Apple loses momentum
It’s a tablet PC with no name apart from “the new ipad,” the wow factor is limited to faster processing and sharper display and it appears to lack the must-have feature that compels users to upgrade.
The third iteration of the Apple Inc. ipad, the mobile computer that has come to dominate the tablet PC market, was unveiled in a highly anticipated event Wednesday headlined by chief executive Tim Cook, successor to the late Steve Jobs.
Dressed casually in a Jobs-like black shirt and slacks, Cook strode onto the stage at Yerba Buena Theatre in San Francisco to announce an update he said will shake up the tablet market.
And as great as Apple has been at advancing the state-of-the-art — the new ipad deliberately makes the original version look and feel like a doorstopper, and consigns owners to a dusty coating of shame until they head back to an Apple retailer for an upgrade — its run of i-themed products, including the ipod, iphone and ipad, has a limited shelf life. Sooner or later, regular feature set updates won’t be enough to sustain torrid growth as the market matures, competitors sharpen their claws, and consumer expectations expand. The die-off has already claimed the ipod — which continues to exist in various forms, but is clearly yesterday’s news — and as heretical as it sounds following yet another blockbuster reveal, it will eventually claim the ipad, too. Apple is at its best when it goes beyond simply updating existing products and instead creates entirely new categories that no one saw coming. To sustain unprecedented growth and shareholder value, Apple needs more paradigm busters, products that create demand in either underexploited or non-existent markets. The ipod/itunes combo, for example, legitimized online music distribution and brought the music industry out of a pirate-infested dark age, while the iphone leapfrogged the smartphone into a touch-based, app-driven new era of mainstream growth. Television now looms as Apple’s next great landscape to conquer, and the rumoured upcoming ITV offering could just be the paradigm buster the Cupertino, Calif.-based company has been looking for. New CEO Tim Cook needs to leave the Jobs era behind with big bang new products, and not simply warmovers of Jobsian creations.
He missed his chance to make the big TV announcement today, but it’s already clear that Apple’s biggest reveal of the year is yet to come. The company’s future depends on it.