The future is Apple !

Apple - not as in the dominant position ...but as a multimedia firm. They are going to be this ubiquitous player.

Jobs learnt his share of lessons after he was fired from Apple as their CEO. He bailed them out when he returned almost after 12 years.

Primary goal for ppl to switch from PC to Apple based systems will be its differentiation factors to force ppl to bear the switching costs.

Apple will try to reduce the switching costs by:

Making hardware Intel-based !
If you can't beat'em then join'em. Apple realised that very well.
Check out this presentation in World Wide Developer Conference in which Jobs and Schiller emphasize on Intel processors.

Making OS switchable !
So, while you can keep your Windows with you for the games and other applications. All you have to do is buy their OS + hardware. Apple calls this initiative as Bootcamp.

While all this is going on, Bill leaves the boat (to step back?) and gives Ray Ozzie and Steve Balmer the charge.


Apple will woo the public by:

Multimedia applications
iPod user base is huge. Adoption of iPod has given a foot in the door to Apple in the low-end market segment. Also, it has tested the waters by knowing that ppl will pay a 100-200$ extra for owning their products but not very large gaps (as was case with Macintoshes before).

Main point is that the proprietary nature of iTunes makes it easier to be manipulatable on MacOSs since they will have those type of applications.

This is one of the reasons why Microsoft decided to launch its own portable multimedia product. They will not copy the concept of iPod. However, they will provide the same set of features which Apple will try to provide.

Essentially, Jobs has seen a new market in multimedia and he is making every effort to have the knife fall in his favor this time. That will ensure that any competitor will find it heavy to go against Apple in that segment at least.

Sleek product designs
This will continue to remain their forte.