Why Apple's Dominance Is Now History
It used to be that Apple stood for innovation. Customers paid a steep premium for bleeding edge tech that wowed the crowds and consumers were only too pleased to pull out their wallet to buy another iPod that held 10,000 songs in a small form factor or an iPhone that could do things no other phone would.
iPod Innovation
When the first iPod came out it was at a time when few people connected the dots of what was possible when portable hard drives got down to smaller sizes. No one was thinking of slapping together a small screen, some controls and turning that hard drive into a digital walkman. Steve Jobs did that. And they sold and sold.
iPhone Beats BlackBerry
BlackBerry owners who often nicknamed their device “crackberry” because they couldn't seem to put it down were thrown when the iPhone showed up. It had a larger screen, it was more colorful and it could do much more than the BlackBerry could. BlackBerry still hasn't recovered from the decimation of their market share.
iPad Impresses
The iPad was another great innovation. Microsoft had failed to get Windows tablets to take off because they were too large, too clunky and with software that needed advanced hardware to even run it as Windows always had at that time and it could be stated still does today.
The first iPad lacked the pizazz of the Retina display which didn't come to the tablet until the 3rd generation, but it still was impressive. The iOS software was newer and simple to understand and snappy. Apple coded enough of its own software to not have to rely so much on third party apps at the start, but created an app eco system that they could make money from as well.
No one had ever seen anything like the iPad. When the iPad 3 came along with Retina display, the clarity of the screen was unrivaled. It took two more years before Android-based tablets even came close to matching the same resolution. The iPad was in a class of its own.
Fast Forward
Over the last 12-18 months, the iPhone market share has been retarded by the monster advance of Android and to a far lesser extent, Windows Phone. What once was a dominant position is now no more.
Android buyers have been clambering for larger and larger phones over the past 18 months. Screens around 3.5-inches were the norm, then it went to 4-inches, then 5-inches and then the phablet arrived with 5.5-inch and larger screens. This was dismissed as a fad by the Apple faithful but the Samsung Galaxy Note range outsold all estimates and established its own category. Three updated editions have followed with the Galaxy Note 4 due out shortly.
Handsets generally have been increasing in size even if our hands haven't grown larger to accommodate them. Apple responded meekly with a bump up to a 4-inch form factor for the iPhone 5 and a 640p display. Meanwhile other manufacturers were barely even making 4-inch phones any more. People wanted bigger and higher resolutions. The latest Android phones sport 1,440p resolutions; 1080p is so last year.
It took Apple two full years to respond to this need and finally release two larger iPhones, the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus. These phones possess 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch screens which barely breach the 720p HD standard for the smaller one and match the 1080p HD standard for the Plus (size) model. As some commentators have mused, this is like paying double the price for last year's technology.
iPad Miscue
The iPad hasn't been updated much between recent versions. The same Retina display is present, the main processor is still only dual-core and the RAM is still only 1 GB. Android tablets already comfortably exceed the resolution of the once fabled Retina display, run on quad-core processors and have 2 GB or 3 GB of RAM installed.
iWatch or Apple Watch
The Apple Watch has been rumored and much discussed for months now. It was roundly referred to in the media as the iWatch. It would have been a simple matter to adopt this common vernacular but no, Apple are calling it the Apple Watch instead. People are still referring to it as the iWatch. Go figure.
The watch itself has many different straps but just like how the iPhone with its small battery is virtually tied to a power socket to keep it running (a fact Samsung have made fun of in a series of TV advertising), the Apple Watch cannot do much without a trusty iPhone nearby. It has no GPS chip so it cannot know where you're located as you go and exercise. As a device that's partly focused on health apps that's really pretty strange. It also rules out buyers who might like to buy the watch but don't own the iPhone.
Samsung by comparison have already released several wearable products in their Gear range. The latest Gear S has an attractive curved screen, nice straps and shock.. horror.. a GPS and cellular chip to connect it to the outside world. Oh, and owning an Android phone as well is op-tion-al.
You Call iOS Software?
And don't even get me started on the latest iOS version. The operating system that has long been dismissed because of its simplicity, lack of widgets or home screens. The latest version still doesn't let iPhone or iPad users create their own home screens, but it does add widgets to the notification tray.
People should be able to buy your products and customize them however they wish to use them. iOS is highly restrictive and only really designed for beginners to use. Anyone more advanced wants to be able to customize their user experience.
Future Does Not Look Bright
It used to be that when Apple announced their latest products, the stock rose, the crowd went wild and the company instantly had new market-leading tech toys to sell. With their latest event on September 9, the iPhones offered inferior technology a year out of date, an iOS that still isn't any better and an Apple Watch that won't even be out until sometime in 2015. Samsung, Sony and others have had wearable technology on the market for over a year now.
Apple is getting left behind in the dust and the stock price tanked when the new products were announced; far fewer people are drinking the Apple kool aid any more including the stock brokers.
