经贸专业英语报刊阅读教程 第十课 unit 10 apple vs google

by Business Week,

By

Jan. 14, 2010

On Jan. 5, Google () did a very Apple-like thing. In a presentation at the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., the 11-year-old search behemoth unveiled Nexus One, a stylish touchscreen smartphone that runs on the company's Android operating system, is sold through a Google-operated retail Web site, and greets the market with an advertising tagline ("Web meets phone") as simple and optimistic as the one Apple used in 2007 to introduce its iPhone ("The Internet in your pocket").

On the same day, Apple did a very Google-like thing. Steve Jobs, the king of splashy product launches and in-house development, announced a strategic acquisition. For $275 million, Apple purchased Quattro Wireless, an upstart advertising company that excels at targeting ads to mobile-phone users based on their behavior.

When companies start to imitate one another, it's usually either an extreme case of flattery—or war. In the case of Google and Apple, it's both. Separated by a mere 10 miles in Silicon Valley, the two have been on famously good terms for almost a decade. Jobs and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, both 54, spent years in separate battles against Microsoft () while Schmidt was at Sun Microsystems () and Novell (). Over time, they went from spiritual allies to strategic ones. When Apple had an opening on its board in 2006, Jobs tapped Schmidt. "Eric is obviously doing a terrific job as CEO of Google," Jobs said at the time. Schmidt, meanwhile, called Apple "one of the companies in the world that I most admire."

Tensions in Silicon Valley's special relationship began to emerge in late 2007, when Google announced plans to develop Android for mobile phones. Apple had unveiled its iPhone in January of that year, and it was clear that the two companies would spar in the smartphone business. Still, both were niche players, with more formidable rivals in companies like Nokia (), Samsung, and Research In Motion (). Only after software developers began creating thousands of mobile apps, and it became clear that phones would become the computers of the future, did the conflicts begin to grow serious. Last summer, Apple refused to approve two Google apps for sale to iPhone users, raising questions about how much of a Google presence Apple would allow on its devices. In August, Schmidt gave up his board seat. "Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple's core businesses," Jobs said at the time, "Eric's effectiveness as an Apple board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings."

Now the companies have entered a new, more adversarial phase. With Nexus One, Google, which had been content to power multiple phonemakers' devices with Android, enters the hardware game, becoming a direct threat to the iPhone. With its Quattro purchase, Apple aims to create completely new kinds of mobile ads, say three sources familiar with Apple's thinking. The goal isn't so much to compete with Google in search as to make search on mobile phones obsolete. "Apple and Google both want more," says Chris Cunningham, founder of the New York mobile advertising firm Appssavvy. "They're gearing up for the ultimate fight."

Apple spokeswoman Katie Cotton declined to comment on the company's advertising plans or its relationship with Google. Google spokeswoman Katie Watson said the company would not make executives available for this story. She did provide a statement, attributed to Vic Gundotra, Google's vice-president of engineering: "Apple is a valued partner of ours and we continue to

work closely with them to help move the entire mobile ecosystem forward."

THE MOVE TO MOBILE

The tech industry has had its share of legendary rivalries: IBM () vs. Digital Equipment Corp., Microsoft vs. Netscape, America Online vs. Yahoo! () Apple vs. Google could dwarf them all. Both companies are revered by consumers with a passion usually reserved for movie stars and pro athletes. They have multibillion-dollar war chests, visionary founders, and ambitions for smartphones, Web browsers, music, and tablet computers that set them on a collision course. The key battleground in the near term is mobile computing. Analysts who once tingled when talking about the Internet are getting that same old feeling over mobile's potential. Morgan Stanley's () Mary Meeker predicts that within five years more users will tap into the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs. Desktop Internet use led to the rise of Google, eBay (), and Yahoo, but the mobile winners are still emerging. "Now is the time to get going," says Doug Clinton, an analyst with Piper Jaffray (). "It's about winning the battle today rather than getting into the fight tomorrow." Billions of dollars are up for grabs in selling phones, software, and services.

The money in mobile advertising is small—about $2 billion last year, according to researcher Gartner, compared with $60 billion for the overall Web. But figuring out how to make mobile advertising more profitable is a lot more important than merely getting in as the hockey-stick curve begins to move upward. A company that can nail mobile ads and share the wealth with the growing legion of app developers—freelance software writers who create all those sometimes-useful (Business Card Reader), sometimes time-killing (Flick Fishing) mobile programs—could pull in the best of the lot. Create the strongest ecosystem of apps and devices, and, the thinking goes, you leave rivals gasping to keep up. "The mobile platform that creates the most ways to make money wins," says David Hyman, chief executive of MOG, an Internet music service that's developing mobile apps.

Apple has a substantial lead in establishing this ecosystem. Developers have created mor …… 此处隐藏：19592字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……