Do they really compete?
Well, obviously they do. Both companies compete for many of the same markets. Or do they?
Apple's goal of making successful consumer level devices has been unsurpassed for years. While iOS is currently in a mild decline in comparison to Android based phones of late (comScore January 2011: U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share) there's little doubt that the iPhone is still an amazing product. While the iOS ultimate sales is down on Android, we're still looking at the Smart Phone sales of one company broadly matching sales with the combined marketing power of any number of alternate major phone manufacturers. That's impressive. On the tablet front, the iPad has the lions share of sales even with the plethora of Android based products coming on to the market from an ever growing list of alternative manufacturers. Where's Microsoft in all of this? I don't see much activity in this market from MS. Maybe that will change next year when Windows8 comes on-line, but for now MS is a bit player and they don't seem to be making much effort (yet!) to break in to the consumer device market. At a consumer level Windows simply can't compete with iOS, or Android at the moment, and very little effort seems to be spent in doing so.
On the business front, MS has recently recovered from the sale of one of their worst operating system evolutions to date. Vista was a nightmare. They've done it before (anyone remember Windows ME?) but Apple was still very much a niche product at the time. Today, Apple computers are even running the same basic hardware platforms as PC's. Even though MS dropped the ball, big time, Apple made little ground in the corporate environment. I didn't see Apple even try.
Where Apple can be seen to be concentrating their efforts at a consumer level with a bleed-over into business products, Microsoft have positioned themselves at the other end of the spectrum. They're big in to business with a bleed-over in to consumer marketed products.
My question stands then. While the media like the idea of these two companies at each others throats, and MAC Vs PC, iOS vs Windows remains an ever popular - if slightly ridiculous - topic of conversation, from the perspective of the marketing I've been exposed to I can't see much evidence that the two companies actually compete for the same business in any significant way.
