Whenever you take two companies that appear to be rivals of one another, this is usually because of the fact that they are operating in the same industry as each other. As this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up making them compete for the same set of customers, many companies end up tackling their marketing campaigns and projected future projects by basing them off those of their arch rivals and you can see this in many industries that are currently doing business all around the world at this current point in time.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it
is important to note that not all rivalries are going to be quite as simply.
The feud between Apple and Facebook, for example, is very different from what
Coke and Pepsi have going on. For one thing, they don’t really offer similar
products. Facebook provides a social media platform that earns money through
ads. Apple, on the other hand, creates and sells smartphones and other kinds of
devices. The two rarely ever need to compete for the same set of customers. Why,
then, do they seem to dislike each other to this extent?
This rivalry might a deeper meaning than the normal
corporate rivalries that we tend to see on the regular basis. Apple and
Facebook just have very different philosophies. Apple doesn’t like the fact
that Facebook cares so little about the privacy of its users and that it
profits so much from its users without them knowing how they are being used.
Facebook, on the other hand, criticizes Apple as a seller of overpriced goods
that depreciate quickly and that Apple’s criticisms of Facebook’s platform have
more to do with its own interests rather than any genuine regard for the
various consumers that might be out there.
What’s more is that Apple seems to be actively trying to
make it difficult for Facebook to conduct business in the manner that it has
been for so many years. Part of this is their app tracking transparency
initiative which gives users more control over whether or not they want to let
a company like Facebook access all of their personal data. Facebook has been
thoroughly incensed by this, claiming that such a move would greatly reduce its
profit margins and make it difficult for advertisers to put out effective ads.
Photo: Damien Meyer/Agence France-presse/Getty Images
