Tim Cook: Competitors Are Still Catching Up To First iPhone
Apple’s COO Tim Cook says competitors are still trying to catch up with the original iPhone, which was launched more than two years ago.
During a conference call discussing today’s Q4 earnings, Cook was asked about competition hotting up for the upcoming holiday season. How will Apple maintain momentum and differentiation?
“We feel very confident,” Cook said. “People are still trying to catch up to the original iPhone, and we’ve long since moved past that.”
Ouch. Take that Google and Palm. And although it wasn’t mentioned by name, the question was clearly referring to the upcoming Droid phone from Verizon and Motorola, which is based on Google’s Android.
Verizon has launched a weird iDon’t advertising campaign that supposedly highlights all the things the iPhone doesn’t do — like run simultaneous apps. But while the Droid is getting early notice for being very thin (even with a slider keyboard), there’s still no sizable library of apps for it to run — and that’s what Cook is referring to.
The iPhone is a true mobile platform, not just a nice piece of standalone hardware. And a platform is something that takes years to build.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: 
