That used to be true, but nowadays every technology company thinks they must be in every part of the technology industry.
- Apple makes a smartphone. Google makes a smartphone. Facebook makes a FB-branded phone. Amazon makes a phone.
- Apple makes laptops and smartphones. Google makes smartphones, therefore they must also make a laptop.
- Tesla makes a car. Google makes a car. Now even Apple is supposedly making a car.
It's insane. Startups don't really have much of a chance to make it to market in the big technology areas any more. The big, established companies are branching out in to every single area and buying up smaller companies before they can ever turn in to viable enterprises of their own.
We're going to get more and more of these, as these companies grow and integrate further only with their own in-house products and services.
I don't really like that future. For example - I don't like that Apple now makes maps. Apple isn't a mapping company, and that entire mapping service is there basically as one tiny feature of one or two products. I think innovation happens better when businesses are smaller, more focussed and independent. For example, Apple's mapping business could independently make deals to license its content and improve the service if it didn't have the constraints of being a small cog. Transit directions were heavily delayed and even now the coverage is small. Maps may kind of be an exception with the rumoured Apple Car, but my point is that I don't expect Apple to keep innovating with every little service 5 years after they launch.
They haven't really done much with iBooks in recent years, for example. As an independent company, that service would be much more aggressively fighting Amazon.
