An article in Investors Chronicle a couple of weeks ago reminded me of some of the problems Apple recently faced. It mentioned that a US legal judgement had upheld a complaint against Google for maintaining a monopoly on internet search services. Apparently Alphabet pay the iPhone maker about £15 billion per annum to keep Google as the default search software in Apple’s Safari Browser. The legal judgement could save Apple even more money apparently for reasons I don’t quite understand. But if true it shows how such cash is involved in the business of search.
Apple’s other problem is that they are clearly reaching market saturation in some of their phone markets and are seeing increasing competition in China. Although they are bringing out new models – the latest being the iPhone 17 and iPhone Air, they do not seem to have much more in capabilities than the iPhone 13 Pro I am currently using. Despite being over 5 years old, the battery life on my current phone is still good. I can see little reason to upgrade my phone.
Apple really do need some revolutionary new products rather than just minor phone improvements.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://x.com/RogerWLawson )
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