Apple and competition
" Yet what I love about Apple’s strategy is that it is never around what the competition is doing. Apple marches to beat of their own drum. This is fundamentally mis-understood by so many. In fact, Apple’s strategy is best understood within the view that internally they literally believe they have no competition"
While I largely agree with Ben’s point that Apple operates on its own terms, I don’t think they’re completely immune to the (occasional) successes of their competitors. Two recent examples are the iPhone 5’s larger screen and the existence of the iPad Mini, products which Apple(/Jobs?) at once point seemed almost loath to release. But larger phones and (particularly) smaller tablets were trends that appeared to strongly resonate with customers, so much so that the Mini has more or less stolen the big iPad’s thunder (and sales).
That’s not to say that they would have struggled without these products. Apple is in a fairly unique position where people buy an iPhone because it is an iPhone, not necessarily because (or even despite the fact that) it’s a smartphone with a smaller screen. We’ll only really know which it is if Apple chooses to release two differently sized but otherwise equivalent iPhones.