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Hey - we all do it. Wait for the next widget that Apple's going to bring out, and if it isn't truly awe-inspiring, it's the beginning of the end for Apple. But we should know better. The market for smartphones (and iPads and watches...) is bounded. They have to keep building widgets of course, but serious growth maybe isn't going to come in that direction. Playing a bigger role in enterprise automation might. And while Apple is certainly not the first company or the only company moving into this space, they have the potential to be a very interesting player. Google and others may lead in bleeding-edge tech but I'd bet Apple will do a better job in the user experience, which is likely to drive mass-adoption.
Anyway this weird partnership with Nike ( no one reeally bought the Nike Wearable nor the Apple Watch, the combination of the 2 should work ?!) is a desperate bet to me.
I don't know what they can bring in the automotive market, they should just acquire Tesla at this point. but with Google is a better position, the partnership of Lyft Uber and carmakers plus the traditionnal BMW / Porsche etc ( that will be hard to beat like the swiss luxury watches... ) working on self driving-car ( and this is software at the end... ) makes Apple penetration of the market difficult.
Apple is also in the business of renting us music, videos and movies through iTunes. So after we have all the devices that we need, then we start to fill our spare time with experiences, which should be a large market for Apple to pursue. Perhaps Apple will follow the example of HBO and Netflix, and start to produce their own movies and series.
The video on demand (VOD) market was $25.3 Billion in 2014 and projected to grow to $61.4 Billion by 2019, so Apple can make a bigger play in this realm, perhaps acquiring a few of the other players to get a jump start.
This is an interesting pivot for the Apple Watch 2 from the luxury market to the fitness market. My quote a couple weeks ago:
There’s only one path for Apple to get it right and make that first assumption true with an upcoming release: get out of luxury mode and chop the price.
I don't think they chopped the price nearly enough, especially to compete with the likes of FitBit and Garmin. It exposes the difficulty in making their own parts cheaply enough when they don't hit their inflated volume curves. (I know, price is market driven, cost is engineering/manufacturing driven, but the lessons of wrapping dollar bills around early Macs probably still stings.)
And, to simoncc's other comment, Apple suddenly appears to be bailing out on autonomous car efforts just months after ramping up staffing with some pretty high profile people.
