“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.