Apple is a great company, at the apex of profitability and success. It has huge markets for its innovative products and millions of satisfied and loyal customers. However, in business the only thing tougher than getting to the top is staying on top, and it will be fascinating watching Apple try to do just that. From Omid Malekan, at omidmalekan.com:
Technological change often comes faster than what the people in it’s thrall can predict. It wasn’t that long ago when you and everyone else you knew were probably using AOL Instant Messenger, around the same time that dude, you were getting a Dell. Then one day you weren’t. Blackberrys used to be so popular that “to bbm” someone made it into the dictionary, but then the devices all but disappeared. These inflection points are seldom based on the companies failing their customers, but rather because consumers simply moved on.
Apple’s success in the past year with the iPhone 6 has been so spectacular that it’s hard not to assume it will go on. Unfortunately that’s usually when the turn starts, without anyone noticing. To question whether the iPhone’s cultural and economic dominance is peaking is not to say that one of its competitors will overtake it, as It wasn’t MSN Messenger or Hewlett Packard that took down the major players of their day, but rather their customers’ apathy. Apple now stands at the same precipice.
The first threat to the iPhone’s ongoing success is the iPhone’s ongoing success. Apple realized long before any of its competitors that portable technology is as much a fashion item as it is a gadget, and marketed its products accordingly. But now that so many different kinds of people own an iPhone, it’s no longer cutting edge fashion. Being popular in the tech world might feed on itself, but being too popular in fashion is dangerous.
The second threat to the iPhone, and smartphones in general, is the success Apple and its competitors have had in cramming every imaginable feature into the latest devices. Today’s iterations are more like “a computer in your pocket” than a communication device, and that’s a liability. Once smartphones become little computers then the only improvements left to be made are incremental. The next model will be a bit faster and have a better camera, but what it probably won’t have is a revolutionary feature that will dramatically shift user experience. There was a time in the PC business where the release of every new Windows version or Intel processor was a milestone and a boost to sales, but the changes eventually became incremental, and it was PC makers who paid the price.
To continue reading: Have We Reached Peak Apple?
