“And what is Apple’s vision for the next 3 years other than milking retread phones and tablets again?
Nothing? I thought so.”
You have no idea, of course. Apple is famously secretive about upcoming products.
Apple spent $8.1 billion on R&D in 2015, up 34% year over year. It has thousands of brilliant employees. I think it has an above-average chance at many more wildly successful product lines, as well as disruptive changes to it’s existing products such as Macs.
Products and vision are two distinctly different things. Vision leads development. Without a clear direction, products can and do fail.
Every other successful company knows their goals and why. Take T-Mobile. Their goal was to be the uncarrier and pass Sprint for the number #3 spot. By removing the subsidies, they changed the way everyone else was doing business, and they achieved their vision, in just 3 years.