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Apple Named Most Valuable Billion Dollar Brand in America
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Agree. But the point of this thread - AT&T and Verizon are on the list of top 10 most valuable brands. AT&T wouldn't have made that list without Apple and the iPhone. Verizon may not have as well. Although I am probably thinking too cell-phone focused. Both of those companies have a pretty big presence in other technologies like AT&T U-Verse and home phone services and Verizon doing similar things in select markets.
Any idiot can have an idea. Nobody else at the time had the balls to bring a phone to market without a keyboard, without Flash and without being tied to a carrier with the carrier's proprietary software and stores. Only Apple did that. There may have been other itty-bitty companies that had the same ideas but couldn't change the landscape.
Remember that MP3 players were not Apple's idea. They built the iPod and created the digital music marketplace for the mainstream. If the image you posted is analogous to the iPhone. Then this image is analogous to the iPod:
If you don't see Google revolutionizing anything you are either blind or crazy. They have their fingers dipped in tons of things that could be big in the future...off the top of my head, Watch OS, Autonomous Cars for legally blind people and others, Google Glass, Home Automation, new clean energies.
Google is byfar a more valuable company than Apple is, while Apple is just making consumer electronics Google is doing the true innovating.
Apple should spend all its money buying up Microsoft and discontinuing Windows. That would safe a lot of people a lot of suffering.. 
Bah ha, um Can I just point out that Im pretty sure Google is only considered on the cutting edge of one of these fields you mentioned, and thats wearables, aka consumer stuff. They arent leading the markets of any of the other technologies you mentioned, especially not autonomous cars or clean energy. They just get more press because theyre Google. There are other companies out there that make money off of those technologies, where theyre basically just hobby projects for Google.
So Google has hobby projects that dont really add much to their respective technologies (aside from maybe wearables, but even thats debatable) while Apple is just sitting on a huge pile of cash. As far as value goes, Id say theyre about sixes on what theyre actually contributing. But Apple sells more stuff, so in a business sense, apparently they win.
Apple's brand and cash account for $275 billion. Yet, Apple's market cap is around $475 billion, while earnings will top $60 billion in 2014. So, Apple is worth around what their profits will be over 3 years. Very strange how the market sets values on companies. Meanwhile, Amazon's market cap is currently at what they'll earn in 650 years, if you base it on their last 4 qtrs profit.
Isn't Apple always on top of things like this? I think everyone (other than the few on forums like these) respect Apple and know that they are the industry standard as far as making new technologies mainstream (the failure of NFC in the US is a prime example).
Also, I keep seeing people say something about an article where Apple was referred to as haunted. Anyone have a link to that?
Also, I keep seeing people say something about an article where Apple was referred to as haunted. Anyone have a link to that?
Why wouldn't have Verizon made the list? They would probably have even more subscribers today if the iPhone never existed. AT&T may have faded into oblivion without it. But one way or another, everyone that has a cell phone today would still have one. The carrier breakdown might be different, and if anything, the iPhone let AT&T catch up to Verizon. Let's not forget that Verizon did just fine for the years that AT&T had the exclusive on the iPhone.
Google "having their fingers dipped in tons of things that could be big in the future" is great but that's not revolutionizing. For all the press attention that Google gets for those activities, those things add practically nothing to Google financially. More than 90% of their revenue is from advertising.
And also, you are judging Apple and Google based on what you've heard, but the comparison doesn't make much sense. Google's modus operandi isn't to be tight-lipped about everything. Google openly talks about what the company is working on. Apple doesn't do that. Apple is very secretive about what it does. How can you be so sure that Apple doesn't have its fingers in anything new and exciting?
If I were you, I'd give up. There are three things that everyone (perhaps myself included at times) thinks they are: A lawyer, a doctor, and a prophet (or, in this case, reverse prophet). Arguing with people about a future which did not come to pass and can not be proven is a losing argument, because while they can't prove themselves right, you can't prove them wrong either, and unless they are intelligent enough to get your point, they're just not going to.
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I want to play the speculation game too!
Judging by how bad RIM's first next-gen touchscreen phone was... it looked rushed. I honestly don't think they were working on it for years prior to its announcement.
If I was to make a guess... I'd say RIM was completely dumbfounded by what Apple was able to do... and they hurried to get something out the door the following year. And that something was the horrible Blackberry Storm.
So... was the Blackberry Storm always on RIM's roadmap? Or was it thrown together at the last minute? It certainly didn't seem like it was very well planned.
Earlier someone mentioned Palm. Below is the phone that Palm announced on Jan 4, 2007... just a few days before Apple announced the iPhone.
Palm went on to release a few more Treos and Centros throughout 2007 and 2008... looking similar with the familiar QWERTY keyboards. No doubt they were already in development from previous years so they had to release them.
So my question is... when did Palm make the huge decision to completely throw out all their old models and focus on the brand new Palm Pre and WebOS?
Was that before the iPhone announcement or after? Was that always the plan?
It doesn't look like RIM or Palm was prepared for the shakeup that Apple provided. It seemed like they were caught flatfooted.
We'll never know for sure... but it's fun to speculate
I know right.
nothing wrong with playing speculation game. human imagination is fun!
I just have fun calling out the fanboys who automatically say
"everything would be crap no matter what if apple never invented the smartphone"
Maybe because their not American companies!
Just remember that the mighty can fall. Blackberry, Nokia etc..... No company is immune to this.
So just because they aren't founded in or originally from America......???
you didnt even finish reading the title of the article.... nevermind the article did you
I don't at all
Quite frankly - many phone manufacturers had full touch screen phones in their pipeline already. Not to discount what Apple did for the industry by proving that customers were ready for it and marketed it well.
But the industry was already heading there.
The only positive things Google has done is search, mail, map the streets and now the ocean, and free fiber to hospitals if enough residents purchase fiber at their locations. A lot of other stuff has been failures.
Apple is almost if not already 100% powered by solar for their data centers. Google is 34% as of 2013.
Google acquired NEST. Nothing Google did was innovative for home automation. In fact, they plan to buy another company who already has home automation. I bet they will use the two companies to collect data about you to serve more ads.
Google Glass - ok, cool - you can see stuff on one lens. Military has had this for years. Not innovative. Just made for civilian use.
Watch OS - again, not innovative. Other watch companies were first to market and do much better.
Apple may not be that 'innovating' either, but their impact on the environment is leaps and bounds above anyone else, including the 2nd place spot.
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Apple did it better. Full browser. Full Internet. Better UI and touch response. It shocked the world. It made Google's prototype phone look 20 years old.
Sorry - did you say full internet?
And you missed the point. The OP was asserting that if Apple didn't come out with the iPhone, we'd all still be stuck with physical keyboards/blackberry type devices.
That's not at all accurate.
Yes - you are not always having to browse a very limited amount of sites controlled by the carrier or browsing mobile only versions. Safari can handle loading a full-screen page on an iPhone.
If you are referring to Adobe Flash - well we can debate this all day but Apple offered Adobe a chance to refine it to make it less CPU intensive. And really, in the last 2 years I haven't once came across a flash-enabled site and I browse the web a LOT.
And Apple is not the first touch screen device but they made it very accurate and natural. The blackberry touch screen you physically had to push the screen to get a response and sometimes the sensor would capture your finger a few pixels off causing you to press something else.