It is a description of how things are going for Apple. And how they can turn it around.
What is actually Apple doing?
Apple has a master plan. How this company has been able to create such profitable fan base on the planet? The answer is simple. No, not that simple what you are thinking. I meant "Principle of Simplicity”.
Take Apple Pencil for example. When you put down your apple pencil. It rolls up until the Apple Logo appears. User may have not noticed it yet. But Apple spent months to get this working.
Another thing to talk about is Product Packaging of iPhone. Apple tested hundreds prototypes to get a perfect unboxing experience. It was done just when you lift the lid, it opens up at a constant velocity.
A favorite feature, 4K videos @ 60 fps . But when you do that. It is actually shooting 4K @ 120fps with every alternating frame being a low exposure frame which is fused to a normal exposure frame to keep the brightest area from over exposing. Apple didn’t talk about it as they though that would made it less simple.
Other thing is Product Announcement . Other tech companies just keep talking. Take Huawei for example. Huawei’s twitter page make 5 announcement a day. There also include promotional offer and product reviews. Moreover, Huawei has about 15 different account which almost does the same thing. They’ve got billboard ads, YouTube adds or Facebook adds all year round. You look so much this and it looks more like a noise. Huawei's messaging blends into Samsung’s messaging which blends into OnePlus’s messaging. And it all becomes noise. So what does Apple do? Apple is silent for 95% of whole year. They have about 5 million followers in twitter. But they actually never made a proper tweet. When Apple has product announcement the whole tech companies becomes silent.
Another good thing about Apple is how they addresses their products. Apple doesn’t talk about features. They talk about benefits. You may remember when they first launched iPad. They didn’t talked about how many storage in contain. Instead they said, It’s a thousand song in your pocket .
Finally, Apple pretends as other brand don’t exist. Other companies while announcing their products. They compare with Apple. But Apple doesn’t do that. They don’t compare benchmarks. They always says this model has these upgrades from the previous one. That’s how Apple managed to connect with people by Simplicity.
Apple is actually killing it in every way. We can understand it by the pictures. Apple has only 20% market share. But stil it managed to take 60% profit lf smartphone market.
There is a big reason behind it. The reason is chipset. We know, there are two major android chipset manufacturers. They are Snapdragon and MediaTek. So, every manufacturer company who uses this chipset has to give some cut to these companies. It is applicable whether it is for Xiaomi, OnePlus or Oppo. Apple doesn’t has that problem. As Apple designs that their own chipset.
But keeping this all apart. Apple has nowadays doing some things that seem very Unapple. The reason in very simple. Smartphone sales are falling. So if they can’t make profit from smartphone they have to look for other sources.
Subscription is the future. If you have noticed pretty much every company like Microsoft, Amazon, YouTube Premium is moving towards subscription. Apple could have made 50 different model for every price point. But they didn’t. They wanted to focus on few model and really control the end user experience. To get this subscription working you need to get more people as much you can. That’s how, we got to see iPhone SE 2. That’s how you get to more people to subscribe to your subscription services. Release of iOS 14, Apple get this subscription idea a step further. Over the last few years, Android had killer advantages over Apple. The features available in Android, Apple could have added them anytime. But they didn’t. As previously mentioned they want to control the end user experience. They offered huge customization in iOS 14 like App Library. Customized widget, Picture in picture mode, Changing default browser.
So why did Apple took so long to make these customization? Now, Apple wants Android user to switch. iOS 14 is a direct attack on Android.
Another thing is about MacBook. When you go to buy a MacBook, you are not sure when the next one is coming. Isn’t weird for a company like Apple who launch their iPhone so on the dot predictively but not MacBook? For quite a few years, Apple had to depend on Intel to produce their processor and AMD for their graphics. That was kind of annoying for Apple. They had no control over user experience. Sometimes they see only 5% improvement. Besides, Intel delays to deliver chip on time. And there was some thermal issues in recent MacBook’s. So what they did? They come up with their own chipset named Apple Silicon. These also done to bring more people to Apple’s services. The other thing to use their own chipset to Mac that doesn’t only Mac more appealing but also that make Apple products more appealing. This gives another advantage that is to run iOS apps on Mac. While using Mac you get access to the largest App Store in the world. While using iPhone or iPad you get the pro level editing experience which is ported from Mac. These are all done because, Apple wants you to buy all of their products. Think about it. The very center of everything is Apple Services. To get sustained profit over time, this is where Apple wants to invest.
Up until now, the only funnel to get user to Apple Subscription was iPhone. This wasn’t working as the iPhone was expensive. That’s why they introduced iOS 14 & iPhone SE 2. Instead of relying just on iPhone, they are making each other's platforms more distinctive. They have turned the iPad to a giant iPhone with a computer capable machine. They turned Apple Watch from an accessory of the iPhone to an independent watch with its own app store. So you see, the iPhone is not the only bottleneck to their ecosystem. So if a person has iPhone using all the services of Apple. He might want to buy more Apple products to consume them with. So sell of one piece of product indirectly leads to buy other products.
Lastly, there is one more thing. People has been disappointed as the constant design of apps because of shadows. Apple has been trying to remove shadows. So did Apple stop paying its designers? No. The answer is Augmented Reality is coming. There is some new news coming that Apple has been working with Apple Glass. This gives you smart functionalities in your watch. Spatial Audio is already introduced. This leads to just one thing i.e. Augmented Reality.
Good one