Shattered Alliances – The Quest for Profits

Alliances in the technological industry is one of the latest casualties for in the increasing Quest for Profits.

 

The tech market is full of monopolies of big corporations and at times these big corporations need to stick together to overtake another power player or to just create max profit. The total basis of these alliances is excellent in the beginning. Who wouldn’t want to take a huge cut of the money pie? Alliances almost always crumble however when money and greed take over. In this article we will systematically go through some alliances that were formed and in the blink of the eye broken.
When Apple first launched their iPhone and original iOS they wanted to not only give the user a cellular phone but one powerful enough to act as your own personal assistant. That being said maps where quickly incorporated as Apple wanted to make the user experience easier and rival such things as car GPS (Tomtom, Garmin, Magellan, etc). Apple did not want to invest the money into creating their own map system. Lucky for Apple, Google had produced Google Maps and they teamed up to allow Apple to incorporate Google Maps into Apple’s iOS. This was a win-win at first because Google could promote themselves to the millions of people gearing up to buy the iPhone and Apple would not only be able to boast its new phone up even more but indirectly enter a new market. Of course all good things come to an end. Apple eventually got greedy because Google was not only showing off their brand with the Google Maps app but, also had their own phones and operating system (Android). Apple could not live with the fact that costumers could “jump ship” and did not want to show Google as a partner any longer. Thus Apple kicked Google Maps out of their App store and is now set to release Apple Maps.

These Tech wars really do not just affect tech companies; in fact even major retailers are getting pulled into the battle. When Amazon launched the Kindle series of e-book readers, users around the world rejoiced about having a new and more convenient way to read and carry their books. So Kindle sales started to climb and we had the birth of the E-book era. At first major retailers all around wanted to carry the E-book readers, specifically the Kindles. So Amazon being a smart company allowed it to be done. They’d make more money out of it this way and for the stores people would start to come in and become customers. The issue with this became people were purchasing Kindles more online and not only that but where purchasing a wide variety of other products online from such places as Amazon. Physical retailers lost costumers and started to turn into a showroom for Amazon. Retailers began to get angry. To hurt the sales of the Kindle and thus the online retailers (in this case Amazon), Target decided to stop selling Kindles. Target really lost nothing out of this as people were not buying Kindles from them and they were able to stop promoting a competitor in Amazon.

 
With Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating systems getting ready for release we have seen them do something they have never really done on a mass market before – use their own parts and sell the finished pieces themselves. Microsoft has seen Apple succeed with such products as the iPad and has now decided to enter the tablet market on their own. Instead of relying on major parts makers like Dell, HP, Asus they have decided to go out and make their own tablet to compete with their own parts. With the introduction of this new tablet called the Microsoft Surface Tablet we are seeing some of Microsoft’s greatest allies turning their heads. The release of this tablet could jeopardize the existence of some of these parts and computer makers if Microsoft decides to go in the route of Apple and build a computers and tablets with a majority of their own parts. Not only could this hurt relations with manufactures, if they decide to sell it only at Microsoft Stores or Microsoft’s website this could lead to a heavy impact on retailers.

 
As you can see alliances are being broken left and right, not because they are not working or because something is wrong but the fact that these corporations will turn on each other first chance they get. In the end it is about the money.