There is only so much hardware innovation, there are only so many people on the planet with $600 to spend on a mobile phone.
Apple should really move whole heartedly into services (as evidenced by revenue up 20%); build a gmail / dropbox competitor - stop thinking of itself as a consumer hardware maker, that era is over.
Take watches however, there is no one perfect form - different needs demand different forms. Or cars, or fridges or planes.
So yes it may not be computers, phones or tablets, but the number of multi-billion dollar aspirational hardware products that Apple will be good at is not by any means a large number.
Heh, I remember time when a 4-inch screen was declared was the "perfect" size for a phone (with intentionally malformed Photoshopped thumb-reachability evidence to buttress the argument) and "no one would buy 'the hummers' of phones"
This includes VR/AR, less someone else gets to the the brand reputation throne first (like HTC or Microsoft).
I think HTC's got it for at least a year. It may continue longer. They'd need to do something wrong to lose the lead. MS Hololens is too expensive at the moment to get much reach. And I could make many comments about how Oculus/FB messed up a bit recently. However, I think everyone, including HTC, hopes that Oculus finds its stride again. More competition is better for everyone and will advance VR tech and the market reach faster. Gates and Jobs are on record saying Microsoft, Apple, and the world wouldn't have been as good without each other.
Sure, this is my opinion on the internet. I've no idea if the HTC and Facebook CEOs feel the same way about competition helping each other as Jobs [1] and Gates [2] said. But I imagine those at the top of massive organizations know a few things about being successful that might not be obvious to the rest of us. What Jobs and Gates said does ring true about their history.
Jobs explicitly pointed out that there was a toxic anti-Microsoft attitude at Apple when he returned, and getting rid of that was critical to their success [1].
> Just as its easy for Gates and Jobs to reminisce after the PC boom after the dust has settled, I doubt they were so romantic during.
That's also discussed in the Jobs/Gates interview. There were good and bad times, and historically speaking, they were not always so against each other. MS invested in Apple several times, and Apple took some risk partnering with them. Jobs pointed out Apple (really, himself) wasn't good at partnering with people, but Gates was, and he admired that [3].
[1] https://youtu.be/wvhW8cp15tk?t=23m42s
Apple makes bets too - they just aren't public.
Yeah. This doesn't seem so bad to me. Search has improved tremendously over the years. Things are easier to find. Google is making more content discoverable.
Advertising is arguably the biggest revenue generator for internet tools. Everyone can use things that are free, and companies want to reach everyone. So long as Google is the most frequently visited site in the world, they remain in control of the biggest revenue stream.
One could argue Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat etc. are making up ground by giving people access to more readers than the likes of Blogger or WordPress. These isolated worlds feel a little like AOL's heydays to me. There ought to be an easy way to publish somewhere, then take your content and network and move to another service if you want. At the moment, it's possible but not easy.
I think anyone who makes such an open social network, with easily exportable contacts and content, would find a lot of success. But it's a really hard problem to solve and I understand why this doesn't exist yet.
Most regular people I know enjoy Facebook, and are accustomed to how it works.
I'm curious about where you see the demand?
I enjoy Facebook. I just see opportunity for something next-generation. Also, I disagree with the notion that Facebook will be fine forever as the dominant player in social networking. They are better off with more competition. Gates and Jobs are quoted saying that Microsoft and Apple's existence helped each other become better companies [1] [2], and helped get more useful computers into people's homes and businesses faster.
Gmail offers an export feature of its emails and contacts in formats that are importable by other tools.
Facebook could do this for your friends list. They don't because they've never had competition that provides such a feature.
When internet explorer became free for everyone, Netscape was forced to become free for everyone.
> I'm curious about where you see the demand?
Demand doesn't make or break a new product. There wasn't demand for cars or iPods before they came out.
That's the best I can explain it. If you don't agree that's fine.
I liked your examples of cars or iPods. I agree that as specific solutions there was not demand before the existed, however there was clearly demand for personal transportation and portable music players.
What is the equivalent for portability?
I think that makes my point further. There is demand for social networks
I'll concede that portability may or may not be the next big thing for social networks. Let's speak more generally.
People want better social networks. They want to connect with friends more easily. To be honest, my Facebook feed is improving bit by bit, but it's still not as good or interesting as it could be. My perception is that Facebook is 100% focused on improving the feed, but without competition, we'll never have anyone thinking outside the Facebook box. Mark has the final say on certain strategies, and I think his vision is great, but his company would be even greater if there were another Mark.
Jobs and Gates fed off each other. Their efforts to market computers to the world helped each other's businesses grow faster than they would've grown alone. By borrowing each other's ideas, we got better products. And their employees were constantly on their toes. Google and Facebook are amazing companies and provide more services to their employees today than Apple and MS in the 90s.
However, the same energy isn't there to improve their core products. Google could be much better at machine translation across all languages, which is part of search, for example. In the future, I think they will be. Without another real competitor, they're free to work on whatever side projects please their employees. The core products miss out on advancements that may otherwise arrive sooner.
All of this is fine and I think tech will thrive regardless. The reason I write all that is I believe in churning up ideas from the bottom that might not otherwise find support. I don't think I'm the only one with this idea.
Perhaps this is just a recent revelation for me, and talking about it helps form my thoughts. And maybe I'm wrong about FB. I don't use Snapchat or Instagram etc. My sense is that FB is far ahead.
I sometimes like to think of it as not so much a benefit of competition as a risk for monopoly holders.
For sure. It is also a risk for state-favored companies that hold monopolies inside authoritarian regimes. Their growth will probably be limited to their own country. Without local competition, it may be difficult to make the leap to global competitiveness. This is very theoretical as I have no experience. But I think you can draw some parallels to the way politicians cut their teeth. They begin at the local level and work their way up.
If the market price is lower than intrinsic value, then the buyback is a good idea.
It's not expensive, their cash stockpile is simply being invested in their own company.
> ..propping up the share price to keep Wall Street happy
Apple isn't worried about Wall St, they've always made that clear in their earnings calls.