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Should Apple allow cloneing of iOS to 3ed parties?

Splitting hairs here, y'all are giving me a headache. Does it really matter ? I know people that buy Apple computers and wipe OSX and run Windows only.

Again hardware without software (to include an OS) is a pile of junk. It doesn't work.
 
Criticize Apple all you want but controlling 100% of the user experience has benefited the user over the years.
 
nwcs said:
It's actually the reverse razor blade scenario. In that case they supply software in support of their hardware. Gillette, for example, makes money off the razor blades and not on the razor which is why the razors themselves are usually given away. Apple's the reverse. They make a lot of software and basically break even on the digital file front in order to move the hardware. Both are necessary but their bread and butter is in the hardware and not software.
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For Mac, yes, but no industry that becomes a $1 Billion dollar industry in 4 years can be called anything BUT bread and butter. I'm speaking of course of the App Store. With iOS, their income is software, software that they don't even produce!

The catch for Apple is, they STILL make money on the hardware! It's like Gillette selling their razors for an 80% profit margin AND selling the blades (even though the profit margin on the iPad is considerably low!)
 
nwcs said:
They make a lot of software and basically break even on the digital file front in order to move the hardware. Both are necessary but their bread and butter is in the hardware and not software.
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Exactly. I could write about this, but I found some blogs that say it much better than I ever would. Granted they're old posts (2008 and 2003, respectively), but still true to this day.

Think of an iPod touch. Would anybody argue that when you buy an iPod you are buying a copy of OS X with a dongle that happens to play music attached to it? Seriously? is anybody complaining that they can’t transfer their copy of OS X from an iPod touch to whatever lame music player Microsoft is peddling this week?

A dongle exists to prevent you from using a piece of software twice without paying for it twice. Apple is hardly even trying to prevent you from using OS X twice without paying for it twice. I can demonstrate this for you: I have a copy of Leopard. There is no copy protection on it. It does not phone home. Why is that? Ah! It is because it is only supposed to run on Apple hardware. Exactly. If Apple lose a few sales of Leopard to Macintosh owners that illegally copy Leopard, that is too bad but it is no big deal to them. Of course, if you hack it to run on non-Apple hardware, you are going to wind up on a first-name basis with Apple’s lawyers. That’s because—are you tired of hearing me say this?—they are in the hardware business, not the operating system business.
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http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/01/apple-is-hardware-company.html

This point cannot be emphasized strongly enough. Apple is a computer hardware company. Selling hardware is how Apple generates most of its revenue. Their operating system software may well be the best aspect of their computers, but that does not make them a software company. Anyone who claims that Apple could simply switch to being a software company and make up for lost hardware revenue by selling additional software doesn’t understand how the company operates.

During the brief period of time when Apple licensed the Mac OS to other manufacturers, their revenue tanked. Too many people bought cheap clones from PowerComputing and Umax instead of higher-priced Macs from Apple, and the licensing revenue didn’t compensate for the lost hardware revenue. The situation may well have been good for Mac users, but it was terrible for Apple’s bottom line.

No matter how badly people clamor for it, Apple is never going to release a version of Mac OS X that runs on standard Wintel PC hardware. Whether it’s possible or not, it isn’t going to happen. A frequent comment regarding this rumor is something like “I’d love a version of Mac OS X that ran on my PC.” Sure you would, you cheap bastard. Apple’s Switch campaign is an attempt to get PC users to buy thousands of dollars of Apple hardware, not hundreds of dollars of Apple software.
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http://daringfireball.net/2003/04/qwerty
 
Winni said:
Software is such a small portion of their revenue? Are you reading other reports than the rest of the world? The entire iTunes and App Store business falls under software, and that's where they shovel the money. No research or engineering and only low operational costs - the iTunes machinery is almost net income.
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Where do you get this stuff? Retail sales of third party content do not fall under software.

And even if you were to include iTunes Store sales in the same category as software sales, you still don't have a large percentage of Apple's revenue. And certainly not a significant percentage of their net income or profits.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/10/18results.html

iTunes Store revenue is $1.2 billion out of $20.3 billion in total revenue for the quarter. Software is only another $662 million. And Apple has said repeatedly that they are operating the iTunes Store at just over break even. There are no significant profits for Apple there.

They don't have to charge for iOS because its development is subsidized by the iTunes store. If they wanted, they could even give away the iPad for free because the device is almost useless without iTunes pay-for content.
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Well, that's not true. The cost of iOS development is funded by iOS device sales. Check the financials.

el-John-o said:
For Mac, yes, but no industry that becomes a $1 Billion dollar industry in 4 years can be called anything BUT bread and butter. I'm speaking of course of the App Store. With iOS, their income is software, software that they don't even produce!
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Except for when that revenue is less than 6% of Apple's total revenue, and a smaller percentage of their profits.
 
A software company sells software. A hardware company sells hardware.

Apple's best software (OS X, iOS, iTunes, Safari, iLife, etc) is created in order to add value to their hardware. Consequently most of it is bundled with the hardware they sell.

Sure they dabble in profitable software with products like iWork, Apurture and FC, but they sell very little software compared to what the give away.

The iTunes/App Store areas are not really software in the traditional sense, since very little of what they sell is produced by them. These are best viewed as content distribution/retail initiatives.
 
Winni said:
...If they wanted, they could even give away the iPad for free because the device is almost useless without iTunes pay-for content.
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Lets do the math on that... In order to brake even on just the parts to produce a base model iPad they would need to make back $260 per unit. Since most users will upgrade hardware in 2 years and taking %30 of the sales they would need every user to buy $36 of software every month ($866/24mo).
Remember that this is the brake even point for the hardware only and does not include R&D, hosting charges, administrative overhead...
I buy a LOT of software for my iPad, but I don't come anywhere close to subsidizing the cost of my device.
 
Why are people banging on about software sales compared to hardware sales? Apple software can only run on apple hardware. So to use it you need to buy a mac!

It is a closed system so it doesn't really matter how apple get your money.

If you want to use their software then you gotta pay for it, you've got to buy a mac/iOSDevice.

The only question is, do people buy apple products because they like the software, or because it is pretty. My guess would be that the software plays a bigger part for most people.
 
They shouldn't, because then iOS would suffer from fragmentation like the Android platform. The beauty of having it only on two devices (iPhone and iPad) keeps too much fragmentation from occurring.
 
mrboult said:
Why are people banging on about software sales compared to hardware sales? Apple software can only run on apple hardware. So to use it you need to buy a mac!
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Well, that is the point of the thread. OP was asking whether Apple should sell the OS to third party manufacturers.
The argument is about what effect this would have on the core business since %90 ($18B of $20B)of revenue is generated via hardware sales.
 
err404 said:
Well, that is the point of the thread. OP was asking whether Apple should sell the OS to third party manufacturers.
The argument is about what effect this would have on the core business since %90 ($18B of $20B)of revenue is generated via hardware sales.
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Yeah your right.

Somewhere along reading all the posts it seems I forgot the original point of the thread. :)
 
If the OP is still reading, GOD NO. Like others have said apple went down that road and it was not a good path for them.

Love, like or hate them ( seems to be either love or hate) they are at their best when they use hardware and software to move the buying public to the place they are already at.
 
MrWillie said:
I am NOT in the hardware software argument. It's a moot point, and you can't have one without the other.

Apple is like a Reese's peanut butter cup, " two great taste that taste great together."

Call it what you will.
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I'm not arguing that Apple doesn't make great software. It's just that they make it in order to enhance and differentiate themselves in the hardware market.

To put it another way; their business model is:
Make great software in order to sell more hardware

As opposed to:
Make great hardware in order to sell more Software

Their business is sell Hardware while they give away most of the Software.
Software is just the carrot on the stick.
 
I'll throw in my "never".

If people want a discount iphone/ipad they buy previous gen, ie 3gs for $49 on contract. when ipad 2 comes out prev gen will be discounted(and refurbs). Other than that your options are ipad 1 or ipad 1, and that's the way apple likes it. It's been working really well for them in case you haven't noticed.
 
0815 said:
Apple almost went belly up doing this with the OS for the desktops - won't happen again.
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In that case Apple let ANYONE make a clone and licensed out the software.

The clones where actually well made, just that Gill Amerlio did not protect the primary income, and did not sell the license for enough.
 
Apple is a software company period unless you think Jobs is wrong. This quote is straight from the horses mouth at the all things d conference.

The big secret about Apple, of course–not-so-big secret maybe–is that Apple views itself as a software company and there aren’t very many software companies left, and Microsoft is a software company. And so, you know, we look at what they do and we think some of it’s really great, and we think a little bit of it’s competitive and most of it’s not. You know, we don’t have a belief that the Mac is going to take over 80% of the PC market. You know, we’re really happy when our market share goes up a point and we love that and we work real hard at it, but Apple’s fundamentally a software company and there’s not a lot of us left and Microsoft’s one of them
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You guys saying otherwise don't understand this industry at all. Don't feel bad only about three analysts on wall street get it either.

Link to the original here

http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070530/d5-gates-jobs-interview/
 
VTMac said:
Apple is a software company period unless you think Jobs is wrong. This quote is straight from the horses mouth at the all things d conference.
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We are all familiar with this famous quote. I don't think Jobs is wrong, I just think he knows how to run a business and say the right things to sell products. He'd say Apple was a drug trafficking company if he believed it would help sales and marketing.
 
grapes911 said:
We are all familiar with this famous quote. I don't think Jobs is wrong, I just think he knows how to run a business and say the right things to sell products. He'd say Apple was a drug trafficking company if he believed it would help sales and marketing.
Click to expand...

You still don't get it. NOTHING in Apple's entire hardware portfolio is unique. MacBooks are all commodity PC hardware in a pretty aluminum skin. iPads and iPhones are ARM designs in pretty skin. The hardware has no unique innovative value. Steve knows this. All ther differentiation and defensible value is in their software. Period. End of story.

They "make" their own A4 chip because the modest tweaking of the reference designs give them more secrecy. Those chips are 99% the same as used in any droid. People pay a premium for Apple hardware because of the software. Not the other way around.
 
VTMac said:
You still don't get it. NOTHING in Apple's entire hardware portfolio is unique. MacBooks are all commodity PC hardware in a pretty aluminum skin. iPads and iPhones are ARM designs in pretty skin. The hardware has no unique innovative value. Steve knows this. All ther differentiation and defensible value is in their software. Period. End of story.
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You could say the same thing about PCs coming from Sony, HP, Dell, and any other PC manufacturer, who are all obviously in the hardware business, rather than software. In fact, I'd say Apple is more innovative hardware-wise than most PC manufacturers, that pretty aluminum skin takes quite a bit of technical expertise to make. But while I disagree with you that Apple hardware has *no* unique innovative value, I do see your point that the software is a major (although not the only) differentiating characteristic. I think that's what Jobs was pointing out when he insisted that Apple is a software company. But regardless of how he thinks about Apple in theory, the reality is that most of Apple's profits come from hardware sales, and licensing iOS or Mac OS to other hardware companies would cut into Apple's own hardware sales. Remember IBM? They won the platform war by licensing DOS, but eventually became irreverent as a consumer PC vendor.
 
VTMac said:
You still don't get it. NOTHING in Apple's entire hardware portfolio is unique. MacBooks are all commodity PC hardware in a pretty aluminum skin. iPads and iPhones are ARM designs in pretty skin. The hardware has no unique innovative value. Steve knows this. All ther differentiation and defensible value is in their software. Period. End of story.
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Wait, wut? Their trackpad isn't unique? Their keyboards? The thin construction? The aluminum body? The integrated, long batteries? The reliability? I think everything I listed is unique, and I haven't even gotten into their handheld devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod).
 
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