Apple, a Trendsetter No More
Apple, a Trendsetter No More
By Shira Ovide
Nov 14, 2016 10:00 PM EST
Apple Inc.'s next hot product category may be...Google's
failed Glass project from 2013.
The company is considering glasses that could combine
digital information with what a person sees, my Bloomberg News colleagues
reported late Monday. If the idea sounds familiar, it's because of the
similarity to technology behind Pokemon Go, the hit smartphone game of 2016. It
was also the aim of Google Glass, before the company now called Alphabet Inc.
put that project on hold for reprogramming.
Apple's possible foray into a similar field isn't
immediately inspiring. That's not to say the company needs to be first in
digital glasses or augmented reality -- a catch-all term for technology that
mixes real-world images with computerized information or digital images -- to
be the best. Apple has a track record of taking not-entirely-original and niche
ideas and transforming them into something grander.
Apple cribbed the idea for the Macintosh from unused
research at Xerox. There were digital music players before the iPod. There were
smartphones before the iPhone. Tablet computers preceded the iPad. In each
case, however, Apple made technology that was better, easier to use -- even
magical. That Apple magic turned fringe products into mainstream ones, and
reshaped the trajectory of the technology industry.
That was the Steve Jobs version of Apple. After more than
five years with Tim Cook at the helm, we're still not sure if this Apple can
make the leap from niche idea to world-changing technology. The first major
product debut under Cook, the Apple Watch, hasn't yet become an obvious hit.
(To be fair, no other companies have found major success with wearable
computers.)
More ominously for Apple, it's no longer the technology
trendsetter. Yes, Apple has brought us better smartphone cameras and
fingerprint sensors, but there are more areas where it has whiffed. Cook has
been saying for five years that the TV industry is broken and needs an
overhaul. He was right. Now the way people watch television is being upended by
Netflix Inc., by "cord cutting" and by video on smartphones. Apple is
barely a participant in that transformation. Apple is developing technology
that could someday become the operating system for driverless cars, but it's
not obvious that the company has a clearer vision than Google, Baidu Inc., Uber
Technologies Inc., Tesla Motors Inc. or other companies that are further ahead
on autonomous driving.
Apple bought Siri more than six years ago to bring
voice-activated digital helpers to smartphones. Since then, Amazon.com Inc.,
Google and Microsoft Corp. have surged ahead. Apple may never make digital
glasses, and if it does, it won't happen before 2018. But the technology will
progress anyway. Augmented reality is what Microsoft is doing with its HoloLens
headset, and that product exists. So does Pokemon Go. The parent company of
Snapchat created a specialized camera built into glasses that lets people
record snippets of video from what they see.Snap Inc.'s Spectacles are no doubt
less ambitious than any Apple plan for wearable computers on the face, but the
point is that companies other than Apple are illuminating the path for the rest
of the industry.
CRANKING UP R&D
Cook has said that the doubling of Apple's
research-and-development spending in the past three years was in part devoted
to cooking up Apple's next big product. It certainly could use a dose of
inspiration. The company just closed its first fiscal year of declining revenue
since 2001. Its major products -- the iPhone, iPad and Mac computers -- may
never return to the growth they once had. We might look back at 2016 as a lull
before a storm of ground-breaking product categories.
More likely, though, Apple's days as technology's
unrivaled innovation factory are over.
Gadfly's Tim Culpan contributed to this column.This
column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.
The Apple TV streaming video device is interesting but
hardly a trendsetter. Apple a few years ago abandoned a television set it had
been developing.
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