way to compete while you develop new products, is to grow multiple market share right now by pushing tie-ins that other companies can’t match. Laptop/Tablet – Camera – Mp3 – Storage – TV – Phone link ups, bundling them together, doing discounts for Cameras bought at the same time as Tablets and vice-versa, throwing in external hard-drives, throwing in Tablets with TVs (first ensuring the tablet can work as a blue-tooth remote control and display all the OSD – of course it should). Only Sony could compete on that front and it would be a huge step forward for Samsung in their war not only with Apple, but also against Nikon, Canon and most pertinently Panasonic and Olympus.
Basically present themselves as a sleek black life-style option to counter the march of the Apple white-goods. They have the lead in TVs, cameras and storage and should use that as leverage for the rest. The tie-in with Seagate makes me dream of a new breed of mega-storage Mp3/mp4 players, or phones with a 200gb mini HD. (Although why my new Samsung laptop has Hitachi/WD hard-drives, after the Samsung/Seagate deal, god knows!)
The problem, as always, comes with software. Samsung aren’t too bad on bloatware, but I think as well as any Microsoft deals they should also be looking to do a deal with DxO or better still PhaseOne in order to get some serious Raw Conversion onto their laptops before they ship and really compete with Apple on Aperture. They could get a tie-in with DxO for pennies and even a PhaseOne deal would be far cheaper than putting Lightroom on there. And CaptureOne gives extra-kudos, it’s the real professionals choice, and even if people never use it you can still punt it as genuinely superior to Apple’s offering. Whatever they do, don’t ask Microsoft for some new piece of crap that won’t work for ten years and still be garbage.
Samsung can work with Microsoft and make a product so good that Apple sh*ts a brick? Not likely.