They say that one-sided comparisons are what makes Internet punditry go ‘round. Well, the Macalope says that.
Writing for the Motley Fool, Ishfaque Faruk says “Amazon.com, Inc. is Taking on Apple” (no link because this is sooo tiresome).
Jeff Bezos would like you to think he is, anyway.
Amazon.com has been aggressively investing in new products so far in 2014, and many of those product categories are directly competing with Apple.
Whenever there’s a new entrant to the market, one thing everyone suddenly accepts as truth is that only Apple makes tablets and phones. No one else will be affected by this new threat.
Strangely, people also know that Android is “winning” because it ships on more phones. These two “facts” never need to reconciled, because punditry is never having to say you’re sorry for not making any sense whatsoever.
Ultimately, Amazon is trying to grab market share from Apple in at least four categories including tablets, smartphones, music, and video content.
Except that their business models are different. Apple makes most of its money selling you the first two, which is why it makes them so nice. Amazon makes most of its money selling you the second two. And a pallet full of toilet paper. Don’t you want to one-click buy a pallet of toilet paper? How about a case of canned tomatoes? Other people who’ve looked at canned tomatoes also bought can openers. Do you need a can opener? BUY MORE STUFF, MEAT SACK.
The recent unveiling of its Fire phone intensifies the company’s push into hardware and could potentially see healthy rates of adoption with innovative features such as …
Stop. Stop. Stop.
The Fire Phone is available on one (1) carrier in the U.S. Yes, Apple did the same thing in 2007, but check your smartphone lock screen. It’s 2014. The Kindle Fire probably has sold moderately well because there’s a minimum of friction to getting a device. They’re cheap and there’s no carrier contract involved. But the same is not true for the Fire Phone.
At any rate, do you really think it’s going to be mostly iPhone users switching to a Fire Phone, or is it going to be Brand Z Android handset owners?
In addition to the Fire smartphone, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos stated that the company already has tens of millions of Kindle Fire tablet owners.
Tens of millions of owners? Apple sells at least ten million of iPads a quarter. The number of iPad owners is in the hundreds of millions.
Apple saw its iPad unit sales decline 16% year over year in the last quarter, and the company cited channel inventory issues.
However, IDC stated that larger-screen phones and consumers keeping their tablets for longer time periods were the major contributors for a weaker than expected quarter for tablets.
Bad macro market trends only affect iPads, apparently. Because, remember, Jeff Bezos said the Kindle Fire is selling super good. What further evidence of its awesome market-controlling powers do you need?
Amazon launched Prime Music, which is an ad-free music streaming service for Prime customers. Prime Music already has 1 million songs available for streaming and competes with Apple’s iTunes Radio and its newly minted Beats Music service.
Boy, a million songs sure sounds like a lot! Until you compare it with Spotify, which has 15 million songs. Or Beats, which has 20 million songs. Or iTunes, which has 26 million (although it’s unclear if all of those are really available to stream).
Amazon has a very high customer satisfaction rate …
For its website. Gosh, if only Apple also had a high customer satisfaction rate for its devices. OH, WELL.
It’s easy to make something look bad for Apple when you trump up the comparison.
It’s not at all useful, but it sure is easy.