http://tidbits.com/article/12856
Apple is consistently criticized by pundits, bloggers, other firms, and market analysts for either innovating too much with initial releases (the MacBook Air, the iPhone, and the iPad, notably) or too little in subsequent product revisions. There’s a reason for that.
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Apple isn’t selling the third-generation iPad to those who bought an iPad 2. Rather, Apple is targeting both new customers and owners of the first-generation iPad. That’s a key differentiation between Apple and most other hardware companies.
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Apple makes its money over the long term not just by introducing disruption, which would mean flash-in-the-pan products that spark and then fizzle, but by seeing disruption through into stable releases, each with significant improvements that appear to be incremental to a product’s design and capabilities.
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Firms like Dell, Lenovo, Motorola (clearing regulatory approval to be acquired by Google), Nokia, and Samsung, to name just a few, typically make very little money on each device sold, whether a desktop, laptop, smartphone, or tablet. This low-margin approach requires that they restrict expensive innovation on the devices that make up the bulk of their sales, or they might end up losing money on each unit sold. Because these firms have locked themselves into a race to produce the cheapest product (whether sold directly or via a cell carrier), their products are rarely future-proofed with sufficient RAM, storage, processor speed, graphical processing, and displays. You can of course find exceptions — and they cost more than the majority of the products that these companies sell.
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Those competing with Apple have to advertise every new device and computer as being substantially different enough to justify a quicker upgrade cycle. If Apple makes $400 from a low-end MacBook Air that might be in use for five years, and Dell makes $50 (after paying Microsoft for Windows) for a low-end laptop, how quickly does Dell need to sell that person another device? During those five years, Apple might get $29 two or three times for updates to Mac OS X; Dell gets nothing from any Windows upgrades. Apple may also now reap additional dollars from Mac App Store purchases, too. Dell? Nothing.
