“There’s an argument in the platform wars, and also on Wall Street, that goes something like this: ‘Apple doesn’t innovate anymore. It moves too slowly, and is being taken over by more nimble, more innovative rivals,'” Mike Elgan writes for Cult of Mac.
“Any success Apple has is the result of slick marketing, rather than the newest technology. But now, Apple is a laggard and is being overtaken by more nimble companies,” Elgan writes. “Apple has an ‘innovation problem,’ according to Forbes. ‘Samsung is innovating faster than Apple,’ according to Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster. ‘Why Doesn’t Apple Innovate?’ asks CEO.com.”
Elgan writes, “For Apple haters, this argument feels good to make. Unfortunately, it fails the test of fact and reason… Apple clearly innovates, and they do so very selectively and with enormous purpose and vision. They have a create-new-market-then-perfect-on-the-vision approach that, while it leaves them open to being called less than innovative, it also works better — far better — than any other model out there from a business perspective. Apple could easily throw arbitrary new ideas into its products, and develop complex product lines to narrowly target every niche. But why? So haters would call them innovative?”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple is responsible for nearly all the innovations we see in mobile today – March 20, 2013
Piper Jaffray’s Munster: Samsung innovating faster than Apple – March 13, 2013
Apple vs. Samsung: Why the advantage goes to Apple the innovator – November 24, 2012
Tim Cook: Apple the only company innovating in personal computers, and have been for some time – February 24, 2012
Young Americans place Steve Jobs second to Edison as ‘Greatest Innovator of All Time’ – January 30, 2012
The 5 Apple technological innovations for which I’m most thankful and why – November 26, 2011
Apple’s penchant for innovation worth $0.00 to shortsighted fund managers – November 22, 2011
Forbes’ World’s Most Innovative Companies: Apple #5 – August 5, 2011
The definition of business focus is what to say ‘no’ to, not what to say ‘yes’.
Throwing up 100 products for the sake of doing so makes you a jack of all trades and a master of none.
I always want to laugh when I see Shamesuck is innovating and Apple is not .
no other company but Apple is innovating…
all are coping Apple in every way,
product
salesmanship
presentations
stores
online store
design
functionality
style and spirit
New technologies are the parts of the puzzle to innovate
researching the combination of several technologies and applying them to ideas that better and improve the idea of a past product – the convergence of technologies – really have been why and how iPhone came about…
if Tim Cook truly believes Apple not about convergence then he is intentionally causing deception over the competitors. Something Steve Jobs did all too well. Doubling up on secrecy was a statement Tim made. I believe this has also played some sense of boredom in the publics eye and wall street… leaks are less. Filed patents get all the stories now. Perhaps Woz is right – Apple might shock us all very shortly. We wait.
They just completely revolutionized the tablet market all over again with the iPad mini a few months ago. And we’re told they don’t innovate? Has anyone who said that actually held an iPad mini in their hands? Do they not realize how difficult it must have been to design something as thin and light yet powerful and well constructed as this? And to bravely release it knowing it could mean the obsoleting of your larger, more profitable product from which it was culled? What other company even risks doing such a thing?
Ay caramba!
Munster is mad at Apple because they don’t release the products he continually predicts fast enough to keep up with his predictions.
Munster the boob wants an apple tv set and has been ragging about it for years. Not happening. So I would agree he’s p’oed
that apple wont make things he predicts.
One of the things that Apple does really well is make small and thin products that function superbly with unmatched battery life. Apple’s competitors got lucky in the smart phone revolution because, even though they were only able to make larger versions of the iPhone, it turns out that there was a market for larger versions/screens of the smart phone.
Well, it should be interesting to see what the “innovative” followers do when Apple comes out with thier wearable computers that are perfect and light and battery efficient.
Will they try to convince people that strapping a 5″ screen on your wrist or head is really cool?
Apple hating has blossomed into a full fledged religion, complete with its own faith, dogma, holy texts and prophets.
Sorry to tell you, that religious followings with negative intentions do not survive long. Anarchy can not be organized and maintained… the free and scattered thinking is as fragmented as is Android.
I strongly believe there is a slow but steady shift occurring (beyond the Wall Street negative claims and negative press) things that are positive for Apple. And, those positive things are bound to re-bound very soon for Apple inc.
Apple is far from done… what company is not feeling the tight economic pinches. Apple has money, and the vultures are finding back door passages to harm and take bites from the Core.
iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad were innovations. What is currently going on in the tablet and smartphone markets is evolution, not innovation. Sticking in bigger processors and making bigger screens is not innovative, it is just playing to the obvious. It’s the same thing that was happening to digital cameras a few years ago. Just upping the specs.
Apple’s approach to this, to get into designing their own chips and evolve the ecosystem as a whole, focusing on key elements such as battery life, mass, and user experience, will keep them in the game for a very long time.
I agree with you , yet it is iPod, then iOS and iPhone which were Apples true innovations. iMac and OSX were already well expanded and obvious markets for Apple.
iPad was merely a spectacular product yielding a bigger screen and introduced with incredible timing.
Apple also innovates were other companies are NOT…
Product Design (powerful),
Processor (leading edge),
Retina screens (pressing the limits),
Thunderbolt (bloody amazing),
Fusiondrive (truly mind blowing)
Apple really looks at the entire universe for its product and provides an ecosystem for that product to nurture in. Bettering the experience for the user and for all ages – simplifying yet empowering. True responsibility in design and functionality.
HARDWARE & SOFTWARE done right beyond all others.
Innovating on all levels – while the competitors just seem to continue to copy.
Apple will remain the leader, no matter where the stocks sit.
Apple innovates more than the rest of the computer and phone industries put together!!!
iPhone and iPhone wannabes
Air and Air wannabes
iMacs, all along since the first
various ports.
iPad and iPad wannabes (fer chrissake… every tablet out there looks like an iPad derivative. Don’t they have a single idea between them?)
and on… and on…
Gosh, another “treat the symptom” article. Get real, treat the disease itself the source, Wall Street, modern day hit whore jouranalysts.
CBS recently ran a story wherein the author claimed Apple’s FQ2 results were going to be bad, very bad. To support his drug induced thesis he claimed that iPad Mini sales were down during FQ2/2013 18% from a year ago.
Problem is, the iPad Mini wasn’t released until November 2, 2012, 7 months AFTER the quarter CBS compared FQ2/2013 sales.
The media, led by CNBC, is rife with journalistic crap like this.
Yup, the media used to report the news now they project the news.
Self full filling prophecies and of course the government loves it, the great propaganda machine to control the masses.
Ya caught that stupid prediction too lol. How can your product be lower than last years quarter when they were not being sold as in 0% sales, because they were not out yet.
Apple …the most innovating company in the history of the World!
NEIN!! ‘INNOVATIVE’!
100% Click bait
Wait, Apple will refresh the standards soon, so everybody will be starting their photocopiers again…
If Apple could move to a six month mobile release cycle they would leave no room for their competitors to get a leg up.
The problem with that is that behind the innovation is engineering, and engineering is not like farming. You can’t just plant a new crop and expect it’s going to pop up a certain number of weeks or months later. Add to that the fact that Apple usually (see Maps fiasco) only releases products when they are ready, so we can’t expect Apple to toss a new iPhone or iPad model out there every six months regardless of their quality.
I’m beginning to feel as disgusted with all tech journalism as I am with politics and Wall Street. No one obsessed with money (or power) is going to be innovative. If that’s your driving force, you will come up short.
I am all converted with iPod/iPad, it suits my needs and I am glad, once in a while I miss Adobe Flash, but it is flushed!
I’m calling bullshit on Samsung innovation.
How is adapting Google’s theftware (Android) with another layer of stolen IP (Samsung’s crapware) layered over Fandroid innovation?
Every post here is emotion-driven, not fact-driven.
MDN, if you cared about facts, you would show a plot of patents by leading electronic gadget manufacturers in the last decade.
Sure, you can argue that not all innovation is patented, but it’s a hell of a lot more objective than the emotionally biased dribble that passes for journalism these days.