Somewhat ironic commentary considering they were just as unable to ship the CrunchPad. And what did ship (the JooJoo) got completely panned in the reviews.
Really the issue is that hardware is hard to get right and requires a lot of resources, resources that Apple has and many other companies do not.
"Really the issue is that hardware is hard to get right and requires a lot of resources, resources that Apple has and many other companies do not."
More than just that, Apple also has the considerable advantage of owning almost all of their stack. They make their own chips to power their hardware which runs their OS which uses their applications and their infrastructure. Apple has aggressively taken control of the entire top to bottom stack (eg App Store reviews, acquiring PA Semi) like nobody else has been willing and/or able to.
They don't own their whole stack, but they do control it - especially the critical stuff - to a larger extent than other verndors. They've done this by making large bets on component manufacturers: first on flash memory, now on displays or touchscreens (or both).
"The Cortex-A8 core used in the A4 is thought to use performance enhancements developed by chip designer Intrinsity (which was subsequently acquired by Apple)[10] in collaboration with Samsung.[11] The resulting core, dubbed "Hummingbird".. is also used in Samsung's S5PC110A01 SoC."
The Samsung Galaxy S has the S5PC110 processor. This processor combines a 45 nm 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8 based CPU core with a PowerVR SGX 540 GPU made by Imagination Technologies which supports OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0[21] and is capable of up to 20 million triangles per second.[3] The CPU core, code-named "Hummingbird", was co-developed by Samsung and Intrinsity.[22]
Sure, but basically every mobile processor "is just a customized version" of some ARM design. My point is that Apple goes out of their way to control the design/performance instead of taking an off the shelf TI/Qualcomm/NVIDIA etc chip
But the context of this discussion is that getting to market with hardware is hard. "[C]ontrol[ing] the design/performance" is only going to make that more difficult, not easier, than going off-the-self.
But shouldn't companies like Motorola, Samsung, Palm, et al have those resources at their disposal? They are consumer electronics companies, after all.
Palm let their original OS stagnate while pumping out iterations of their phone hardware. Moto mostly stuck with iterating hardware models. Samsung seems to have split their software and hardware people into competing groups.
There's a general lack of focus or apparent belief that their core competencies should only include one (1) of hardware or software among most consumer electronics brands, it seems. And a lot of timidity regarding innovating something new that cannibalizes your sales of some older thing.
The real shift that started with the iPhone was that the software became as important as the hardware - how they work together [1].
Motorola, Samsung, Nokia et al don't have the extensive software culture.
Palm/HP is the only one that does.
[1] Also a weakness with Android phone manufacturers - my phone has a small screen, making the icons just too small to hit accurately - Apple would never let a device like that leave the building, Samsung are quite happy to and Google are OK with having their name slapped on the back of it.
Well, I wonder how much Samsung actually cares. There are no high-tech devices that already isn't chock-a-block full of their components, and they're crazy profitable.
They are big, no doubt. But they aren't as innovative as they once were. Palm is HP now, and HP is squarely in the commodity hardware business. You can't outstyle a boutique marketing haute couture when you sell K-mart seconds.
I mean, even Nokia had to capitulate to stay competitive in the smartphone market, ceding control to a not-even-second-place Phone 7 software stack with an app store ecosystem that literally has to bribe hot developers to port over their stuff let alone have a fiercely competitive market like App Store or Android Marketplace.
Sony is almost exactly 1/10th the size of Apple (in terms of Market Cap). Don't underestimate just how much weight Apple is throwing around these days.
Sonly also doesn't fab their own processors for mobile devices like Apple now does.
> Sony is almost exactly 1/10th the size of Apple (in terms of Market Cap).
Sony is also 130% the size of Apple in terms of revenue, 180% the size of Apple in terms of assets and 340% the size of Apple in terms of employees headcount.
> Sonly also doesn't fab their own processors for mobile devices like Apple now does.
Apple does not fab their own processors (for mobile devices or otherwise), and — up to the A4 anyway — don't have that much input into them (the A4 is almost of-the-shelf, we'll have to see for the A5 but so far there's been no great works there)
> Sony is also 130% the size of Apple in terms of revenue, 180% the size of Apple in terms of assets and 340% the size of Apple in terms of employees headcount.
Which suggests that Sony makes ~39% of the revenue per employee that Apple does.
Really the issue is that hardware is hard to get right and requires a lot of resources, resources that Apple has and many other companies do not.