Opinion The battle for your palm

Apple,which started out as a desktop computer company,has found its groove as a portable gadget company ever since it first launched the iPod in 2001. Apple makes more than half its money from iPods and iPhones,with computers and notebooks contributing a little more than a quarter. Sales of peripherals,software,and media from its online stores make up the rest. These figures are for Apple’s sales between January and March,and do not include the iPad,Apple’s new product which occupies a niche between the very portable iPod touch and a notebook computer. The total sales are huge,too — at the beginning of 2010,Apple had so much cash on hand that it could have taken over 15 per cent of Greece’s then sovereign debt.

Whether by luck or by design,Apple entered the gadget business at the right time. The company benefited from and exploited several parallel trends — the rapid spread of WiFi and 3G cellular networks,cheap and energy-efficient microprocessors,and the crashing prices of flash memory and other hardware. All these put together made it possible to create a relatively cheap device that could connect to the Internet or make phone calls anywhere,play all kinds of media,take pictures and video,and act as a high-end organiser. This allowed phones and handheld devices to become more powerful and computers to become smaller.

At one end of the spectrum,Nokia,Research in Motion,and Palm tried to make phones and handheld internet devices closer to full-fledged computers with multimedia,e-mail,and organiser functionality. At the other end,Asus created the netbook category — tiny laptop computers with very frugal processors and amazing battery life. Since then,most computer manufacturers have launched their own netbook models.

Apple’s strategy of focusing on small handheld devices with network connectivity is not particularly unique. It differentiated itself from other companies by creating an operating system and user interface specifically for this class of device. The iPhone OS,now renamed iOS,amazed consumers with its touch-based controls. With a consumer base that large,Apple was easily able to convince software developers to create applications for its devices. The counterculture proverb “Cuius testiculos habes,habeas cardia et cerebellum” says that if you have people’s attention,you automatically have their hearts and minds. Apple first won consumers’ hearts,and then used this to get a firm grip on software developers and the user experience.

Flipping the proverb around has garnered Apple comparisons to Soviet Russia and other unsavoury dictatorships. Apple allows software developers to sell applications for the iOS only through its own online store. Not only does Apple collect a margin on every application sold,it acts as a gatekeeper on what can be sold. It has banned applications not only for pornography or risqué content,but also for satire or for giving users the option to multitask. Apple’s vision of the future is a jeejah in every hand,but a jeejah which only does what Apple wants it to do.

This vision is not going unchallenged. Apple’s on-and-off partner Google has come up with two alternative operating systems to Apple’s: the Android for mobiles and handheld devices,and Chrome OS for tablets and netbooks that will target the iPad. Android and Chrome OS are both open source and available to all manufacturers. Any device manufacturer can use Android or Chrome,and customise it to whatever it feels users will enjoy or will make it money. Android phones and tablets are being manufactured by Motorola,HTC,Sony Ericsson,Acer,and Indian startup Notion Ink. The first tablet running on Chrome is expected to be launched later this year. Other manufacturers are also attempting to develop more open competitors — Nokia purchased the Symbian operating system and made it an open source project,and has also flirted with the Linux-based Maemo operating system in its new top-end N900 phone.

Apple has decided that the best defence is a good offence,and has targeted Google in its main line of business by giving software developers the ability to insert advertising into their applications. It has also made symbolic moves such as adding rival search engine Bing to the search option in the iPhone. However,it is now justifiably worried — Android phones outsold iPhones in May,and the latest version of Android is far ahead of the iOS. And with many manufacturers building Chrome tablets,the iPad may not be able to sustain its initial surge in sales.

Apple likes to brag that its products change everything. In the past couple of years,it has found that its competitors can also create brilliantly designed products that are every bit as disruptive. The high-resolution screen apart,most of the features in the new iPhone are already offered by rival manufacturers and developers. Apple will retain its base of loyal

customers,but it will find that everything will not necessarily change in the way that the company imagines.

The writer is a former banker,tech enthusiast and freelance writer