Apple's strategy: owning our lives

Apple's short and long-term strategy is apparent amid recent news involving the iPhone 5 release and the first high-def Apple TV: own everything we do in life beyond sleeping or eating.

The Cupertino, California technology company earned its way into the lives of so many throughout the world with a bottoms-up strategy, integrating into the lives of consumers so that eventually the company's products are services are not merely tools used in life, but a part of life beyond base tool function.

The revolution that began with strange computers used mostly by graphic designers is now integrated into the daily lives of millions of consumers around the world in most everything they do, and the company aims to take that a bit farther, soon.

Apple's strategy:

Own the delivery tool..

and the distribution source for all content and e-tools. It seemed revolutionary when Apple turned its fortunes some years back with the iPod and iTunes, revolutionizing how music is bought and listened to. Then the company effectively created the app with the iPhone. Now, the company is expected to launch the Apple TV, the high-def product that will fuel what is sure to be a video version of what iTunes has become for music.

Consolidation

Initially tie multiple products together with broad commonality differentiated only by a few but important differences, including size, so the company both creates and controls the fast-emerging world where personal computing and communications merges.

At this point, and into the foreseeable mid-term future gauged by twenty first century tech terms, Apple will drive significant revenue off the multiple products, but quietly all the while the company's biggest strategy will be playing out behind the scenes. As the multiple products come closer together in size and functionality so that consumers may need just one or two instead of three or four, the biggest and longest term money game for Apple is owning the distribution and the delivery mechanism end-to-end for consumers all over the world.

Consider only that a generation of young people today thinks the only way to get anything beyond something to eat or drink is through Apple's app store. And, consider that it's that way in developed countries all over the world.

Apple will own more eventually in terms of content distribution than most of us can conceive.The products make for good corporate profits now, but those will pale in comparison to what the company will get when it owns distribution channels for all content.

Move into global businesses with larger products.

Yes, Apple is winning the lucrative business market the old-fashioned way, by acting like it does not want it at all. Sure, the company plays like it wants business sales, but while the big computer companies like HP and IBM focused on business units the past decade Apple focused almost solely on the customer, from the U.S. to China to India and everywhere in between.

As customers have fallen for Apple products like the iPhone and the iPad head over heels, they are forcing big companies with every passing day to look into technology spending that is Apple based. Reports already suggest that many big companies that are cutting edge with technology and understand the importance of being Apple-based are already working with the company beyond the traditional sales patterns to create the next big thing that's customized inside their brick and mortar and terristial borders.

For most, it's all a lot of absorb. They just want to know what features the Apple TV or the next iPad or iPhone 5 will have, how much it will cost, and when it will be available. But they don't need to worry anyway. Apple's well on the way to doing what it plans to do. Consumers merely have to keep doing what they are doing to make the plan work - buying Apple's products.