“In 2015, Apple dramatically enhanced its ability to make money, and at the same time incrementally dismantled the profit engines of its competitors, leaving them even weaker for their next match in 2016,” Daniel Eran Dilger writes for AppleInsider. “But Apple has several weaknesses related to the core strength of its existing ecosystems that it needs to address over the coming year if it wants to retain and enhance its brand of excellence that drives sales of its premium, profitable hardware.”
“First and foremost, Apple needs to focus on the ecosystems that give buyers good reasons to continue to prefer its premium hardware products,” Dilger writes. “That includes HomeKit, Apple Pay and Maps.”
“Adding HomeKit to your life is addictive. If Apple makes this a priority, it could rapidly make its secure HomeKit protocol the standard that everyone includes in their silicon. It can’t simply roll out a half-finished specification and expect the ‘community’ to adopt and finish it the way Google does with everything it creates,” Dilger writes. “Beyond the simple task of searching for Apple Pay merchants, Maps needs a way to distinguish searches for a type of business, a business by name, and an address… If Apple focuses real attention upon its ecosystem technologies in 2016, it will have no real problems in selling premium hardware. If it doesn’t, it will be opening the door for competitors to offer cheaper products that are less obviously differentiated.”
Tons more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: The sorry state of Apple’s Maps continues to perplex.
agree about Apple Maps, it needs big improvement, the data and information where I live is still incorrect despite submitting the correct information
Stupid so-called analyst obviously skipped the value of money lectures, or never had formal economics course. Due to escalation, the value of the $206B is worth more, not less, in future. Duh.
Sorry; unstable app; this comment should have been posted on article “Why Apple Will Remain Undervalued in 2016”
Figured that out. Agree with you.
I have often wondered if anyone who could make a difference actually uses Maps outside of driving back and forth to work.
It took Maps almost 9 months to update an intersection on I-39 in WI which Waze updated in a few days. It still gives me instructions to turn onto another cloverleaf exit which has been changed to a diamond exit several months ago. I-90 into Chicago is in a constant state of construction. Exits are opened, closed, renovated, but mostly seem to be ignored by Maps. Given how much traffic this road carries, I have to use Waze when I’m traveling this route.
I use Google and Apple maps side by side especially on holidays and using Apple maps on its own is a risk 😥
Clearly (pun intended) it’s Maps that needs the mists help. Where I live half they year my whole town is under clouds, literally. I’ve reported it 5 times to no avail. There are four supermarkets, four major banks, loads of bars, cafes, restaurants, pharmacies, hotels, etc. Only a few hotels have markers and you can’t see any streets or anything because of the cloud. Even on the non-satellite map there is just blank space. It’s like we don’t exist. Just ridiculous!
Homekit all the way baby!
Plus iTunes, Apple Music, App Store. Just about all of the Apple services need a major overhaul.
There are over 800 people working on the iPhone Camera. Apple can’t put that many people everywhere.
?!?
I’d think the bottleneck at this time would be finding enough qualified people to hire into Apple.
HomeKit doesn’t even have an official Apple app. I am getting tired of waiting for Apple to get serious about HomeKit. Maybe hardware manufacturers are too.
Apple Pay is great in the hand full of places where I can use it. Apple, skip over the resistant big boxes and focus on small retail and online stores. Make Apple Pay the norm for most retailers and the big boxes are more likely to follow.
Maps, coordinate your data bases and sources. A Siri search in different apps should result in the same map location. Also, N means north, S means south, etc. when I enter an address with an N, don’t take me to the S end of town, please.
I thought MDN had been bashing on about how generally good Apple Maps is now. Make your mind up guys.
Apple needs to work on software stability and reliability in general in all of OS X, iOS, and their apps. “It just works” has slipped a lot.
As much as I want to use MAPS I am always pulled back to Google maps because of the usually higher resolution satellite imagery and butter interface. If it’s something simple and quick, I might use Apple. But if I doing something that requires more I invariably turn back to Google.
Come on, Apple! I want to use your products, not Googles! I don’t know what it takes but you really do need to get someone in there that will kick butt and make the map department better. And this probably applies to other areas too. I worry that a lot of people at the company are getting fat and happy and thinking they are invincible. That’s the kind of thinking that probably helped to bring down Microsoft!
I returned to California from Europe for the holidays. So far I’ve used Apple Pay twice, once at McDonald’s and once at Safeway. McD’s was no problem, but at Safeway I still had to select debit/credit and approve the total on the terminal after my Apple Pay went through. It’s no faster than swiping a card and less intuitive because it doesn’t work as advertised. The cashier commented that “maybe one day you’ll be able to do it without the extra steps”. I think half-measures like these hurt more than help. They still have a lot of work to do. I wonder how many stores that accept Apple Pay also have this clunky problem.