Apple is a gibbon; everyone else are sloths

by cliff1066™

Talking about monkey bars from my last post got me thinking about gibbons and their mode of travel – brachiation. By swinging and properly timing their movements, they can accomplish really exceptional progress, apparently effortlessly. They adapt to what is needed to get them where they need to go.

Now look at another arboreal mammal, one that is just the opposite of the gibbon – the sloth.

Notice how it does not let go with one paw until the other has a firm grasp. It  is slow and careful because it doe not have the ability to adapt quickly to changing circumstances. The gibbon can change immediately if the branch is not capable of holding it. Not so for the sloth. It must be certain of each of its moves, before it can even make them.

Most large 20th Century corporations act like sloths. It is just too hard to change direction. They  will not let go of one product until they know for sure that the next will be successful. They can not use their momentum – timing the transition to take the best benefit of their energy – to make rapid adaptive change.

But now we live in an environment where being able to rapidly change directions is a strong adaptive response. This change happens so rapidly that corporations will simply lose if they wait for things to be certain. Their slothlike organizational skills simply do not allow them to take real advantage of 21st Century processes.

Apple, on the other hand, does. It has created an organization that can not only come up with wildly popular and amazing products but can also make sure it can produce them and sell them worldide, in quantities that are simply mind-boggling to people from 20th Century companies.

A sloth can only tolerate success. One misstep at it can fall to the forest floor. Even to defecate requires a tremendous risk. The gibbon can take much greater risks because its agility and adaptibility permit it to recover from mistakes.

Which one will have more success in a rapidly changing environment?

I’m betting on the gibbon.

Most important what-if question regarding Apple

by Jessica.Tam

When exceptional growth is not an exception
[Via asymco]

Apple’s last quarter’s sales growth was an impressive 83%. It was not as high as the 92% earnings rise because there was a higher mix of iPhones this quarter than in the past. The iPhone is the most profitable product in Apple’s portfolio so it impacts the gross margin significantly.

The iPhone is, in fact, a huge part of Apple’s business. In units it reached 5% global share and 14% US share. I’ll go over the overall industry data as soon as all the major reports are in, but already it has been estimated that Apple is the largest phone vendor by profit and sales.

In the following chart, you can see just how important the iPhone has become. Together with the iPad and iPod touch, iOS-powered devices make up about 65% of sales. That’s almost three times the value of OS X based products which make up 23% of sales. That also leaves just 12% of sales not directly affected by these two juggernaut platforms (though music and peripherals are clearly indirectly affected by Apple’s own platform products.)

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Quoting Asymco:

What if blockbusters are really something that can be built with repeatable consistency. What would that be worth?

What if Apple can keep doing this?

Apple has not only presented one disruptive idea – they have continued to introduce ones about every 3-4 years. The iMac changed the way PCs looked and worked. The iPod created an MP3 player for everyone, the iPhone changed the smartphone industry and the iPad created a novel new device.

These have all driven sales so greatly that year over year sales are almost up 100%. Can you name any other 40 tear old company with over 46,000 employees that has done this even once in a 4 year period, much lest 4 times?

In fact, as the data show in his figures, Apple has actually done something few companies have been able to do – it will sacrifice one extremely profitable, disruptive product to open way for another one. The share of total sales held by iPods 4 years ago has almost all been taken by iOS devices. It has seen a shift in the relative importance of its products from computers to iPods to iPhones, each shift doubling sales but with a focus on leveraging each bit rather than destroying them.

But, in the nice wat things work today, they do not have to destroy the village in order to save it. They still sell iPods and computers. In fact, their sales of only OS X devices has increased at a much faster rate than any other computer maker. They disrupted the netbook-laptop market with the iPad and Macbook Air.

Many are noticing that Microsoft’s main problem is not that it does not have great research. It is that is simply can not move away from Windows and Office. It cannot recreate itself to move into new areas. It suffers from the Innovator’s dilemma – moving into a totally new area requires it to let go of a perfectly profitable product.

Most companies hold on to a money-making product until it completely fails in the market place. By that time, they have generally ‘wasted’ all the profits – CEO salaries, etc. – and have nothing to bootstrap themselves into the next step. In fact, they often only start looking when it is already too late.

Apple is a 21st Century Company – one based on a degree of resilience and adaptability that will serve as a model for this century. It takes the profits it is making to leverage up to the next step WHILE the product is still extremely profitable.

Think of monkey bars. If you swing from one to the next, letting go with one hand and then grasping a new bar at just the right time, you can move through them very quickly with little extra energy.  If you wait until you start swinging backwards, it is really hard to get moving again. If you just hang there, moving one arm forward and then the other one forward, holding on bar by bar, you will often become too tired to make it across.

Adding ads to an app – storming the Bastille time

by kevindooley

Action – push ads to everyone, not just those actively using the app

Airpush — Push Notification Ads for Android
[Via Daring Fireball]

Sounds like hell on earth.

Update: Dan Wineman:

Airpush sounds like a really good way to turn “inactive users” into active uninstallers.

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Reaction – torches and pitchforks

How Do Users React When a Developer Adds Airpush Ads to an App?
[Via Daring Fireball]

Not kindly.

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Making money based on ads simply does not seem like a viable approach. The amounts are tiny, the revenue stream is out of your control as Google controls the price of ads and the app can go from 5 stars to 1 star in a heartbeat if things go wrong.

A thing to remember in an App Economy is that feedback is immediate – both positive and negative.