This is a dogmatic model that unfortunately a lot of people are believing to be true, but it's more subtle, especially in today's running industry. Apple has been innovating the most in the computer industry, yet they are always being followed (read copied). So, how does the competition makes more innovation by following when it is always Apple bringing the next innovation ?
Apple innovates while there's still nothing comparable on the market and makes a significant change to something existing. Take the latest example, the MacBook Air. 4 years later, the "ultrabook" comes along with its "amazing", "non compromised keyboard" and "stunning thinness" (after the netbook fiasco, allowing the iPad to rise) which looks exactly like the MacBook Air. And they call it innovation. Lower prices alone don't trigger innovation, Apple computers have never been cheap.
Although Apple also have borrowed some features elsewhere, they are insignificant compared to true innovation of the last 15 years I can remember. And if they did use something created elsewhere, they made it a standard (think about the mouse as a pointing device).
Apple brought among other things :
- the first consumer all-in-one and easy to use computer with the Desktop, created by Xerox, as a standard to the market
- they made computers beautiful (both the front and back)
- evicted the floppy disc and now does the same with the CD/DVD to ensure old useless technologies don't last to long, endangering innovation
- the trackpad
- Firewire
- backlight keyboard
- insight cameras in screens
- Unibody, full metal enclosure computers
- the thinnest computers ever (already the Powerbook G4 where only a centimeter thick. Never has the competition reached that until the Ultrabooks, 11 years later)
- multitouch display to the general market (like the mouse at its time)
- Wireless and automatic sync between multiple data with iCloud like no one else does (it's more than just syncing documents around to have it everywhere, it's a full backup)
- MagSafe (still haven't seen this anywhere)
- etc, etc.
I won't talk about software innovations and iTunes/iPods. Innovation is mostly driven by passionate minds, that pop out ideas from "nothing", some from existing things in order to better them
significantly. This "more competition = more innovation" dogma is a false innovation trigger that brings consumers to believe that more actors, each bringing a slightly better product than the previous one by adding a new, yet insignificant "something" to it or worse, only lowering the price for the same stuff the others are doing is innovation, while innovation truly is something that : "make changes in something established, esp. by introducing new methods, ideas, or products (from Latin innovat- ‘renewed, altered,’ from the verb innovare, from in- ‘into’ + novare ‘make new’ (from novus ‘new’). 'Make changes in something established'", Oxford American Dictionary.
And I don't say I like everything Apple does, but from an innovation perspective, they've proven themselves more than once and thus have my respect and my trust. That's why I'm with them, for no other reason, no blind following nonsense, etc. You are right saying Apple is just a brand, it is. As for success, I wish too that HP has success, they do great printers and decent computers.
As for supposedly happy consumers thanks to competition triggering innovation, reading about Samsung's "latest innovation", the Galaxy S3, I can't say consumers seemed very happy about it... some critics are very harsh. Have you seen their mock-up of Siri ?
