For a very long time, Apple has not operated on the mantra of first-mover advantage, the benefits a company gains by being the first to introduce a new product or service to a market. Before the iPhone, we had Blackberry. Before the iPod, we had Sony Walkman. Before the Apple Watch, there was Pepple. But in all these categories, Apple won. Because Apple is peerless in understanding competitors’ misses and scaling great products.
So, when Apple comes into a category, it improves whatever that is there, scaling and owning the category. In other words, Apple is the grandmaster of first-scaler advantage, the competitive edge gained by the company that achieves the highest level of scale and market dominance within a specific category.
But there is one category that Apple’s playbook may not work if one waits a really long time to begin. That is the AI sector where Apple is well behind leaders like OpenAI, Google and Microsoft. But it seems the company got the memo and wants to win, and there is one asset which has offered Apple a penalty at the injury time of the market soccer competition: “Apple is reportedly in early internal talks about acquiring Perplexity AI—a fast-growing AI-powered search startup—as part of its broader, increasingly urgent push into artificial intelligence.”
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Apple needs to score this penalty if it wants to move to the next phase of this AI competitive era.
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