“While Samsung, HTC, Google, Nokia, Amazon, and many others are cranking out new smartphones, tablets and even wearables several times a year, Apple is hanging back,” Dan Farber writes for CNET. “The company last introduced an iPhone in September and an iPad in October.”
“Whatever is going on in the market, Apple doesn’t appear to be in a hurry to respond to competitors. In fact, Apple has never been very reactionary or much of a fast follower in trying to keep up in the feature wars,” Farber writes. “It’s as if Apple knows something that no one else knows about how the mobile market will play out as it tinkers with exotic materials, like Liquidmetal, and develops its own chips in pursuit of the perfect union of hardware and software. Apple is more interested in the thickness of fonts and bezels than giving its customers a smartphone with a screen larger than four inches.”
Farber writes, “Apple has always been more focused on creating what it thinks is the best engineered and most aesthetically brilliant device on the planet. It’s a conceit that seems to be working… Apple has set itself up to flourish or flounder in a hit driven business. For the last decade the company has flourished, but a serious flop could inspire defections and erode the company’s stellar reputation. A wearable device, perhaps an iWatch, could be Apple’s next attempt at breakthrough device.”
Read more in the full article here.