I just don't think the iWatch is their style. It's something Microsoft would do. I really think the iCar or iDock for the car is ingenious because it will get redundant sales from their existing customers. I mean so what if you have an iPhone, you don't have the car dock! With the watch, they are competing with themselves. Why would someone want an iPhone, when they have an iwatch? 51% of their revenue comes from the iPhone. They have zero revenue from the auto industry.
Another question: why does Apple have to innovate in order to have a higher stock price? This seems to be the "narrative" but lots of very successful companies do very little innovating (Samsung, for example).
Well technically not to justify a share price; but they need to innovate so they are always being the company other companies want to be. They must keep their status quo as being the coolest pieces of equipment you can own. Innovation gets you there. Apple could ride the coattails of iphone and ipad for the next 5-6 years without innovating a damn thing and still probably make a killing. But if they sit too complacent then they will get passed up. Look at Sony....
Another plus could be apple signing license contracts to the automotive industry for the "SIRI" feature. Basically do the Bill Gates (IBM) to the automotive industry. They develop software that diagnoses the vehicles, has a decent conversation with the driver, etc. It wouldn't require much of hardware either. And it would be cool as fuck to see the apple logo on the start up when I start my car!
Samsung sure does innovate. http://news.yahoo.com/samsung-elect...ebate-over-innovation-110636096--finance.html "Samsung keeps investing in R&D. They've boosted their smartphone R&D workforce to 25,000 or so from less than 20,000, and I think they have an exciting product lineup ready, probably in the second half, to upend the market," said Lee Do-hoon, an analyst at RBS. That is a significant departure for a company which used to tear apart a Sony television in 1970s to reverse engineer rivals' products. Samsung finally overtook Sony to become the world's top TV maker in 2006, largely aided by slim designs and super-thin displays produced as a result of aggressive capital investment. By contrast, Samsung's mobile devices business now generates 70 percent of its total revenue.
Well hell, Apple could give away every product they make for free for 10 years and still have money in the bank. As for the iWatch, it'd be a symbiotic device like the iPod was to the Mac. It's also right in Apple's wheelhouse: you have a nascent industry (wearable computing) that has some early players (Pebble, etc.) that are hacky but okay. Apple can come in and make their offering that much better without being Too Good, and cool to People Who Aren't Nerds. Apple is as much a fashion company as it is a tech company (shades of Nike, here). An actual piece of fashion (a watch) might be the perfect melding of their design sense and their technology sense. To me the iWatch is a good fit for them, provided it does things other smart watches can't do, or do some subset of that feature list better than anyone else. Perfect "it just works" system-level melding with the iPhone/Mac ecosystem is essential, and something they can do that watches like The Pebble can't.
Another innovation could be the iCloud working with the cars. Basically you can purchase a song and have it downloaded to your vehicle like it would to a computer or iPhone. You can get emails and pictures too I guess. What changes is maybe the license is $50 per vehicle. Sell 1 million vehicles and you have $50 million in an entirely new revenue stream!
As Apple has taught us, being innovative year to year and generating a ton of profits year to year aren't 100% correlated. Samsung has used its position as an Apple supplier to get a leg up on other Android smartphone makers; they are indeed the farthest along because they were partners. But I'm not sure their cash cow (smartphones) are terribly innovative in and of themselves. I guess there's a slippery definition of "innovative" that we're disagreeing on.
LMAO!!!!!!!! Speaking of Trek. How you like the new movies? I wasn't that impressed with the last one, but the new one really looks awesome!
But in that scenario, it's integrated to your existing phone. I want the day when the cars themselves have the OS installed. You wont need a phone in this scenario.
What apple has taught us is that failure to continually innovate leads to profits from optimization of processes and decreasing stock prices. Apple innovated with the iPhone by combining a lot of neat and useful technologies. Of interest for our discussion, perhaps, is the potentiometer that allows software to detect the phone being rotated or shaken. Think about the experience without the phone automatically switching between portrait and landscape display by simply rotating the phone orientation. The Samsung Galaxy 4 has a sort of motion sensor that detects when people are actually looking at the camera part of the phone. A way to start and stop recording, among other things. It remains to be seen how useful the feature is, but it may well be. Would you consider taking a dual core processor version of a phone an innovation? Apple is likely to start making cheesy plastic cheapo iPhones to compete. That's not innovation, but taking a giant step backward. And I don't think Apple is so much a fashion statement. I buy apple products because the operating systems are great, the apps work great, and the packaging adds a lot to the experience. For example, I've owned laptops for a couple decades now and rarely actually carried them around and used them. Until I got a macbook.
Where I see things going is super tight integration. You get a phone and it works great for its size. It does your voice and data calling and provides wifi. From there, your communicator badge, tablet, eyeglasses, watch, etc., all talk wifi to the phone. Why do you need wifi/internet/calling ability on your phone and tablet? Once you get this level of integration, then health monitors and even devices that monitor what you eat are trivial.
Sure, but Apple's hardware has also always been the prettiest around (discounting the Lost Years of the mid-90's through 2007). This is not a coincidence. Great hardware and a rock-solid OS get you most of the way there, but you have to sell the damn thing, and a luxurious look helps justify the higher price (even if the parts themselves justify it behind the scenes).
Agreed, as long as it just works. There's little things like Nike+ and Pebble which are mostly there, but don't integrate at the system level perfectly. Only Apple can let that happen.
