Apple became Microsoft and in doing so engineered their own demise
With the next iPhone being talked about and being unveiled shortly, it is important to discuss WHY Apple's (and everyone else's) sales have been plummeting.
First, it is fair to say that Apple won the initial wave of smartphone sales amongst consumers. And, it is quite likely most success outside of Apple was also driven by their success.
To put it simply, I think the smartphone market (in North America) was saturated long before now. In fact, probably around the time of the 4S. But, momentum kept the iPhone 5 alive. A new form factor reinvigorated sales for a time, but we're hitting a point where iterative releases just aren't cutting it.
Other OEM's benefit from Apple's success because a genuine push for Apple fans to buy new phones makes Android (and other) fans feel the need to upgrade as well.
But why are sales falling? Surely saturation alone isn't enough to stop people from buy? You'd be right if you said so. Innovation and change (two different things) are key motivators for sales. Especially when a company believed to be as visionary as Apple is the one doing these things. But Apple hasn't been innovating. And no, I don't mean that they stopped once they lost Jobs. They stopped after the original iPhone. At least, in the way which mattered.
I've said this in the past, iterative phone releases IS NOT planned obsolescence. That only works for a time, while the hardware is immature and successive generations are tangible improvements. Like I said, this hasn't really been the case since the iPhone 4S. And while it took time for the momentum to stop, it is clear when you look at what has stopped it, that this is in fact the case. New buyers are an ever decreasing slice of the market (due to saturation) and what is hurting now is existing buyers upgrading less frequently. And the less tangible the upgrades are, the bigger the gap will grow.
Another topic I've repeated ad nausea; this is the state PC's are in. People (in general) haven't stopped buying PC's, they've just hit the ultimately slow upgrade cycle... they don't replace them until they die. Which IS what will eventually happen to smartphones.
How could Apple have stopped, or at the least delayed this? By doing what they did for YEARS before the iPhone. True planned obsolescence. With the iPhone, Apple, for the first time stopped making products from scratch each new generation. Remember iPods before the iPhone? EVERYTHING CHANGED, EVERY ITERATION. Maybe not that extreme. But as near as mattered. Hardware design and design language often changed drastically from one generation to the next. Connectors changed, software changed, hardware changed and firmware changed.
This made it IMPOSSIBLE to be part of the new generation of products unless you upgraded.
That alone wouldn't have made Apple the success it became though. Throwing everything out also meant you could learn from the past, add truly innovative stuff and show the true height of your mettle every generation of a product.
But, Apple started acting like Microsoft. Afraid to lose the smartphone market they helped create, each new phone ran the prior gen OS, supported the same app store (and thus API and to a large degree hardware). The biggest controversy Apple has been willing to gamble on is changing the communications/charging port every few generations.
As a result, as Murphy's law dried up and hardware saw diminishing returns each generation, being handcuffed to supporting old devices, Apple has basically made it impossible for themselves to meaningfully innovate. There are probably insane design geniuses and engineers at Apple who pitch astounding ideas that are simply to radical. Especially now that Apple is in bed with this philosophy.
If Apple, tomorrow, unveiled a new smartphone which broke compatibility with the App Store and everything from the past, many of their fans would mutiny.
If Apple had to foresight to see that iterating on hardware alone was unsustainable and had either committed to scrapping everything on some regular cadence, we probably wouldn't be here today.
But, I could be wrong. I have the benefit of not being able to know what would happen had history taken a different course.
The problem is that there are very few things Apple could do from a hardware perspective that would push the industry. A battery with a week long charge maybe. While many fans will praise camera and processor improvements, the average person has had a good enough iPhone camera for years now. SoC improvements generally don't make a tangible effect for years after launch and design changes aren't enough once the original appeal has faded. Pixel density, weight, thinness and device colors have even less sway over the masses.
At the end of the day, Apple really needs a miracle, a new device trend or to be insanely lucky that some new gimmicky feature will actually become a market requirement. And none of those can they engineer intentionally.
First, it is fair to say that Apple won the initial wave of smartphone sales amongst consumers. And, it is quite likely most success outside of Apple was also driven by their success.
To put it simply, I think the smartphone market (in North America) was saturated long before now. In fact, probably around the time of the 4S. But, momentum kept the iPhone 5 alive. A new form factor reinvigorated sales for a time, but we're hitting a point where iterative releases just aren't cutting it.
Other OEM's benefit from Apple's success because a genuine push for Apple fans to buy new phones makes Android (and other) fans feel the need to upgrade as well.
But why are sales falling? Surely saturation alone isn't enough to stop people from buy? You'd be right if you said so. Innovation and change (two different things) are key motivators for sales. Especially when a company believed to be as visionary as Apple is the one doing these things. But Apple hasn't been innovating. And no, I don't mean that they stopped once they lost Jobs. They stopped after the original iPhone. At least, in the way which mattered.
I've said this in the past, iterative phone releases IS NOT planned obsolescence. That only works for a time, while the hardware is immature and successive generations are tangible improvements. Like I said, this hasn't really been the case since the iPhone 4S. And while it took time for the momentum to stop, it is clear when you look at what has stopped it, that this is in fact the case. New buyers are an ever decreasing slice of the market (due to saturation) and what is hurting now is existing buyers upgrading less frequently. And the less tangible the upgrades are, the bigger the gap will grow.
Another topic I've repeated ad nausea; this is the state PC's are in. People (in general) haven't stopped buying PC's, they've just hit the ultimately slow upgrade cycle... they don't replace them until they die. Which IS what will eventually happen to smartphones.
How could Apple have stopped, or at the least delayed this? By doing what they did for YEARS before the iPhone. True planned obsolescence. With the iPhone, Apple, for the first time stopped making products from scratch each new generation. Remember iPods before the iPhone? EVERYTHING CHANGED, EVERY ITERATION. Maybe not that extreme. But as near as mattered. Hardware design and design language often changed drastically from one generation to the next. Connectors changed, software changed, hardware changed and firmware changed.
This made it IMPOSSIBLE to be part of the new generation of products unless you upgraded.
That alone wouldn't have made Apple the success it became though. Throwing everything out also meant you could learn from the past, add truly innovative stuff and show the true height of your mettle every generation of a product.
But, Apple started acting like Microsoft. Afraid to lose the smartphone market they helped create, each new phone ran the prior gen OS, supported the same app store (and thus API and to a large degree hardware). The biggest controversy Apple has been willing to gamble on is changing the communications/charging port every few generations.
As a result, as Murphy's law dried up and hardware saw diminishing returns each generation, being handcuffed to supporting old devices, Apple has basically made it impossible for themselves to meaningfully innovate. There are probably insane design geniuses and engineers at Apple who pitch astounding ideas that are simply to radical. Especially now that Apple is in bed with this philosophy.
If Apple, tomorrow, unveiled a new smartphone which broke compatibility with the App Store and everything from the past, many of their fans would mutiny.
If Apple had to foresight to see that iterating on hardware alone was unsustainable and had either committed to scrapping everything on some regular cadence, we probably wouldn't be here today.
But, I could be wrong. I have the benefit of not being able to know what would happen had history taken a different course.
The problem is that there are very few things Apple could do from a hardware perspective that would push the industry. A battery with a week long charge maybe. While many fans will praise camera and processor improvements, the average person has had a good enough iPhone camera for years now. SoC improvements generally don't make a tangible effect for years after launch and design changes aren't enough once the original appeal has faded. Pixel density, weight, thinness and device colors have even less sway over the masses.
At the end of the day, Apple really needs a miracle, a new device trend or to be insanely lucky that some new gimmicky feature will actually become a market requirement. And none of those can they engineer intentionally.
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