Having a new CEO take the rein from an iconic co - founderhas not seemed to make much turbulency for Apple . In fact , the company is stronger than at any gunpoint in its history . In its most recent financial quarter , the company sold more iPads than in any three - calendar month full stop in its history ; it also tallied June - twenty-five percent records for Mac and iPad sales and saw quarterly revenue rise 22 percent from the previous twelvemonth to $ 35 billion . More to the point , Apple is now the most valuable caller in the world in footing of market capitalization .
But Apple did n’t get to this lofty position by doing the same things over and over . Apple executive will be the first to tell apart you that maintaining the position quo is no agency to stay on top . The companionship will extend to look challenge and questions in the coming year , and its responses to those will decide whether or not Apple will proceed to flourish .
How to stay on top of the tablet market?
Apple invent the modern tablet market , and — for now , at least — still overtop it . But while would - be iPad competitor such as theXoomand thePlaybookhave come and go like season , more recent upstart such as theKindle Fire HDandGoogle Nexus 7are chipping away at Apple ’s once ostensibly insurmountable lead .
The perennial rumor , of course , is that Apple will come out witha littler version of the iPadto vie more directly with the more and more popular 7 - inch tablets . Steve Jobs once deride 7 - column inch tablets , enunciate that size “ is n’t sufficient to produce large tablet apps , ” that tablets littler than the iPad ’s 10 inches make “ reset the wrong trade - off , ” and that such tablets are “ tweeners — too big to compete with a smartphone , and too small to contend with an iPad . ”
Apple would n’t launch a smaller tablet unless it matte that Jobs ’s concerns were no longer deserving worrying about . ( It ’s not as if Apple has never changed course after a Steve Jobs dictum . Just inquire anyone who ever owned avideo iPod . ) The hearsay mill suggests that a humble iPad would actually have a screen closer to eight inches than seven , which would help .
decide whether or not to launch a modest iPad is n’t the only selection Apple faces . How should it price a minuscule tab , specially when you’re able to pluck up a Kindle Fire for $ 159 or a Nexus 7 for $ 199 ? Remember that the entry - level 16 GB iPod touching costs $ 199 already . Apple has never felt compel to compete directly on price — until the release of the original iPad , which ball over many with its $ 500 entry price . To price a smaller iPad competitively , Apple may want to fix its lineament , storage space , or processor speed .
What to do about digital entertainment?
Apple ’s position in the euphony manufacture is assured at this point : The caller has sold billions of songs since opening the iTunes Store in 2003 , and its iPods have dominated the music - participant marketplace for more than a X now . But the next battleground is the living room .
The company has been trying to come up with a compelling product for that part of the house for year , without much achiever . In fall 2006 , Jobs preview the first version of the Apple TV — then code - named iTV — which go on to launch in spring 2007 . Since then , the Apple TV has been update several time , most notably in fall 2010 , when it became a much smaller gadget that focused on streaming metier and connection with the rest of Apple ’s ecosystem .
Both Jobs and his successor Tim Cook have said that the Apple TV is still a “ hobby”—in other words , not as crucial to the society ’s success as iOS devices or the Mac . But that hobby is still astonishingly serious : In July , Cook said that the devicehas scud up 4 million salesthis fiscal twelvemonth , and that the ship’s company is committed to continuing “ to pull the string to see where it accept us . ”
But the Apple TV as we fuck it may simply be a overture . hearsay of a full - fledged Apple television set , gross with streaming content , have been fly for years now . But negociate with subject matter providers and be allocator has proven difficult ; having seen what happened to their counterparts in the music business , those troupe have been decidedly suspicious .
At the mo , the saving grace for Apple in the living way is that none of its competitors have do to take in much of a foothold there , either . But the company ca n’t afford to not be a player in what is trusted to be a contentious — and remunerative — grocery .
What’s the future for the Mac?
One thing ’s clear : In the near full term , at least , the future of Apple ’s laptop computer seems to rest on the MacBook Air . The young MacBook Pro is the first of Apple ’s high - final stage ancestry to follow the Air ’s thinner , light design , but that modification was n’t much of a surprise : Apple has long aimed to make its products ever - thinner , ever - lighter , and ever more muscular . The questions for MacBooks , Pro and Air alike , are how thin they can go and how affordable their self-coloured state drive can get .
Apple has some decisions to make on the screen background side , too . The iMac has n’t get wind a significant physical refresh since 2007 . The Mac Pro infamously mark onlythe most minor of updatesearlier this yr , after two class of stasis . Apple ’s big Mac sales development is in laptop , but it ’s unlikely that the society would simply forsake the desktop market completely . The interrogation is whether Apple can create compelling young hardware that overstep traditional ware evolution .
How much should iOS and OS X intermingle?
With the last few iterations of iOS and OS X , it ’s becoming progressively unclouded that the futures of these two operating organisation are tight intertwined . Over the last decade or so , Apple has become a company concentre on its ecosystem , in which all of its ware influence together . Naturally , as that ecosystem has develop , the exchange of ideas and lineament between iOS and OS X has increase . You might think that , in sentence , they ’d finally become the same .
But that ’s not necessarily the face . In a lecture at the2008 AllThingsD group discussion , Jobs made a distinction between traditional microcomputer and devices like the iPad by comparing them to truck and cars . And that equivalence seems to have remain mostly apt . plain , there ’s a great deal of overlap between what the two types of devices can accomplish . But there are still time when a particular task calls for one or the other .
So do n’t require Apple to do anything radical like forsake the Mac program . If anything , Apple ’s recent waiver of two major OS X updates in the past two years shows that Mac growth is as strong as ever . Borrowing feature from iOS is just an denotation that the former veteran OS X has something to pick up from the fresh - faced rookie .
What about Web-based services?
Compared to Apple ’s hardware and software products , services are not the companionship ’s strong offering . iCloud is the quaternary looping of the companionship ’s online service , following iTools , .Mac , and MobileMe . If you ’re depend for evidence of Steve Jobs ’s flaw as a man of affairs , this is a good place to start .
But the increased focus on iCloud in iOS 5 and Mountain Lion has made that service essential to Apple , especially now that the price barrier to entry has been removed . That means that Apple must solidify iCloud , making it more true and more competitory with the many alternatives that consumers have . Most unmanageable of all , iCloud must escaping the stigma its predecessor leave behind .
iCloud is , in its most introductory word form , the trench mortar that contain Apple ’s ecosystem together , and a wall is only as good as the poppycock that binds it . Apple ca n’t yield missteps likeprolonged , unexplained email outage . If people are going to be wooed off from the the like of Dropbox or Gmail , iCloud need to be rock candy solid and offer compelling features that users ca n’t get anywhere else . The question is , can Apple provide them ?
