Michal Ždanský Despite its secretive culture, Apple is very predictable in certain aspects. Regular cycles are behind this predictability. Cycles repeating at almost exact intervals. A great example is the crown jewel of the company – the iPhone. Apple introduces one phone per year. Most other manufacturers manage at least five times, but not the company from Cupertino. One iPhone per year, almost always in the same period, which is now determined to be between September and October.
Then there is the two-year cycle, or the so-called tick tock strategy. Here, too, it can be observed especially with the iPhone. The first phase of this cycle represents an innovative model with more significant changes in design and features, while the second product in this cycle is more of an iterative update – better processor, more RAM, better camera… 3G>3GS, 4>4S…
If the one-year cycle is updating, the two-year cycle innovative, then Apple's three-year cycle can be called revolutionary. In this time frame, Apple introduces its revolutionary products and services, which often define a completely new category or turn an existing category upside down. At least that's how it's been for the last fifteen years:
- 1998 – Apple introduces the computer iMac. Less than a year after Steve Jobs returned to the head of the company, he introduced a unique personal computer with a novel design, which with its joy won a huge number of customers and was able to put the struggling Apple back on its feet. The transparent plastic chassis in playful colors was one of Jony Ivo's first entries in design history.
- 2001 – Steve Jobs shows the world the first iPod, a music player that soon completely conquered the MP3 player market. The first version of the iPod was Mac-only, had only 5-10 GB of memory and used a FireWire connector. Today, the iPod still holds the majority of the market, although sales of MP3 players continue to decline.
- 2003 – Although the revolution came a year earlier, Apple introduced a digital music store at that time iTunes Store. It thus solved the persistent problem of music publishers with piracy and completely changed the distribution of music as such. To this day, iTunes has the largest offer of digital music and holds the first place in sales. You can read about the history of iTunes in a separate article.
- 2007 - This year, Apple completely changed the mobile phone market when Steve Jobs introduced the revolutionary iPhone at the MacWorld conference, which started the era of touch phones and helped spread smartphones among ordinary users. The iPhone still represents more than half of Apple's annual turnover.
- 2010 – Even at a time when cheap netbooks were popular, Apple introduced the first commercially successful tablet iPad and thereby defined the entire category, in which it still has a majority share today. Tablets have quickly become a mass product and are displacing regular computers at an increasing rate.
Other smaller milestones also belong to these five years. For example, the year was very interesting 2008, when Apple introduced three essential products: First of all, the App Store, the most successful digital application store to date, then the MacBook Air, the first commercial ultrabook, which, however, was popularized by Apple only two years later and became the benchmark for this category of notebooks. The last of the trio was the aluminum MacBook with a unibody design, which Apple still uses today and other manufacturers try to imitate (most recently HP).
Despite the undoubted importance of several smaller innovations, from the App Store to the Retina display, the five events mentioned above remain the milestones of the last 15 years. If we look at the calendar, we find that the three-year cycle should be fulfilled this year, three years after the launch of the iPad. The arrival of another (perhaps) revolutionary product in a completely new category was indirectly informed by Tim Cook on the latest announcement of quarterly results:
"I don't want to get too specific, but I'm just saying that we have some really great products coming out in the fall and throughout 2014."
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One of our potential growth areas is new categories.
Although Tim Cook did not reveal anything specific, it can be read between the lines that something big is coming in the fall in addition to the new iPhone and iPad. Over the past six months, the consideration of the next revolutionary product has been narrowed down to two potential products – a television and a smart watch, or another device worn on the body.
However, according to the analysis, the TV is a dead end, and more likely is a revision of the Apple TV as a TV accessory that could offer integrated IPTV or the ability to install applications, which would easily turn the Apple TV into a game console. The second direction of thinking is towards smart watches.
[do action=”citation”]Apple has a lot of room here for its famous “wow” factor.[/do]
These should act as an extended arm of the iPhone rather than a standalone device. If Apple really introduces such an accessory, it will not be just a solution like it offers, for example Pebble, which are already on sale. Apple has plenty of room for its famous "wow" factor here, and if Jony Ive's team has been working on them as long as some sources state, we have something to look forward to.
It's 2013, time for another revolution. One that we were used to seeing on average every three years. It will be the first such product that will not be presented by Steve Jobs, although he will certainly have a certain share in it, after all such a device must have been in development for some years. Steve won't be the one to have the final say on the final version this time. But when it comes to the show, maybe some cynical journalists will finally admit that Apple can have a vision without its visionary and that it will survive the death of Steve Jobs.
Well, I'm still waiting for a new Macbook Air with an ARM processor and of course running on OS X.
And what OS does MBA run on? Windows 1?
Please explain the phrase "become ethanol?"
Probably autocorrect :D PS: now it's "standard"
somehow the numbers don't match... 2001 + 3 is not 2003 :-))
3 years is the average, moreover it is stated that iTunes came a year earlier than the average…