What tends to happen in these cases if the purchaser wants to lose a customer is that they increase the costs to an unreasonable level.

Apple are not known for treating their customers like that.

They will most likely incorporate the technology into their current and future product offerings .

Orla I know a small software company that uses third party software in their product. The third party company was bought by a major software company. The cost of the third party product was increased by a factor of 16, making it uneconomical for the small company to continue with the product. Why did it happen, because the major player has a very expensive competitive product to the third party one. So they price it out of the market and try and force others to migrate to their product.

I doubt it. IBM were past masters of the art until they were (rather duplicitously) outmaneuvered by a smaller and more agile Microsoft. Who in their turn used their considerable corporate clobber to make footnotes of the likes of Digital Research and Novell. Intel for quite some time pushed Dell around regarding pricing on their processors to prevent AMD getting a foothold in the market until Dell became big enough in their own right to tell them where to get off. This stuff is par for the course in an notoriously dog-eat-dog industry.

Also, it’s highly unfortunate that these practices have resulted in some really innovative companies with great products either never getting a foot in or ending up being gobbled by larger entities. For an interesting read, check out Steve Job’s venture during his solo stint, NeXT

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT

Interesting how Apple, since the demise of Steve Jobs, have quietly but quite quickly changed certain policies. The first was paying dividends on shares, something Steve Jobs would have blocked every step of the way. And now openly buying technology from outside the company. Not that Jobs didn’t do this, but it was all low-key and a little shame-faced. Jobs wasn’t a fan if strategic partnerships, it diluted the Apple “philosophy”. I’m not saying the post-Jobs Apple are not clever in the choices they’re making, but the company is changing into something other than it was five years ago.

@ The Lost Lenore – I wouldn’t say the technologies NeXT developed were denied the market they deserved. Once Hobs was brought back into the Apple fold, NeXT came with him. From iMac days on, all of Apple’s software, mac and I device, is based on the platform originally developed by NeXT. There’s also the point if view that Jobs bought intoand nurtured Pixar purely to have their output as a showcase for what NeXT’s systems could do. All in all, NeXT had a huge impact for their shirt lifetime.

Jobs not Hobs – a better iphone keyboard wouldn’t be an unwelcome upgrade…

Very true. The real genius behind Apple in latter years was, I think, the concept that after the sale the device could continue to bring in significant revenue for the manufacturer throughout its lifetime and furthermore almost ensure the user would opt for the next generation of the product. My main gripe with Apple is the rapid built-in obsolescence. With a bit of tweaking and a few upgrades I can still use a PC made around the time Bill Clinton left office for most internet, social media and business software. Not so with Apple – the original iPad, we’re told, won’t support the new version of iOS. Specification-wise of course it could, just Apple decide they don’t want it to.

I’ve been a fan of Apple’s products for over twenty years ( bar the dark days spanning the nineties ) and I’ve always been very impressed by the design and build quality of most of what they sell. I’m also amazed at how savvy that have become in how they generate revenue, you’ve already highlighted two if these; forced upgrading of hardware to match software and revenue-generating after sales services, but I never know if I should be in awe or disgusted. Clever? Yes. Nice? Absolutely not. It’s very clever how they’ve presented themselves as “human” and “creatively iconoclastic” when in fact they are a corporate steamroller who now dwarfs IBM and ( possibly ) Microsoft. The Rebel Alliance morphs into the Imperial Empire, but people still think they’re the good guys.