Apple Ecosystem

Apple is a well known American technology company which designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software and online services. Yes, almost every tech lover knows what Apple is and what it is capable of. When considering about their customer base Apple has the most loyal customers ever. There are a few reasons behind that loyalty such as usability, consistency, hardware quality, and also the ecosystem they have created or the giant wall that they have built around their brand. So what is this ecosystem?

The general definition of the ecosystem is, a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment. So what is Apple’s ecosystem?

Apple manufactures a variety of tech devices to cater to a variety of consumer needs and they create a tenacious link among those devices. Here is a list of Apple products or the agents of this Apple ecosystem. iPhone, Apple Mac, Apple Watch, Ipad, Ipod, Homepod, Apple TV, Airpods and a range of accessories. These devices are capable of catering to almost every potential technological desire a consumer may have. While manufacturing a  range of hardware products they develop a range of proprietary software such as Airplay, Airdrop, ICloud, Apple music, iMessage, Apple continuity etc.

So how do these proprietary technologies help in creating the Apple ecosystem? These technologies are the binding agents or the things that link all these hardware devices and keep them enwrapped in the Apple brand.

So this is how they create the Apple ecosystem, the most successful technological ecosystem in existence. Apple has a range of products with the potential to cater to a wide range of consumer technological needs or smart needs of the 21st century and they have created an interrelationship among those products. So if someone owns an iPhone he/she should have a range of other Apple devices and services enabled on their device to get the maximum benefit of features available in that handset. As an example, to get the maximum use of the health app ( the default app which comes with iPhone) the consumer should have an Apple watch too to get the hardware support required by the app to function properly and provide the expected service to the consumer. Another example is iMessage and facetime, these two services are exclusively available to Apple users. Simply, those who are in the outside of the Apple ecosystem cannot access it. These services work together with Apple Mac, IWatch, iPhone and also with the iPod.

Someone can easily access these services with any of those devices and access the same content with the help of Apple ID which they are using to sign in to their devices. Another strategy they have used since the beginning is the file sharing method among devices, they have clearly limited the file sharing by allowing to share files only among Apple devices so they have built a fence between Apple devices and non-Apple devices.  Even the hardware accessories like chargers and earbuds are specifically designed to work only with Apple devices. So these accessories are not compatible with other devices and other standard accessories are not compatible with Apple devices. Likewise, they have their own solutions which are only applicable in their ecosystem and not for outsiders, their own music streaming service (Apple Music), cloud storage (iCloud), file sharing service (Airdrop) etc. Those are only few examples out of the many things that they do to nurture their ecosystem. So who you are in this Apple ecosystem if you are already an Apple consumer?

If you are already an Apple consumer who just has two or more of their sophisticated devices, you are very much likely to be trapped inside their ecosystem. A person having only Apple devices will only see the things inside that ecosystem and not the things beyond those great walls or the boundaries which Apple has built. As an example, if Apple ecosystem is a beautiful small island in the great ocean with almost every facility in it but no way to step outside of that island, yes the people who live in it are kind of trapped inside but with peace because they are provided with almost everything they need to survive.

There is a giant wall built around that island to make sure no one will try to escape or to discover what is beyond those walls. So the people on that island will only know about what is in there and nothing about the rest of the world or the capabilities of the rest of the world. Apple loyal customers are pretty much the same as these people on this island. They will only know about what Apple is, what they are capable of and what technologies exist in them. They will never experience the great technologies outside that great wall. So it is your choice whether to be trapped inside an island or to discover/experience the whole world out there.