Blog of Intellectual Capital

Here is a good article from SF Chronicle that sheds some light on Apple and its renewed strategy on Mobile devices. With its launch of iPad, as well as the consious sidestepping from flash, a new and clear focus on iTunes and Appstore becomes much clearer – the focus on being the entertainment and content provider of consumer entertainment, and controlling the accesspoints secures large revenues from the convert. The larger question is if there are new areas previously untapped in this strategy that represent next level. With clear focus on casual consumption, everyday content and easy access, I have problem seeing next product line within this strategy.

– Patric

“Apple’s recent unveiling of the iPad was primarily a product announcement aimed at priming the pump for consumers, developers and content owners.

But for the notoriously secretive company, the iPad event provided observers with a glimpse of the company’s growing ambitions and strategies.

By trumpeting its own chipset for the iPad, passing on Adobe Flash software and putting even more emphasis on its iTunes system, Apple appears intent on tightening its command over the user experience and delivering a distinct vision of mobile computing, Internet connectivity and media consumption.

But perhaps the most obvious upshot of the latest unveiling was Apple’s continued recognition that its future, unlike its origin, is tied to mobile devices. Three years after dropping the word “computer” from its name, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs said the company’s annual revenue of $50 billion from iPhones, iPods and MacBook laptops make it the largest maker of mobile devices in the world.

“Apple is a mobile devices company – that’s what we do,” said Jobs, during the iPad event.

Tim Bajarin, president of technology consultancy Creative Strategies, said Apple recognizes that the computing landscape is expanding to a model in which everyone carries around an Internet device. With the iPad, Apple is seeking to shape and stay ahead of that future.

“Apple’s role is to bring digital technology to the masses,” said Bajarin. “They don’t believe it’s restricted to a desktop or a phone – it should come in all types of devices.”

While the iPad represents a new hardware market, some observers see the device as expanding Apple’s business in services and content delivery.

“In 10 years, Apple will be just as much of a services and a software play as a device manufacturer,” said J. Gerry Purdy, an analyst with MobileTrax, a mobile research firm. “I think that gives them a tremendous playing field opportunity.”

Making chips itself

Apple’s introduction of its own chipset for the iPad – called the A4 – suggests that the Cupertino company is even more focused on the marriage between its hardware and software, eschewing third-party chips that are used by most rivals.

Nathan Brookwood, an analyst with Insight 64, questioned whether Apple’s chipset will outperform rival technology from Nvidia or Qualcomm. But he said the approach can result in some savings if it’s applied on a significant scale. And it allows the company to be less dependent on outside suppliers.

But perhaps most importantly, it gives Apple a way to tune its chips to fit the exact needs of its devices and software, allowing the company to achieve better performance and battery life.

“Apple’s gone from buying something off the rack to buying something where they have the pieces and they can tailor it themselves to their unique body shape,” Brookwood said.

Brookwood said he expects to see more of the A4 chipset if the iPad proves successful.

Apple’s iPad announcement also revealed a deeper antipathy toward Adobe Flash, the ubiquitous browser plug-in that enables most of the video and animations you see on the Web.

At the press event, Jobs avoided any mention of Flash, even when selling the iPad as delivering the Internet in your hand. And at a company staff meeting a few days later, Jobs reportedly called Adobe’s browser plug-in “buggy” and said the world will be moving to HTML5, a new Web language that will eliminate the need for Flash in many instances.

Tech pundits said Apple’s crusade against Flash appears to be philosophical, practical and political. The opposition might be a way to steer consumers to Apple’s iTunes and App Store, where they can find video content and applications that replicate the Flash content, often at a price.

“Apple’s position is they want to move things off the Web to the (iTunes) App Store,” said David Wadhwani, vice president and general manager of Adobe’s platform business. “Our position is we will support both models and let the consumer choose.”

Flash the next floppy disk?

Apple also appears reluctant to allow San Jose’s Adobe access to its iPhone operating system, especially when its Flash software is the cause of most of its crashes on the Mac, a claim Jobs reportedly made at his staff meeting. By advocating HTML5, Jobs could be attempting to help precipitate the decline of Flash, something he also predicted with floppy disk drives and more recently optical drives, wrote Farhad Manjoo, a technology columnist for online magazine Slate.

“Jobs could be betting that the same thing will happen with Flash,” Manjoo said. “There will be a lot of whining in the short run, but in time, we’ll all forget we ever wanted it and keep buying iPads.”

With Apple’s decision to go with the iPhone operating system, instead of Mac OS X or a hybrid, the company seems even more intent on using it as a major platform for mobile development. Apple has outpaced rivals in the mobile application market with more than 140,000 apps, but it has faced increasing competition from Google’s Android, which is also being pitched as a tablet operating system.”