A Look at Apple’s Many Competitive Feuds at Home and Abroad

By Don Reisinger

Google is Apple’s biggest concern on several fronts. For one, the companies are competing in the mobile market with their operating systems, application stores, mobile payment applications and more. Apple hasn’t forgotten Steve Jobs’ vow to wage “nuclear war” against Google for creating Android in competition with iOS. Now, Apple has fired a rhetorical shot across Google’s bow over its collection of user data. Apple and Google cannot stand each other, and it doesn’t appear that will be changing any time soon.

Apple CEO Tim Cook wasn’t just singling out Google in his comments about data privacy and security. In fact, he has been quite outspoken on the point over the past few months and has made reference to Facebook without mentioning the company’s name. Apple believes Facebook shares the onus of collecting user information for its own business gains, and Tim Cook wants the world to know it.

It’s well-known that Samsung is one of Apple’s most hated competitors. The companies were locked in bitter patent disputes around the world for years and have been jockeying back and forth for the top spot in the smartphone market. Each year, Samsung and Apple try to one-up each other on hardware, and with the announcement of Samsung Pay, they are now rivals on yet another front—mobile payments. Watch out.

While there have been periods of cooperation between Microsoft and Apple, the two companies have been intense rivals on many fronts for more than 30 years. The companies compete with each other in desktop operating systems, of course, but are also facing off in the mobile market. The competition between Apple and Microsoft will likely heat up in the coming months as Microsoft deploys Windows 10 and vies to slow the gains Mac sales have made in the corporate and consumer markets.

Spotify may be in for trouble in the coming weeks. The company, which offers a music-streaming service, is reportedly in Apple’s cross hairs. The iPhone maker is reportedly working on a streaming music service that will compete with Spotify and has reportedly asked record labels to stop working with the streaming service. If that’s true, Spotify could have a tough road ahead.

If Spotify is in trouble with Apple and its impending streaming service, Pandora could be in even worse shape. Although the company has attracted millions to its streaming service, Spotify is starting to gain in popularity. If a new Apple streaming service launches successfully, customers could quickly move from Pandora to Apple and a two-way battle between the iPhone maker and Spotify could erupt. Pandora, meanwhile, will be left to pick up the scraps. That’s not a good thing.

Xiaomi is a thorn in Apple’s side in China. The company has been able to boost sales in the Chinese domestic mobile market by offering products that mimic the look and feel of Apple’s smartphones. Xiaomi has also generated the level of excitement for its products in Asia unlike anything seen from a company not named Apple. Xiaomi is now slowly but surely making its way to other markets and has opened an online marketplace for the United States. Xiaomi is a threat to Apple in China and could very well become a threat to the company elsewhere in the future.

Although just about every PC maker is trying to catch up with Apple’s increasingly popular Macs, Hewlett-Packard is arguably doing the best job of it. HP offers a range of products that appeal to enterprise customers and consumers, and Apple cannot beat its pricing. What’s more, HP offers high-end all-in-one PCs that have been compared favorably to iMacs. HP is really the only company that has been able to at least come close to keeping pace with Apple in the PC space.

When it comes to Amazon, the battle with Apple is being waged on multiple fronts. On the mobile front, the companies are competitors in the smartphone and tablet markets, though Apple is winning handily. Amazon, however, has a compelling set-top box in the Fire TV that provides stiff competition to the Apple TV. Look for the Amazon-Apple war to heat up as Apple delivers a new Apple TV and Amazon responds with its own new alternative.

Tesla may seem like an odd choice here, but the company is actually a major concern for Apple. According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, his company has hired dozens of prominent Apple engineers to help it develop its electric car technology. Apple has become so concerned with the hirings that it has tried to poach Tesla employees with its own rich hiring packages. For what? Apple isn’t saying, but reports suggest the company is considering building an electric car.