Despite competing in the same markets, John Martellaro believes Amazon could never be like Apple. According to Martellaro, one company is trying to get people to spend as much money as they can while the other is trying to empower the human race and is being handsomely rewarded for it.
[su_quote cite=”John Martellaro” url=”http://www.thestreet.com/story/12758588/1/amazon-can-never-be-like-apple-no-matter-how-hard-it-tries.html”]The self-admitted basic business model of the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Fire smartphones is to reduce the friction when shopping. That’s another more polite way of saying that Amazon would like to seize the individual’s executive function disguised as convenience.
The long-term effect of this kind of intervention cannot be favorable for a company, no matter how good it makes the bottom line look in the short term. That’s because it flies in the face of what people consider more important than spending, and that’s human responsibility. A rough analogy is a bartender who keeps on selling a customer strong drinks late into the night because it’s good for business. Then the customer drives home — with predictable results.
Good stewardship of a credit card, a family’s well-being (and a family’s privacy) seem to be eroding, but the good news is the pendulum will eventually swing back. That’s because the concept that a corporation can seize more and more of a customer’s weatlth until the customer has nothing and the corporation owns everything cannot endure without destroying the very fabric of the society that made the original business model possible.
And Then There’s Apple
Apple has had quite a different history than Amazon. The passion of Steve Jobs (and now Tim Cook) to use technology to make our lives better, to reside at the intersection of the technology and the humanities, means Apple has a different business model for selling hardware. Apple isn’t trying to sell stuff for the sake of commercial success. Apple sells things that allow us to be more human, more empowered and have more dignity. For that, Apple is embraced and rewarded financially.[/su_quote]