Tim Cook

Answering questions today at a Goldman Sachs technology conference, Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook talked at length about the company's strategy. But in the process, he sounded at times almost like a professor presenting a case study in opposition to Microsoft's business model, on subjects including hardware integration, mobile phones, retail stores, and just about everything else.

I just finished listening to the online audio playback, and these are some of the comments from Cook that stood out.

On the mobile ecosystem: We believe that we are uniquely positioned to do extremely well in a mobile device world because we can integrate together seamlessly software and hardware. There’s very, very few companies in the world that can do that well. The traditional model, where one company does an operating system, another company does key core apps, another company does hardware really begins to fall apart significantly in a mobile device world. We very much are very happy to be playing in this space.

On the competitive landscape: In Microsoft, we love the Mac Office division. They do a great product, and we partner with them and work with them very tightly. We’ve done that for years, and hope to do it for years more. The balance of Microsoft we compete vigorously against, in operating systems, in mobile operating systems, etc. If you look at Google, I would say that Google is similar in that respect. We partner with them in maps, in search for most of our products, but we also compete with them in the mobile OS space, and now in the hardware phone space. So it’s difficult to put people in one camp or another always.

On growth in the Mac market: We continue to invest an enormous amount of energy and talent in the Mac, because it doesn’t take market growth for us to grow in the Mac. What we have to do is convince Windows users to switch. We can provide a much better experience than they can. Fifty percent of our customers in the Apple Store are from Windows, and so we’re going to continue to go after that, and we think that there’s a lot of growth potential there.

On netbooks: I think they are an experience that most people will not want to continue to have. People were interested in the price, and they got it home and used it, and they went, why did I buy this? I think when somebody looks at the iPad, and plays with it, and experiences the magic of it, and they compare it to a netbook, I find it hard to believe that people are going to buy a netbook. Now, everybody won’t make the comparison, obviously, so I’m not suggesting that.

On Apple's Mac OS: What you’re seeing with Apple is that the Mac OS is amazingly scalable. This is a huge competitive advantage for Apple, because we use the Mac OS from the iPod touch to the new iPad to the iPhone to the Macintosh. And I think there’s no other company on earth that can use the foundation of their OS in such a way. That allows us to innovate an an enormously fast speed with many fewer people than what it would take if we were geographically north. This is a really huge advantage for us. Maybe I should just leave it there.

On the enterprise market: It’s amazing how many CIOs are now visiting Apple and are now interested in the Mac. We don’t have a huge direct sales force for enterprise, but many CIOs that once thought standardization was the most important thing in life, they look at the salaries of people and the importance of having people’s creativity at peak, and they’re increasingly deciding to let the employee decide. Well, this megatrend helps Apple immensely, because many employees have always wanted to use the Mac. I mean, who would not want to select the Mac over a Windows unit? ... In addition to that, Mac OS is well known for being more stable, of having better security, and you get all the ease-of-use features.

On Apple Stores: We went into retail not as a test, not as a pilot, but as a commitment to sell product directly to consumers.

On Apple's M&A strategy: We have never been about being the biggest. We’ve always been about making the best products. Not having the highest market share or the highest revenue. Acquiring something so that our revenue gets larger isn’t something that drives us.