Apple Rolls, Google Stumbles, Samsung Flames

For all the changes in the competitive tech landscape, Apple seems to be holding its own and still manages to carve out more profits than all competitors combined, regardless of the product.

What about Apple’s competition? From flaming products to abandoned R&D efforts, from Samsung to Google (and when I say Google, I really mean the parent company, Alphabet) things are not looking as good. Apple makes money. Competitors eat the leftover crumbs.

Hidden Feature: ‘Flames’

Let me get this one out of the way first. I’ve had the pleasure of viewing and drooling over Samsung’s newest flagship product, the Galaxy Note 7. Drool worthy, indeed. 4GB RAM, 8-core CPU, Quad-HD screen. Iris Scanner technology built-in. Sweet. Almost. There is one feature in these new models that Samsung didn’t bother to tell customers or reviewers.

The Galaxy Note 7 explodes. Yep. There’s a battery problem and Samsung has started the massive recall effort. Any company that blatantly steals technology the way Samsung steals technology and intellectual property should be aware that the universe is full of natural laws that impact everyone.

Karma is a bitch. What goes around, comes around.

Everything Is A Remix Beta

What about Google? This so-called technology giant is little more than an advertising company, and despite tens of billions in various and sundry investments, has yet to diversify much beyond what made Google famous in the first place. Advertising still makes up about 90-percent of the company’s revenue and profits.

One such recent and high flying publicly visible project was Google Fiber, an attempt by the company to infiltrate various markets with high speed internet access as competitive prices. Installing cable all over town is a tedious, time-consuming process, even for telephone and cable TV companies, and probably more so for advertising companies like Google.

Alphabet’s head honcho and Google co-founder Larry page wasn’t happy with the speed of the rollout. So, what did he do? Give Google Fiber more money and tell them to install faster? Nope. Instead, Page demanded that Fiber Chief Craig Barratt to cut the divisions headcount in half and cut costs. So much for bringing high speed internet to the masses, huh Google?

Wait. There’s More!

A few years ago one of Google’s executives and a few managers were looking for something to do and came up with something called Project Ara, a modular smartphone project, whereby customers could build their own smartphones from various interchangeable components. They had a spreadsheet, a PowerPoint presentation with bullet points, colorful graphs with hockey-stick lines of growth, and they made a pitch to CEO Larry Page who said, “Whatever.” In Google-talk that means throw a few billion dollars up against a wall to see what sticks.

Nothing stuck. Google Fiber is winding down. Project Ara has been shuttered. Android is an expensive disappointment with no positive ROI. Nest is a less expensive disappointment but going nowhere fast. But you get the idea, right? Apple rolls out products that people love and make Apple more profitable. Google rolls out products that don’t make money and eventually get shuttered. Samsung rolls out products that catch fire.

Somewhere the technology gods are chuckling and giving each other high fives.