TECHNOLOGY company Apple has achieved what most businesses dream of: strong revenues off the back of a dedicated market for products that market themselves.
In the company's recently revealed results, its market share is down, but profits are up. The company has implemented a magic formula for products that don't require massive volumes to drive revenues.
In September, Apple will announce something new and, once again, the hype machine has been revved up.
Apple fans know September well - this is usually the month in which Apple refreshes its iPod line. Last September we were introduced to the new iPod Nano, a standardised capacity on the iPod Classic and other adjustments made to prime the range ahead of the Christmas sales cycle.
Will this September be another round of iPod updates? Or will we finally see the rumoured Apple tablet-slash-netbook device that fills the gap between the iPhone and entry-level Macbook laptops?
Riding the curve
We know Apple has ordered a large number of 10-inch touch screens from a Taiwanese partner. Based on this, the rumour mill has generated stories of a device that is part netbook, part iPhone, designed for media playback and a Kindle-killer to boot.
Apple usually leaves the big announcements for its Macworld keynote.
But that won't be happening next year. The company has pulled out of the third-party event held in San Francisco every year.
Apple sticks religiously to the hype curve - a mechanism for gauging market maturity and adoption for new technologies developed by analysts at research company Gartner.
Based on this measure, Apple played the iPhone to perfection and the device is now stable in its market. Time for something new to start the hype cycle afresh.
One must remember, however, that the next version of Apple's operating system, Snow Leopard will be released in September, and Apple will undoubtedly be focusing attentions on the launch of this product - timed to take some of the wind out of Microsoft's Windows 7 sails.
But as Apple picks up momentum and has the market bracing itself for another big product announcement (without lifting a finger, mind you), another dynamic is facing the company ? the growing resentment that seems to follow a technology company naturally once it reaches a certain size.
In the walled garden
Microsoft understands market resentment well. The Redmond-based technology giant has born the brunt of it for a long time. Recently this has been changing, however, and the sentiment seems to be shifting towards Google and Apple.
Google sparks fear in the market once people realise what a grip the company has on their personal information. Google is increasingly being perceived as a snoop that follows people around the internet, building a database of their personal information to use for its own gain. And Apple is being rubbished from some quarters too.
Last week, internet entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis published an article titled "The Case Against Apple" on his website.
In this diatribe Calacanis fumed against Apple, quantifying the amount of money he has spent on Apple products since switching to the Mac platform and accusing Apple of effectively trapping consumers in a technology environment where things have to be done the Apple way - where one has to use an iPod to sync music and where one may not run applications on the iPhone unless Apple says they can.
Calacanis has a point. But he fails to mention that Apple is a staunch supporter of standards and is opposed to digital rights management (DRM). Users may be locked into an Apple paradigm while using the company's products, but your data is not trapped on a Mac.
If you ever switch to a Windows or Linux environment from the Mac it is dead simple to take your information with you by simply copying pictures out an iPhoto folder, for example, or copying cached email messages off the Mac, which stores email in industry-standard mbox folders, compatible with the most open of email clients, including Mozilla Thunderbird.
And, as a parent of a four-year old who has no less than 25 games loaded on my iPhone, I like the fact that someone is vetting the content being allowed on the device.
Since Apple is selling the software, it must take ultimate responsibility for it - hence the nannying.
Perhaps what Apple should do, then, is allow a secondary, informal app store where third-party, unvetted apps can be downloaded without having to jailbreak the phone.
But I'm not trying to change people's minds about Apple. I like the fact that its popularity is waning, albeit on a small scale. Technology companies do their best work when their market is not spoken for.
Things also lose their appeal once mass adoption makes them common. For us Apple fans, a level of dissent and resentment from the market at large is great - it maintains a level of exclusivity and keeps the technology vendor on its toes.
- Fin24.com