I don’t think that Jobs absence has anything to do with these issues... Jobs being alive or dead these same issues would be happening.
The 4S was an upgrade, nothing game changing (though SIRI certainly is, the phone itself, not so much), and while Kindle Fire is selling (any decent $200 tablet would sell) it is not showing that people are choosing Fire over Ipad, they are just getting a market that can’t or doesn’t want to spend $500 on a tablet.
There is definitely demand for a decent $200 tablet, but that isn’t cutting into iPad sales. People are buying the Fire because they will spend $200, not because people aren’t buying iPads because they are choosing a Kindle.
It is going to be a while before we can see the impact of Job’s death has on the company, I don’t see anything in this article that can be attributed to him no longer leading the company. The real test will be 1-2 years or so from now, when all the things he was involved with launching are no longer in the pipeline... that will show how Apple is going to be post Jobs.
Personally I think Apple will lose some of its premium status and have to begin to compete more price wise, but that’s just basic market dynamics, not lose of a CEO.
Quite. Don't underestimate this point, people. A LOT of tablets have sold because of the implied vague promise that they're a full-blown PC for $100-250, cheap enough for a small enough package that they will in fact go "meh, it's a couple hundred bucks, why not". Many will blow a day's pay on some toy with little thought; when the price eats into the better part of a week's pay, not so much impulse ... and a lot more devotion if they do buy.
Apple could do a little better in getting the notion across that "if you buy a cheaper tablet, you'll end up buying another cheaper tablet, so just get an iPad to start." A lot of people will blow $200 2-3 times only to find the products are inadequate, losing enough that they could have bought something that "just works" after all if they'd thought it thru in the first place.