Apple's Survival Plan

The comments in this post is purely biased. :)

Part 1. Apple's original plot.

To me, at least until I read this news, Apple stands no chance in the fight of mobile device with Android. Steve Jobs criticized Google entering mobile phone market was a strong sign of risk that Apple is facing or will be facing.

Apple is indeed good at creating maybe the best product of a kind in the world. The original plot was to have a very good product and sequels of it to dominate the market. Competitors may be able to create similar products after a few years of chase. But the S/W app store richness and MP3 purchase channel will keep Apple the winner for as long as it does not make a fatal mistake.

Apple's ecosystem would become an ever since mobile empire if the plot goes on as planned.

Part 2. Google's disruptive plot.

No threaten can be seen in this plot until Google joins the game. The best thing Google does is creative disruptions, creating me too products were never the strength of it. Google's targets are like this: creating an open platform, free Internet access, free (to Internet users) search engine creates healthy ad revenue from transforming mobile phone users to smart phone users.

The tricky part is no existing mobile phone manufacturers have enough power to disrupt this game, they are simply fighting each other and will not accept any creative ideas from each other. If Nokia creates its app store, Samsung, LG, and Sony will all have their own ones. In the end, this competition is still zero summed.

Even Nokia is willing to offer its Symbian OS for free, it is unlikely others will adapt it from their deepest heart because when it comes to a new feature rich upgrade, Nokia will definitely be the first to enjoy it. Google isn't so, fortunately.

- Google creates an App store that all mobile phone manufacturers are able to have their share.

- Google maintains an open OS for every one without license fees.

- Google evolves the platform/desktop/GUI and so on to make every manufacturers happy and be able to catch up Apple's UI design without investing much resource.

The plot became that Google/Android powered mobile devices blooms and overwhelms Apple's ecosystem in the end, it may take several years before the fight ends.

Part 3. Apple's plan to survive through this.

Apple knows what risks Android is putting onto its empire and is smart enough to not simply been stubborn (as it did with Mac computers at IBM PC era) again.

This time it is opening a job to port iPhone OS to new platforms. The description is not explicit enough to know all the details and the interesting part is everyone can have their speculations. My theory is Apple has not figure everything out yet because of the following logical contradictions:

- Apple knows it has to let manufacturers join its camp to survive.

- Apple has always been enjoying and will not give up its healthy margin. But Google's Nexus One is breaking neck of smart phone prices. Apple will have to let go its iPhone margin and stop making money on its iPhone. Letting other manufacturers to sell ultra low cost iPhone clones.

- Apple will no be able to license its iPhone OS at sky high price, otherwise it becomes harder to make every manufacturer to join Apple's empire.

- Its past culture was never licensing stuff to external vendors. And it will suffer from this re-habitation. And this is exactly why it is looking for a manager externally for this. But I think it still will be harder than Apple's expectation.

- Apple has been a skeptical customer to its vendors and the culture will not be able to transform easily to co-work with other vendors.

- To spread its OS to enough devices is the key to win this fight between ants and an elephant. However, the quality will become hard to control.

- Current iPhone OS is tailored to and optimized on specific H/W, it is hard to maintain its elegance while been adapted to various H/W platforms.

Part N. The rest mobile alliances.

Please note that I am skipping all other alliances because I simply do not believe any one of them will be able to have a major share in this game. Period.