Tim Bajarin, columnist for Tech.pinions, says that after sitting through various pre-CES press conferences and meetings, one thing stands clear: Everybody is playing catch-up to Apple.
CES hasn’t even started, but after sitting through various pre-show press conferences and meetings, one thing is clear: Apple is casting a very long shadow on this show. And many of the products I have seen have been various implementations of something Apple has already brought to market.
He says this is especially true in two categories, the iPad, and the MacBook Air.
“First is the iPad. Pretty much every tablet vendor here hopes they can develop a tablet that is at least competitive with Apple. Some are going for cheap and basic as differentiators, while others are trying to bring out models with a unique design, tied to Android, and still be cheaper than Apple.” says Bajarin.
He goes on to say that while the success of Amazon’s Kindle Fire has given vendors another target, when talking with vendors some will openly admit that they aren’t trying anything unique, they simply hope to tag along and tap into users who Apple might not get because of their higher prices.
He continues, “The second product they are all chasing is Apple’s MacBook Air. If you look at Intel’s Ultrabook program, you can see that this is a blatant attempt by the Windows crowd to ride Apple’s successful coattails in design and give their audience something that Apple has had on the market for their customers for five years. Now that is not necessarily a bad thing…it just amazes me that it has taken the WinTel world that long to even catch up with Apple.”
Bajarin explains that the vendors have a sense of foreboding about Apple, “But when talking to these vendors who are hopefully bullish about any of their offerings in either of these categories, I sense something else. While they know what Apple already has, the fact that they don’t know what Apple will have in the future really weighs heavily on them. Or in other words, they keep waiting for another shoe to drop.”
In closing, Bajarin writes, “One of Apple’s core strategies is to keep ahead of the competition by at least two years. And their competitors have finally realized this truth. That is why no matter how happy they are about their new offerings at CES this year, they are looking over their shoulders because they know with 100% certainty that Apple could do something significant at any time and send them all back to the drawing board to play catch up.”