On Tuesday the Macalope brought you Hadyn Shaughnessy’s valuable opinions about an Apple product that doesn’t exist yet: the iWatch (spoiler: He thinks it’ll be a dud). You might be surprised to learn—if you didn’t already know Shaughnessy was a contributor to Forbes-that he has a decidedly different opinion about Samsung products that don’t exist yet.
Not once, but twice this week Shaughnessy has graced Forbes’s hallowed virtual pages (haha) to tell us how super-awesome the Galaxy S4 is.
“The Galaxy S4, Samsung’s Last Act in Apple’s Shadow.”
“Will The Samsung S4 Launch Drive Apple’s Share Price Down?” (tip o’ the antlers to the Jony Ive parody Twitter account)
Because pumping Samsung is just that important.
In the most interesting week for mobile since the iPhone arrived …
And the iPad. And the iPhone 4. And, well, all the other iPhones.
… Samsung is disrupting Apple once again.
Disruption, according to Shaughnessy, is a one-way street. Apple no longer disrupts Samsung with its product launches, only Samsung disrupts Apple. Because. Because it’s a thing Shaughnessy just wrote, so it must be true because he wrote it and it’s on the Internet.
Well, it’s on Forbes. Which is kind of like being on the Internet at large. Except with less credibility.
Its principal advantage is to be better at Apple at sustained improvement. But this is going to prove extraordinarily disruptive nonetheless.
We are now one full paragraph into Shaughnessy’s piece and it’s time to pause and point out that Shaughnessy has no idea what Samsung is going to announce. The Galaxy S4 unveiling is today and Shaughnessy, despite his attitude to the contrary, is not clairvoyant.
But the S4 is not even an adjacency play. It is an iPhone-like phone, just done a whole lot better than the iPhone itself.
Still hasn’t seen it!
Apple’s share price was under pressure yesterday from supply chain rumors, according to Philip Elmer-DeWitt over on Fortune – it has cut orders again …
Again. Like the last time. When Apple hadn’t actually cut orders any more than it usually does. Just like that.
The stock is under renewed pressure this morning. It is 1.4% off in early trading.
Updates every five minutes if AAPL goes down. (No updates if AAPL goes up.)
Shaughnessy’s big point is that the Galaxy S4 is coming out less than a year after the S3, which was super-disruptive to the max. Even though he has no idea what the S4 looks like.
Meanwhile Samsung is taking product innovation to a new level of speed.
Let us review again what the horny one said on Saturday:
Innovation, for Apple, means it has to remake a whole market. Samsung can just add a stylus.
That’s hyperbole, of course (it’s not just for breakfast anymore), but not by much. The double standard at work here is undeniable.