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Paul Saunders, 24th September 2012

Has Apple Jumped the Shark?

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The news has been ablaze for the past week with the release of Apple’s flagship product the iPhone 5 and the often maligned iOS6 update. I’ve heard the debate from several users as to whether Apple’s best days are behind them. Here’s my take on the reasons some believe Apple has jumped the shark.

Underwhelming Product Updates

The iPhone 5 certainly doesn’t knock your socks off as a radical new product. Indeed there is little reason to upgrade from the iPhone 4S to the iPhone 5. Apple doubters have pointed out that there hasn’t been a single product launch since the death of Steve Jobs last year that has really wowed the market. The iPhone 5 is certainly an incremental updates rather than a revolutionary new product. Having said that, the public is still willing to queue for days for the device and pre-sales have outperformed all previous versions of the iPhone.

iOS6 Fiasco

Much has been made of the step back in user experience that was brought about by Apple dropping Google’s YouTube and Maps apps from iPads and iPhones with the release of iOS6. Certainly the Apple Maps product is half baked to say the least. However what is significant is that this move sees the removal of Apple’s biggest competitor from native apps on the device. Apple’s Maps application has been the subject of much ridicule, but sales of the device are not won or lost on maps alone. Besides an iOS Google Maps app is rumoured to be not so far away and Apple’s foray into the maps market is surely bad news for other map software vendors. There was a 15% take up of the new operating system in the first 24 hours. This is an impressive roll out showing no drop off in demand considering that iOS5 took 5 days to reach 20% of devices and Android’s Jelly Bean update not even reaching 2% of devices since launch 2 months ago.

A 7 inch iPad?

One of the key benefits that Apple had over the mobile and tablet competition was the lack of divergence. Whilst you can buy every sized Android device to suit any possible form factor you could possibly desire this is a nightmare for developers who have to either cater for every single screen resolution possibility or focus on individual devices. Up until the release of the iPad 3, Apple’s iPad only came in one size and dominated the market. This meant developers only had to worry about one size and one form factor. Does the rumoured release of the iPad mini or nano mean that developers have divergence to worry about with the iPad as well now? It is rumoured that the new mini device will sport a 7.85 inch screen which with a retina display will allow a screen resolution of 1024x768, the exact same size as the iPads 1 and 2. This means that existing apps written for those devices will just work. There are several use cases such as point of sale and medical applications where a smaller device makes much more sense than a full sized 10 inch device. Could this move see Apple compete directly with the Google Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire HD?

Certainly the death of Steve Jobs was a huge and devastating blow to Apple. Few organisations as large as Apple are quite so dependent on one individual as the driving force and public face of the business. Some pundits have tagged new CEO Tim Cook as a caretaker who is keeping the seat warm for future executives like Sir Jony Ive. Steve Jobs left the company on an upward curve and I believe on rails for the next few years. The market changing product launches that we have seen over the past 10 years simply cannot be repeated every decade and it is natural to expect a period of incremental updates as those products become mature and ubiquitous in their respective markets. With news of continued patent wars, connector rip-offs and Foxconn meltdowns, haters are still gonna hate and fan boys are still going to queue round the block for product launches for the foreseeable future in my opinion.

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Author: Paul Saunders

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