Out of all the big players in tech, I think Apple understands very well about sliding into mediocrity. Apple has been around for a few decades now and they already experienced a huge decline before.
Apple is too large to implode and fail quickly. Even if they do fail it will be a slow death or just a leveling off. Look at Microsoft. The last ~10 years they been getting beaten in many large markets they are entering, but they are still a massive player.
Financial performance during the biggest market bull run in history (which lasted almost 10 years) isn't that indicative of the future of company.
On the other hand, the declining quality, sloppier design, increased prices on already highly priced products, multiple conflicting product lines - all of those decisions will eventually have consequences.
Apple used to be about doing a handful of things really well and having a loyal customer base that would happily pay a premium for the quality/brand/premium-feel/coolness of their products - all of that has been slowly going away over the past 5-7 years.
I'd like to jump on this bandwagon. IMO a decline of a company can come in various forms and here we're seeing an empire built on mobile market growth starting to feel the reality of 1% yearly growth in a mature market.
Apple is slowly declining (a percent per year) their market share (they are no longer number two - oppo/oneplus has that position now), next year they won't be number three (Huawei). What happens when they go below 10%? Will developer still deliver applications for OSX? Is there a possibility for the same scenario as it was in the Mac vs PC?
Reality is that modern Android mobile phones are good enough for most. Unless you're really into the status symbol part of the Apple, they really don't have something special. Plus there is no need to upgrade a phone anymore. I bought my Galaxy S8+ a year after lunch (much cheaper) and would replace it only because of consumerism - to get a new phone. Arguably there is nothing that really warrants an upgrade today.
Headphones, while a great move, won't help them in a long run - not enough margins and good competition. The silver lining with Apple is the that they have a growing services business. Too bad Netflix is kicking their ass in video content wars. Siri is also mostly mediocre. Homekit - who knows, what happens if your market share is falling.
Reality is that Android won 3 years back. We'll see if Apple can turn around thanks to their endless coffers of cash. It's not over yet, but they need to do something and not just upgrade what they have.
In the 90s Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy, was dependent solely on the Mac, contracting rather than growing and had no operating system strategy.
Today, Apple earns 70b/year profit, is growing at 10% per year and is incredibly diversified. They could survive on any one of their businesses and in recent years grew two from nothing i.e. Services and Wearables into 1B+ businesses. And they still have their 1B/year content play starting in 2019 and they have AR glasses rumored for 2020.
I personally have been feeling the quality bar slipping but this article goes way too far. For me things aren't that bad but I can see where it's heading. Hoping to get another 5-10 years out of the Apple ecosystem.
Apple has never been a major player regardless of this. They never will be. That goes back for decades and they barely have moved the needle. They are the artisanal version of computers.
I think its about time Apple got challenged on the high end. For the rest of the market to survive they eventually have to pierce the myth that Apple is the upper bound in terms of quality in every market that they operate in.
Sure, Apple still makes the best smartphones and will sustain its current momentum and cash flow for the foreseeable future.
It has gone from a company built around its products to a company focusing on its shareholders with a CEO that is absolutely clueless when it comes to product development.
I'm cautiously betting that Apple will end up like current Microsoft. They'll stagnate to some degree, have some more ups and downs, and they'll still be around for a long while. They've grown to a tremendous height, they have a long way to fall.
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