Apple was once a great company. They revolutionized the way the world listens to music, moving the world from buying CD's to downloading music to digital devices capable of storing thousands of albums. They revolutionized the smart phone definition, moving the world from physical keyboards and clunky user interfaces, to smooth scrolling pages and colorful icons. However, ever since the death of Steve Jobs, I believe Apple has fallen into a pit of reiteration, and as if they were stuck in glue, they can no longer revolutionize. But unfortunately, Apple defies the standard business model, and continues to grow in strength despite their lack of innovation, and other companies such as Samsung and LG are suffering unjustly.
For example, the Apple iPhone has had an extremely small screen compared to its Android counterparts until just recently. Samsung had been making "phablets" (phone-tablets) since 2011 with their first Galaxy Note 5.3", but it wasn't until 3 years later, in 2014, that Apple finally moved from its puny 4.0" screen to 4.7" and 5.5" variants. If any other company, such as Blackberry, were three years late to the market, they would have seen huge drops in sales and revenue, and maybe gone bankrupt, but Apple just sold phones like hotcakes. Apple also puts inferior, cheaper technology in their phones. Their base model iPhone still costs $650, the same as Samsung's latest offerings, however, they include half as much storage (16GB vs 32GB), they have lower resolution screens (720p panel vs 1080p), the batteries are smaller, the processors are slower, the RAM (allows fast multitasking) is a third as much on the iPhone's, and the list just goes on and on.
Specification wars aside, the iPhone consists of only 18% of the world market share for smart phones, which is not alarming or seemingly very high. However, Apple makes 92% of the worldwide profits on smart phones, selling its 64GB iPhone 6 Plus for $849, when it only costs $240 to fully manufacture. That leaves 8% of the profits for Samsung, HTC, LG, Microsoft/Nokia, Blackberry, Motorola, and dozens of other top manufacturers to split among themselves, and even though they are the innovators, they are forced to try to compete against this behemoth and survive, like Oliver Twist pleading, "Please sir, I want some more."
Apple currently holds a monopoly on the people, and it comes to market with technology 3+ years after its competition, but yet, people continue to feed the flame of anti-innovation, and it needs to stop. If it doesn't, other companies will be squeezed out of the profit margins, and there could be a day that everyone is forced to own an iPhone. However, contrary to Apple's belief, one single phone will never be suitable for all 7 billion people on this planet; we need diversity, and thus, Apple's dictatorship over the smart phone market must end, and Apple must die.
-487 words
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