Hello there, great piece but respectfully disagree on one key point.
The iPhone is not their greatest business, the App Store is.
Case in point, I wonder how much the iPhone would have grown if Steve Jobs had stuck with his original intent and kept the iPhone closed to third party apps? If that crucial decision had not been overturned, the iPhone would have been merely a top-of-the-line genre-bending communication device rather than a gateway to the most explosive expenditure of creative and entrepreneurial energies ever put forth by humanity.
Guess we’ll never know what that alternative universe would look like.
Or will we?
I argue that all of the products that have come since have paled in comparison not so much as products but as platforms in that they have failed to spur a similarly explosive expenditure of creative energies.
In order to capture the next tsunami of creative energies, Apple needs to look further ahead of the curve and make a bet as to what the next fundamental shift in human interaction and/or behavior will be.
Where they once anticipated these curves exceptionally well, their flawless record is beginning to catch up with them:
- With the iMac, they bet that cohesive design and seamless user experience would trump raw functionality and customizability (but they missed the convergence of these desktop devices with mobile)
- With iTunes, they bet that we will download music (and other media) instead of buy it physically (but they missed that we will now stream it)
- With the iPhone, they bet that our mobile devices would be the new center of our personal “digital lifestyles” (but they almost missed the importance of third party apps to realize that potential)
- I think in essence, you are asking, where should they place their next bet?
In my humble opinion, to focus on the next big consumption device (i.e. iPad, Apple TV, and Apple Watch) would be to miss the forest through the trees.
The game-changer they need to identify lies not in new ways to consume (don’t just build a thinner, bigger, touchier smartscreen), the key lies in new ways to create (build a better “you”).
Hate to say it, but these platforms are coming, just not from Apple. Whether it is Facebook’s Oculus, or the follow-on to the original ill-fated Google Glass or even, dare i say it, Microsoft’s Hololens?! Other companies are placing their bets on new modes of interaction and creativity, not just new means of consumption.
Meanwhile, Apple seems content to churn out ever thinner and ever fancier iPhones. I don’t blame them, they need to feed the beast.
However, they can’t play this game forever! They need to stop playing conservative (shoot, they have $billions of chips to place on the board every quarter as you pointed out) and to confidently express their own point of view as to where humanity is going next. If they’re wrong then at least be confidently wrong.
Is it going to be self-driving cars? Maybe. If they are betting this is simply a new mode of transportation, then that’s not going to spur legions of developers to stir their creatives juices. However, if they envision the car as the next “mobile productivity space,” kind of like a mobile command center on wheels, then maybe they have a chance.
For their sake, I hope they are betting on the latter.
