5 Reasons Apple Looks Like the Next Sony

Apple may be the most valuable company on the planet, but two and a half years into the Tim Cook era, it already looks like a different outfit. Though Cook has brought revenue up 58 percent, and profits up 40 percent, the Steve Jobs-led fervor to innovate seems to be subsiding. Apple is in an industry where it has to keep coming up with daring new breakthroughs, and the famously bland Cook doesn’t seem like the man to deliver them. Revenues in the last fiscal year were up only 9.6 percent, the slowest increase in a decade, and earnings fell for the first time since 2001.

Former Wall Street Journal reporter Yukari Iwatani Kane‘s book Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs has been denounced as “nonsense” by Cook, but Cook has good reason to bristle at the book, which paints him as a mere caretaker, not a creative genius. Sony was once the coolest kid on the block too. Here are some early warning signals that stasis and even decline beckon for Apple.

1. Regression to the mean. Apple came up with the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010, in each case not only creating a blockbuster new product but a whole new category. Like a football quarterback who throws for 400 yards a game for a month, Apple is overdue for a slump. “Apple was essentially in violation of business physics for an extremely long time,” says Harvard management professor Gautam Mukunda in the book. Today, portable music players are an aging product category and competitors are stealing market share from the phone and tablets. Will Apple be able to pull another rabbit out of its hat?

You mean a company that has revolutionized four product categories on a scale that 99.99% of companies never do to one hasn’t done it again in FOUR YEARS? That the world’s largest company by market cap grew only 9.6%? DOOMED!

The problem with routinely exceeding expectations is that eventually folks come up with completely unreasonable expectations.

So you want a device with a 13" or larger screen that you can fit in your pocket? Good luck with that.

Any device is a compromise.

Perhaps a device with a 7 inch screen and a small bezel that has detachable keyboard and operates through a Bluetooth headset for the phone function.

Or maybe a larger tablet that has your cellular/data connection, combined with a dedicated Bluetooth telephone handset.

It is just silly to say things can't get any better. In a couple of years somebody is going to come along with something that we have not foreseen, and will wonder how we ever lived without it.

So to the guy with an iPhone 4 complaining about battery life... pay to have the battery replaced or buy a new phone.

My iPhone 4s battery was just fine until I upgraded my OS last week. Don't try to tell me my battery degraded 50% overnight, on the very same night that I upgraded my operating system. It is that kind of snarky, lying bullshit that drives people away from Apple products.

If they have lost control of the process, and are now just producing bloatware, they should admit it. Embrace the suck, and try to convince the customer he can't live without it.

Any device is a compromise.

Which is why there will never be one device for all purposes. The compromises become too great. You wouldn't buy a combination hammer/screwdriver/wrench, or a combination house/car/wallet. I can watch movies on my phone, tablet or computer, but I have a 50" TV for that.

Perhaps a device with a 7 inch screen and a small bezel that has detachable keyboard and operates through a Bluetooth headset for the phone function.

What you're describing is a tablet. My iPad Mini does that, but it's bigger than 7".

It is just silly to say things can't get any better. In a couple of years somebody is going to come along with something that we have not foreseen, and will wonder how we ever lived without it.

I'm not arguing that things can't get any better -- it's almost inevitable that they will. I'm arguing that converging all devices into one wouldn't be "better."

I have a desktop machine with three monitors, which allows me to have vast amounts of information at a glance. I don't have to do a lot of flipping between windows. I have a laptop, but haven't used it in quite a while because the iPad does everything I need in a portable device. and I have an iPhone that fits in a pocket and has practically become another appendage. Any one of those devices can perform the tasks of the others, but not well.

I have access to a subcompact car, pickup truck, minivan and motor home. I'm not holding my breath for someone to come up with a vehicle that can fit in a small parking space, sleep eight, have its own bathroom, haul a half-ton of gravel, and get 30 miles to the gallon. Physics is a harsh mistress.

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