Why are Apple & Google winning?

  • They understand the impact of performance on users’ decision making.
  • Google is passionate about fast response times and good performance of all of their systems.
  • Apple is consumed with producing the best quality and highest performing devices.

Why is Microsoft losing?

  • MS software performs poorly.
  • They accept poor performance as “good enough”.
  • MS’s culture is hanging onto outmoded user expectations regarding performance.

Today’s Tech Leaders Understand Performance


Google is winning because they place a very high priority on performance. They are impressive because they are possessed with being fast.

Their search engine has always been the speed demon, and that appealed to all of us…not just geeks, but even my mom can tell the difference. She recently made Chrome her default browser because it runs so much faster.

I’ve been impressed with Google’s engineers because they invest in speeding up everything. They even give away cool performance tools like PageSpeed in order to help the whole world make sites faster.

They not only provide tools for Chrome, but they also have PageSpeed Insights for Firefox. It sure seems to me that high performance is a pervasive part of the Google culture.

Have you heard of Google Now? It’s the Android competitor to Apple’s Siri. The latest advancements in voice recognition and functionality to make it useful. Well, here is another example of Google’s passion for performance. Google Now is fast. BusinessInsider interviewed Hugo Barra, Google’s Android product manager who reported that his team spent months shaving seconds off the response time. The early reports from users indicate it’s very fast – “nearly instantaneous” according to BusinessInsider.

Would you argue that performance is not key to Google’s DNA? Isn’t it a key reason they are so successful? Performance = Google.

I’m convinced their engineers are some of the best and brightest on the planet, and they understand that speed sells. Performance = business success. Performance = technology leadership.

Apple has surpassed MS in company value and is the leader in technology. Apple has always taken a different approach and has shown how to be a driver in the global tech industry by employing integrated strategies between software and hardware. Performance is greatly enhanced by optimizing all the parts of the technology (e.g. iPhone) together.

Sales of smart phones and tablets are exceeding traditional computers, and the tightly constrained resources of mobile devices demand performance tuning that is enabled by hardware/software integration.

Not only the device, but also websites and cloud applications must run fast with fewer glitches. That’s one of the key reasons why Apple’s iCloud has been such a big success with the masses. It works well. It is fast. It performs up to expectations for a world full of impatient users.

Forbes recently declared, The End Of Microsoft … As We Know It, and I believe the unwritten reason is that people are finally getting fed up with the poor performance of MS software.Microsoft was the leader in a PC world, but we are rapidly moving to a POST-PC world. MS dominated by focusing on the OS layer of the PC value chain with no true integration to hardware. Windows set all the records in software industry revenue, but it was never a good performer. It was always slower and more crash-prone than any of the UNIX flavors, or IBM mainframe OS, or DEC VAX/VMS, etc. It succeeded wildly because of superior marketing (price, promotion) – not from being a good performer.

More users today are too opting to pay more to get more. They are too sophisticated now to fall for the cheaper is better approach. I’ll pay an extra $1,000 for a Mac, and I’ll come out way ahead in the long run because I will be more productive. The ROI on good performance is obvious to me.

Buyers Demand High Performance

End users are expecting high performance. They are impatient. Buyers will spend more for better performance. Buyers have already turned the corner on hardware/software (Windows) that crashes. I’m so over the Blue Screen of Death!! I threw away my Vista machine after about 20 blue screens and bought a Mac. I’ve been thrilled because of the significantly better performance.

We won’t spend our money on slow devices with buggy apps. We won’t wait more than 3 seconds for a site to display.

In fact, studies have shown there is a direct correlation between buyer behavior and the speed of a website. One second makes a big difference!!

One second can cost you 7% of your revenue? Well, that’s not exactly what the statistic says, but if you do some simple math on your revenue figures relative to your traffic numbers, it won’t take long for you to get a good estimate on how much money a slight delay on your site will cost you.

Performance = real money.

The new post-PC world is exciting because we are getting useful devices where the components work together to enable the best performance. That makes everyone happy. It makes more money for the companies that make high performance a high priority. It shows clearly in how Google and Apple are dominating the tech industry. It also shows in how Microsoft is declining.

Performance sells. The winners are proving beyond all doubt that performance is a key strategic differentiator. And the competitive advantage gained from performance performance is certainly not limited to phones or tablets.

Performance = winners.

Websites and web applications that are faster make more money. It’s a fact.

If you haven’t yet incorporated performance into your business strategy, then I urge you to do so. Good performance is a competitive advantage.

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