CoolTechZone::Column: Apple’s Strategy Behind ROKR

CoolTechZone::Column: Apple’s Strategy Behind ROKR: "He doesn’t want a cell phone that doubles as an MP3 player to become too popular as that would cut straight into Apple’s bread and butter product, the iPod."

hmm, if this is true, then Apple's demise may be much quicker in coming than I originally thought. (Just so everyone knows, I don't actually want Apple to die. I would actually prefer that they turn into an even better company).

If Apple is unwilling to cut it's legs out from under itself to branch into a market it knows will be successful (a marriage between the phone and the ipod) then it will lose it's ability to remain an innovative, visionary company.

Here is something Steve doesn't get.

"You're not the first, nor the last person to come up with <insert idea here>."

Steve's talk about how lucky we are as an industry because he dropped out of college and took a caligraphy class illustrates this gap in Steve's vision. Of course somebody else would've come up with the idea to put publishing quality fonts and graphics on the PC. Others would've seen the potential and acted on it. Apple was simply the first out of the gate.

Apple has a significant leg up in this whole portable music player war, but they need to face the fact that it is a war. The other side has been lobbing softballs at them, but some up and coming company could come out with a killer implementation of a Phone/Music player combo that simply kills any other combo.

Now this is all based on some random website's conjecture about Apple's motives. Maybe their A-team was working on the ipod nano and the B-team was working on the ROKR... or maybe they left the specification of the product up to motorola and did nothing more than license their look and feel and access to ITMS.