‘Has To’

This tweet by WSJ reporter Jessica Lessin epitomizes everything that’s wrong with the Journal’s coverage of Apple of late:

New iPhone heads into production soon amid a new reality: Apple has to act more like Samsung if it wants to thrive.

Here’s the story. Now, if it’s true that Apple is heading into production on a new iPhone in the next few months to go on sale in July or thereabouts, it would be a change, insofar as each previous new iPhone has debuted a year or longer after the previous one. And if they unveil another new iPhone this calendar year — a lower-cost model — that would be an even bigger change.

But none of that is exactly Samsung-like, strategically. Samsung’s U.S. website currently lists 145 different cell phones. And Apple did the exact same thing with the iPad last year — a new top-of-the-line model just six months after the iPad 3, and a second lower-cost model in the iPad Mini.

As for “has to”, here are the last two sentences of the report:

Last year, Apple captured nearly two-thirds of the profits in the industry, up from 62% in 2011. Samsung’s share rose to about a third from 19%.

Poor beleaguered Apple, right?

★ Tuesday, 2 April 2013