Commentary: With Apple again being named the world’s most admired company, does this mean Apple has it all worked out? Not exactly.
Praying that the competition doesn’t get its act together?
Winners don’t always deserve it.
They end up as winners for all kinds of reasons.
As Apple is yet again named the world’s most admired company , I wonder just how much a lack of great competition has contributed to Cupertino’s dominance.
Once, it was fanciful to think that Microsoft would be the company that would beat Apple. It had might. It had dominant, if ugly, software.
But Redmond looked at the iPhone and laughed. It was the first laugh. The last one is still ringing in Microsoft’s ears.
What about Google? The supernerds believed that their Android operating system would be all that was needed. They could get other companies to do the hard work of hardware.
It suddenly struck Samsung relatively recently that making phones that looked good was a clever thing to do.
How many times have we heard of iPhone killers that killed themselves trying?
How many times have people accused Apple of just relying on marketing and being slow to innovate, yet there it is again as the world’s top brand?
The truth is that no other company has the combination of design taste, software ecosystem and customer service that moves consumers to commit on a consistent basis.
It’s been that way for too long. Much of Apple’s recent complacency — the dull iPhone 7 , the messing around with dongles , the MacBook Pro that depressed creative types — can surely be put down to the fact that Apple sees few large threats.
