“The iPhone is 7 years old. The iPad was introduced 4 years ago. Since then… nothing,” Jean-Louis Gassée writes for Monday Note. “Apple’s growth is gone: a mere 9% revenue uptick in 2013; only 6% for the last quarter.”
“It’s time to acknowledge the painfully obvious truth: Innovation has deserted Apple. Something must have gone seriously wrong if the company can no longer break into new categories,” Gassée writes. “This is the refrain that echoes through the Web… and this is the toxic waste of success.”
“Putting hopes for Apple’s future on a magical New Category misunderstands the company’s real direction. Instead, Apple stays the course and continues to play its Ecosystem Game. Many interpret this as a company in death throes,” Gassée writes. “In 2013, Apple increased its R&D spending by 32%; 2012 was +39%. In the previous two fiscal years ending last September — and without entering any new category — Apple increased its R&D spending by 83% to $4.5B, 3% of revenue. And then it increased it by another 33% in the December, 2013 quarter. Accelerated R&D spending can only mean one thing: Apple is widening the range of products under development. Let’s just hope company execs continue to be as good as they’ve been in the past at saying No, at not shipping everything they engineer.
Read more in the full article here.
A thousand No’s for every Yes.
Sounds like my dating life. [rim shot]
Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week. Please tip your waiters!
try the veal, tip the waitress.
Wow what a busy little spammer, so redundant and irrelevant. Maybe your best friend’s sister should come here and speak for herself.
Or maybe if that site is so successful and is paying employees they should contact MDN and post their adds on the side here.
Oh wait they pay their employees a minimum of $91 and hour.
Hey did you hear that, everyone who advertises their adds here pay their employees more than what this person’s best friend’s sister makes. She must be slumming from a trailer park.
SPAM! REMOVE PLEASE! THANK YOU!
seriously, my wife’s cooking is so bad, the flies got together and fixed the hole in the screen door.
A girl phoned me and said, “Come on over. There’s nobody home.” I went over. Nobody was home!
I went to see my doctor… Doctor Vinnie Boom-Batz. Yeah…I told him once, “Doctor, every morning when I get up and look in the mirror I feel like throwing up. What’s wrong with me? He said, “I don’t know, but your eyesight is perfect.”
Bot, you left out the ultimate, classic Henny Youngman one-liner:
“Take my wife… Please!”
heh, great stuff.
Guy with a huge belly goes to the Doc:
” Doc, this gut, I take a leak I can’t see my penis. What am I gonna do?”
Doc:
” Have you tried to diet?”
Guy:
” Dye it… Why, what color is it now?”
hahahaha
Much better, botvinnik. Much better…
“Apple’s growth is gone: a mere 9% revenue uptick in 2013; only 6% for the last quarter.” I’ve been investing in AAPL for about eight years, show me another company doing this for as long as Apple.
I too am a long term investor and user of Apple products. I find it interesting that only a unique device is a development. Not a 64-bit chip, not 64-bit software, not the finger print security on the iPhone 5s, not iBeacon, not 4K media ability, not CarPlay, … Some things are real and can be touched like the many known and non-disclosed billion dollar server farms. Not new OS X or iOS. You would think, BECAUSE APPLE IS UNWILLING TO TALK ABOUT ALL THAT IS BEING DONE that know one is working in Apple’s development department. Not even the ALL NEW Mac Pro is counted as a new developed product. Back logged and unlike anything on the market, yet, ignored by the clueless talking heads on Wall Street. However, if they buy a new 4K HDTV set, you know that they will have to also buy a Mac Pro to feed the 4K HDTV data to it.
I’m all in favor of new products — if Apple doesnt abandon them later. Excellence is not just in design, but staying power and corporate support.
Just wait. Just wait …
“He that can have patience can have what he will.”
Benjamin Franklin
JLG is bored and looking for something to write about.
“It’s time to acknowledge the painfully obvious truth: Innovation has deserted Apple. Something must have gone seriously wrong if the company can no longer break into new categories,”
8% yearly growth in income is close to a billion dollars growth each year. Most companies will never see a billion dollars in sales EVER…. TOTAL… But its Apple so we want to see much more money and new things.
Fruit the iApple and the iBanana
transport the iPlane small and large sizes
TV the iTV with a money losing tv with an AppleTV duct taped to the back.
etc
You can tell a blogger by what he writes but telling him anything at all is a waste of time cause he can imagine stuff easier.
Just saying.
What people don’t seem to understand that the iPod and more so the iPhone and iPad were introduced to support a very strong eco system. Other items may be added to it though these are clearly going to be more limited for now as opportunities aren’t so clear, but the real innovation will increasingly be within that eco system that the present items have allowed. There is far more opportunity there than trying to engineer a new gadget on a regular basis to fill shrinking and more competitive gaps in the market.
The iPod could support an ecosystem when released as there was NO ecosystem at that time.
The iPhone had NO apps market when released.
Just saying.
Care to list how many new categories Samdung (or anyone else for that matter) came up with in that time?
NONE!!!!
Only Apple has to come up with NEW categories?
I heard a rumor about a toaster/dishwasher/fridge combo platter. Would that be a new category?
A lot of writers seem to believe new category needs to be hardware. This author expects no additional revenue from Carplay. This completely ignores the probability that iTunes Radio will expand significantly through this product and has associated advertising revenue.
Another example is payment. Depending on how Apple implements this, it could bring significant revenue (think PayPal) especially since Apple is now introducing a mechanism to significantly reduce fraud.
It’s unlikely the iwatch itself will significantly add to revenue. However, if it has the sensors and capabilities that are rumored, the app revenue will be significant.
I am the first to criticize Tim Cook on the relatively slow pace of innovation, but I don’t agree that they haven’t innovated since the iPad and I do think there’s more to come.
Apparently the reward for revolutionizing multiple markets with new product categories is that investors decide you’re dead the instant you stop, or even just slow down on introducing new products. Other companies release NO groundbreaking products and aren’t punished by the investor class for it.
I mean, how long did people expect the new product train to continue? Don’t they understand how astounding it was that Apple released the iPod, iPhone, and iPad? Most companies would be overjoyed to have one disruptive product like that, let alone three! And yet, the consensus is that Apple has to keep doing it over and over again, or else they’re DOOMED!!
I doubt Apple is going to have another decade like 2001-2010 anytime soon, and that’s not a knock on Apple. That was an amazing 10 years, and it would be hard for anyone to follow, even if Steve Jobs had survived.
But there will be new products, and they will make Apple a lot of money. Investors just have to learn to be realistic (like that will ever happen).
——RM
The reason talking heads are harping on this issue is their that Apple will eventually be marginalized by lower cost Android, thus they need new markets or they are doomed.
Lets face it, Android is slowing just like iOS is, Apple hasn’t significant market share and it will take years to Android to get to 64 bit OS and App ecosystem. Apple is still 2 – 3 years ahead, yet these talking heads refuse to admit it.
Some guy said “Real artists ship!”
Just sayin’.
Yawn. Another anti apple quote from JL Gassebag. He’s not over his defeat when Apple passed on BEos.