iAd: Apple’s Retaliation to Google
iAd: Apple's Retaliation to Google
Recently I attended a speaker panel regarding corporate competition and how leading companies develop a competitive edge in the market. Microsoft was one of the companies represented in the panel.
When asked about why they heavily promoted Bing even though their previous search products (Live, MSN Search) failed to succeed, the speaker cited that because of Google's entry into Microsoft's core products, Microsoft must retaliate by attacking Google's core product: search and advertising. It didn't matter whether Microsoft was losing money over Bing: so long as they take profits away from Google, Microsoft was winning as long as it gains market share.
It is clear now that both Apple and Microsoft have one common competitor: Google. Google has entered both companies' dominant markets with force and much fanfare, chipping away market share and media attention bit by bit. The once search-based company created a number of products that match or are arguably better than each respective companies' dominant markets: Google Docs for Office, Chrome for Internet Explorer/Safari, Chrome OS for Windows/Mac OS X, and Android for iPhone.
With iAd previewed with iPhone OS 4 yesterday, Apple has officially retaliated against Google's entrance to the mobile phone industry by attacking Google's core source of revenue: advertising. Nearly all of Google's revenue is generated through advertising, and Apple wants to threaten Google in the exact same way as how Google threatened Apple with the Android. As Steve Jobs allegedly stated quite bluntly a couple months ago, Google fired the first shot by "entering the phone business" with Android. Apple is merely firing back without entering the Google-dominant search industry, as iPhone users do not search on the web but rather use a specific app for information. With hundreds of thousands of apps backed with millions of developers around the iPhone OS platform, it appears that Apple is attacking Google with full force.
As with Microsoft's response with Bing, Google will most likely respond with tweaks and enhancements to its services, possibly creating a similar mobile advertising platform on Android. However, with Android being an open source based platform, anyone could easily get rid of the advertisements by tinkering with the inner coding.
Time can only tell, but one thing is for sure: advertisements are going to become more interactive rather than flashy and static. More developers are going to implement iAd simply because of its ease of use and integration with their own app experience overall. The iPhone App Business Model may simply change because of iAd.
My take on it? I would prefer not to have any ads at all, no matter how innovative the ad or who it's from. Taking up an eighth of my tiny 3.5" screen in an app I paid for, simply because the developer wants to make more money is, in my opinion, unjustifiable.
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Agreed - I wouldn’t want an ad to take up an eighth of my screen for an app I paid for. Indeed, I wouldn’t buy that app in the first place. However, I would consider using an app with ads that I didn’t pay for (i.e. a free app).
iAd isn’t in retaliation to Google or anyone else…
Apple is in an unique position to deliver 1 billion high-quality, targeted ads per day to qualified buyers…. Who cares about the “also rans”... Apple has a winner service to sell!
I’m thinking Microsoft doesn’t deserve to be represented on a speaker panel tackling “corporate competition and how leading companies develop a competitive edge”. Because they’re competitive strategy is 1. Inherit a monopoly from IBM and then 2. use that monopoly in a criminal way to establish monopolies in other markets. Microsoft has nothing to contribute on how to make a better product that customers will choose even if there are other alternatives. Although, they do have a lot to contribute on “what NOT to do . . .”
Personally, I think it doesn’t make any difference whether Microsoft is losing money over Bing, as long as they take profits away from google. However, this saddened me because what if Microsoft is truly transform and arise a better search? Well, surely users will move to MS. - Unilife]http://alanshortallunilife.net”]Unilife Alan Shortall[/url]
, but true of all too many businesses. What if MS were to truly innovate and come up with a better way to search? Then users would migrate to MS naturally. car title loans