Oh yes, I said it, the geeks don't matter. Or maybe I should be more nuanced: As a consumer group, the geeks don't matter as much as they used to.
After the latest round of announcements from Apple about the iPhone, All over the internet, on blogs, FaceBook, Twitter and wherever you choose to point your browser, you'll find a whole lot of angry geeks. That is, if you are yourself a geek. Otherwise, you're probably not reading those articles.
People are angry that Apple is further building their closed system. That they are removing user's freedom to choose. That they are forcing developers to write Apple specific code by blocking cross-compilers and all that. They vent online making all sorts of arguments about how they won't use Apple products and how they have lost their trust in apple that has finally become as bad as Microsoft.
Vent and rant all you want. Rest assured however that it doesn't matter. It will not change Apple's decisions. You, me, the geeks, are not the main customer group for Apple. See, we never were. This is perfectly consistent with Apple's past behavior and strategy.
And geeks all over should be ready to suffer even more and get angrier. Not only are geeks not the main customer group for Apple. But they are bound to loose their status as the main customer group of most other technology companies as well. The biggest accomplishment of Apple over the past few years, culminating with this week's announcement, is to demonstrate that if you don't aim your technology product to a technologically savvy audience, you end-up making bucketloads of money.
This means that other technology companies will also realize that they can stop caring about the requests for openness from the technology elite. They can safely ignore this because it is much more lucrative to sell to the normals than it is to sell to the geeks.
Some will argue that this is not the best for the consumer. But then again, companies rarely do things because they are best for the consumer. They do things because they are best for themselves. (tobacco, agro-industry, oil companies, etc...) Why would a company like Apple (or Microsoft, or Google or Amazon) voluntarily limit the amount of revenue they can extract from their customers just to preserve their rights to choose the content that they consume or the way they consume it.
Consumers will continue to purchase proprietary devices with arbitrary limitations because they are not interested in how it works or why it works in a particular way. They just want to get something that satisfies their needs, that works and that they can afford.
I guess us geeks should get used to this. The era of large technology companies run by geeks building products for geeks is over.
Hey... we had a good run, it was fun while it lasted.
8 comments:
Francis,
I kept thinking about this for quiet a while this morning and I kinda disagree. Apple's business model is based on the margins, they are not and can not get a bigger market share. iPhone in 2009 generated 1.6B$ with 2.5% market while Nokia generated 1.1B$ with 35% market share. The reason they got to this point was how cool their products are but at the same time, the app store was a selling and adoption factor for a lot of buyers. This being said, closing their products for geeks will raise up the prices of the apps because the developers will only create the app for iPhone and not any other platform. This works pretty well for Apple because again they are not interested in bigger market share, they are interested in the profit. On the other hand, platform independence has always been the key to market share. So I think there is always place for geeks just not on the fancy side of things :)
Sherif: I'm happy you're not in agreement. Frankly I was expecting some people to disagree with me a little more.
One thing to note here is that Platform independence is the secret for market penetration for application builders, not platform builders.
Application developers cannot always afford to hit all the platforms. If you force application developers to choose a platform, they will choose the platform that has the momentum. And for now, that platform is the Apple platform.
While what you wrote makes sense, it does not explain why geek have adopted quite widely the mac platform nonetheless (I like to place that word, nonetheless).
This is a paradox to me. I went to a many geek conferences and a high percentage of geeks have macbooks and talk on their iPhone.
The company I work for introduced macs gradually and just made the decision to go 100% mac because interoperability with other platforms is not great (Calendars in particular). And believe me, this company is totally geek (at least as much as yours, if yours still is).
But paradoxes happens to be a concept I enjoy watching.
Indeed, a lot of geeks use Apple products. I think that fashion plays into this a little. Except maybe for the iPhone. Until the recent Android phones, there was nothing that could compete. I used to have a Blackberry and when I was offered a choice, I gladly let it go and changed it with an iPhone. And even with the recent Android phones, the reaction from people that have tried it is mixed. Some like them, some don't.
As far as the macbooks, that is hard to say. They are not more reliable than Dell laptops (for example). They are more expensive (per feature/power). But we are seeing more and more of them. More on TV and in films. They are good looking solid feeling machines.
I must say that since they switched to the Intel platform, I have seen my share of macbooks running Linux and Windows.
And don't forget that Mac OS X is a Unix variant. That is the ultimate geek really.
@Anonymous Mac products in my opinion aim towards the following:
- The user, average user...average consumer
- Stylish, fancy. My wife summed it up one time: "I feel smart when I am using my Mac"
- The high end of stuff, the BMW of gadgets. When you own one you belong to the "group"
Geeks ARE users first and geeks second.
You can be a geek without leaving your browser window nowadays.
Old-schoolers are still building their own systems and posting on Slashdot about coding everything in assembler, but they're a smaller percentage of the group. Diminishing performance returns, high level languages, and (spit) The Cloud make hardware an afterthought for a lot of geeks.
You are correct, though: I -- the geek -- am not Apple's main customer. It's their business to redefine geek, and sell it to that demographic.
I just stumbled accross this post while trying to find something to make a point with a colleague. I agree with your understanding of Apple's target (non-technical geeks) market and sales strategy(profits).
@Francis Your statement about the quality of Macs being no better than Dells is not borne out by research. Computer Reports and user surveys have shown that Macs are more reliable to Dells or HPs etc. OS X is not a UNIX variant. It is UNIX: http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/
@Khurt I stand corrected on the level of indirection to the Unix name.
As far as reliability, you are right technically but the spirit of what I said is that they are not necessarily better than non-Apple notebooks. I pulled Dell out of the pack because it was a common name.
Reliability surveys place them in the same ballpark as Dell.
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