Linked List: July 8, 2014

Tuesday, 8 July 2014

Apple Hires Sales Executive From Tag Heuer ★

Vanessa Friedman, reporting for the NYT:

Just as the couture shows really get underway in Paris, an executive from LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, a.k.a. the biggest French luxury group (and, for that matter, the biggest luxury group in the world), has been lured away from the fashion capital to the technology capital of Silicon Valley. Patrick Pruniaux, until last week sales vice president for Tag Heuer, one of LVMH’s most successful watch brands, is this week joining Apple in an unspecified role. […]

Certainly Mr. Pruniaux’s appointment solidifies the theory that Apple is looking to the luxury market for strategic and aesthetic know-how. He becomes the third luxury executive to jump sectors since last year, after Paul Deneve of YSL and Angela Ahrendts of Burberry (now Apple’s head of retail and online stores).

I’d include Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre in that group — not because I think Beats is a “luxury” brand, but because I don’t think luxury is the right word to explain these hires. It’s about taste, style, and branding. In one word: fashion.

The iPhone is nothing like Vertu, and whatever new products Apple is coming out with won’t be either. (Beats isn’t like Vertu either — I see people wearing Beats on the street every day. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone using a Vertu phone.)

Lettersapp.com Domain Name Auction for App Camp for Girls ★

A good domain name (R.I.P.) and a great cause.

Smart Devices/Dumb Cloud vs. Dumb Devices/Smart Cloud ★

Benedict Evans:

I’ve said before that Apple’s approach is about a dumb cloud enabling rich apps while Google’s is about devices as dumb glass that are endpoints of cloud services. That’s going to lead to rather different experiences, and to ever more complex discussions within companies as to what sort of features they create across the two platforms and where they place their priorities. It also changes somewhat the character of the narrative that the generic shift of computing from local devices to the cloud is a structural problem for Apple, since what we mean, exactly, when we say ‘cloud’ on smartphones needs to be unpicked rather more.

Nailed it. My only quibble is that Evans addresses the future of smartphones specifically, whereas I think this applies to all computing devices, regardless of size.

Ben Thompson: ‘Smartphone Truths and Samsung’s Inevitable Decline’ ★

Great piece by Ben Thompson:

Ultimately, though, Samsung’s fundamental problem is that they have no software-based differentiation, which means in the long run all they can do is compete on price. Perhaps they should ask HP or Dell how that goes.

Actually, it’s even worse than that. Samsung does offer its own software: TouchWiz, etc. But the overwhelming consensus from reviewers is that Samsung’s add-ons to Android make the system worse, not better. Samsung sees the need for software differentiation, but to date they’ve proven incapable of doing it well.

In fact, it turns out that smartphones really are just like PCs: it’s the hardware maker with its own operating system that is dominating profits, while everyone else eats themselves alive to the benefit of their software master.

Relevant piece from the DF archive, circa 2009: “Herd Mentality”.