It's hard to see what compelling offering they could bring having started so late in the game, considering what the pioneers like Google have been doing.
If we're talking about a robust, reliable, commercially successful transportation service, really, nobody is early.
CEOs are talking ~2020, but the roboticists are like 'well, actually there are some fundamental unsolved problems that have to be adressed before level 4 autonomy can be much more than an amusement park ride.'
Google pioneers like Anthony Levandowsky and Chris Urmson are talking 30ish years now before we'll see unmanned cars driving across the country. This may have something to do with why so many google vets have jumped ship over the last year.
Source?
http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self...
Levandowski said “In 30 years, every single new car will be autonomous. That’s completely obvious", so I guess he's a little more optimistic.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/19/self-driv...
There seems to be no change here. Silicon Valley will have autonomous taxis in this decade. You can't guarantee 100% of new cars sold will be autonomous until you have a plan for Calcutta and Barrow, Alaska.
It's certainly possible that at least subsets of highway driving could come much sooner. Which would be useful but you don't get to the whole potentially not own a car until you can self-drive without a human present on most roads under a wide range of conditions.
It's early days in self-driving cars, and Apple has a lot of talent, a ton of cash, and (generally) a huge amount of desire to nail the user experience in ways other companies cannot or will not. Clearly their project is experiencing issues, but I wouldn't count them out.
However, just because that sentiment was wrong in 2006 doesn't mean it's wrong now.
In hindsight, what was important about smartphone isn't what the established companies thought was important. Apple's core competencies translated over extremely well to what was actually important, which turned out to be user experience, full internet access, apps, and such, rather than things like telephony and data frugality which is what the established players concentrated on.
It's possible that the same thing would play out with cars. But I'm skeptical, and I'd want to see some explanation of just what advantages Apple would have, not just "they did it before with phones."
It's also not clear they understand the market or sales environment at all.
(They even guessed the name)
The iPhone is not that different from the Palm Pilot.
They weren't first on MP3 players, smartphones, tablets, online music stores, or smart watches, either.
I'll also add that this is a service economy, and while Apple get accolades for their physical products, even Apple fans say that their service offerings kind of suck.