I think Apple's success rests on its genre-defining products. The Company is able to introduce one blockbuster after another. Its success, starting with iPod, drew competitors into the a death race - it seems as if you can't sell unless you either provide a low quality product at drastically lower price point, or you make something that looks like an Apple product. By choosing the latter strategy one leaves its success at Apple's mercy - essentially your design cycle is half a season or a season behind Apple. And whenever, Apple mows over its own design and come up with something new (from ipod classic to ipod touch; from ipod touch to iphone, from macbook to ipad; from macbook to macbook air), you are letting it literally run a monopoly for half a year. And the worse thing is, if your Apple-too product isn't nearly as good, you lose more potential customers craving for these product categories: think Microsoft's Zune, Dell's Adamo, and Blackberry's Playbook.
---Consider this a writing exercise---
Intel has generated some buzz with its Ultrabook concept, a very thin and portable (under 3 pounds) series of laptops driven by Intel's power-efficient chips. Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba, HP, and LG all responded with their models. The designs are sleek, but the looks are no news to techies eyes. All the metal, all the unibody-like case, and the way they are portrayed in the ads to emphasis their minimum profile, screamed Macbook Air, which is almost a 4-year-old product (the original Macbook Air was released on Jan.28 2008). The OEMs of Ultrabook are in a really touch spots, very similar to those of Android-powered smartphones. Their best efforts run the danger of relating people to Apple's products which are always 2-3 product cycles ahead of them. With one losing battle in hand, the obvious and the counterstrike for OEMs is out-power Apple regarding technical specifications, larger storage, bigger screen, faster chips, and more functions. But wait, aren't tech specs declared dead less than a month ago?
Perhaps I should put my $5,000 (when I have them) on Intel :)
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