Mossberg on Apple’s ‘End-to-End’ Strategy

Walter Mossberg speculates that Apple’s end-to-end product design strategy — where they design and control everything from the hardware to the software — is a better overall strategy than the open component model typically championed by Microsoft (and the model of the personal computer industry).

This line has drawn a lot of attention:

Now, Apple is working on other projects built on the same end-to-end model as the iPod: a media-playing cellphone and a home-media hub.

in that it doesn’t read like he’s speculating, but rather it reads like he’s revealing something he knows as fact.

I continue to believe that the best reason to believe that Apple is going to do a mobile phone is that (a) you know Steve Jobs uses a mobile phone; and (b) there’s not a single existing mobile phone that’s good enough to make Jobs happy.

★ Friday, 12 May 2006