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A recent report from Forbes made some interesting predictions about what moves Apple will make in the rest of 2013. Although it has taken a lot of people quite a while to figure out that Apple has been repackaging identical products and calling them new every year since 2007, even people who don’t know much about technology are finally coming around. There was a time when people who understand even less about the mobile industry than they do about comparison shopping would get excited when Apple would announce the next iPhone or iPad, but those days are gone. Forbes doesn’t expect anything exciting from Apple in 2013, and the reasons why will warm your heart.
We all know that Apple has been rumored to be working on a smart watch. In fact the smart watch and the potential for an Apple TV are really the only products that the Apple faithful have to look forward to these days. But unfortunately Apple is having a problem finding a supplier for the screens it would like to put on the upcoming smart watch. It seems that Apple can’t find anyone who can make OLED screens for the iWatch… except for Samsung. In case you haven’t read any tech news at all in the last two years; although Samsung and Apple were once very close, relations between the two companies have been strained because of Apple’s abuse of patent laws around the world in a largely unsuccessful attempt to keep Samsung’s superior products from being sold to consumers.
Apple has been getting fewer and fewer components for the iPhone and iPad from Samsung every year, but now Apple is actually facing supply issues because Samsung is the only company in the world capable of producing what Apple needs. Apple has spent millions attacking companies that make vastly more innovative smart phones and tablets instead of using that money to develop new technologies or to finance the production of the screens it needs for a new product; and now one of the companies that they have attempted to beat in court instead of in the marketplace is the biggest obstacle to growing Apple’s product line. It is starting to look like there is a little justice in this world after all.
Apple is also struggling to find a cost-effective way to make an Apple TV (or iTV) that separates itself from the crowd. In order for Apple to get market share in the living room they will have to put out a TV with a 4k resolution screen. Unfortunately neither Apple or anyone else have been able to make a 4k screen that can sell for anything approaching a reasonable cost for a TV. LG’s 4k TV costs around ten thousand dollars right now.
Where does all of this leave Apple? I’m sure we will see a slightly thinner, yet essentially identical new iteration of the iPad and the iPhone sometime this year. Tim Cook will get up on stage and drone on about how revolutionary and mind-blowing whatever tiny tweaks that have been made to these products are. But it is nice to see more and more people catching on to Apple’s game of greed every day. Apple hasn’t come out with a truly revolutionary product since the Apple II, and as long as they keep spending their money on litigation instead of innovation, we won’t be seeing anything exciting from Apple for a long time.
Source: Forbes