Looking through the current leaks around the next iPhone, there are a number of leaps in technology destined for Apple's next-generation smartphone: a curved screen, an all-glass construction, wireless charging, and improved audio to name four areas. But if Tim Cook continues his cautious approach to new technology, he's going to damage the iPhone brand and weaken Apple's key product just as Cupertino needs the iPhone sales more than ever.
The new technology will combine into the best iPhone yet. What it won't be is the best smartphone. When Apple announces the new smartphone (no doubt along with the technology 'that only Apple can deliver') the combined might of Nexus supporters, Galaxy fans, and the rest of the #AndroidArmy will point out that every single feature that is expected in this super smartphone from Cupertino has been long-established on 'the other platform' for many years.
The all-glass construction mirrors the design cues of Sony's Xperia handsets, the curved screen goes back to the Galaxy Note Edge and S6 Edge, dual-camera smartphones are hitting the street this year, wireless charging arrived for the mainstream in Samsung's 2015 devices... it's all been done before.
Even one of Apple's biggest gambles, the removal of the 3.5mm stereo jack, has been tried before when the Oppo R5 dropped it to reach a thickness of 4.85mm at the end of 2014.
But the biggest gamble for Apple is not going to be in presenting all of this technology as 'brand new' to an adoring fan base ready to buy the next-generation iPhone. The gamble is that Apple is ready to delay all of this until 2017. Increasing the stakes will be the lack of advancement in 2016, with just a handful of minor tweaks to the current design language at this September's launch and the previously mentioned dropping of a physical headphone jack will satisfy the fan base, the industry, and the analysts.
Next page: How Apple can damage itself by slowing down...
The hardware is one part of the smartphone game. Perception is another, and 2016 is shaping up to be a difficult year for the perception of Apple in the mobile game.
January opened up with the news that year-on-year sales in the preceding quarter were effectively flat and that iPhone sales in the first calendar quarter of 2016 would likely fall for the first time in the lifetime of the iPhone. The push towards large-screened handsets left a generation of smartphone owners looking for a smaller suitable replacement, with Apple eventually reacting and crashing the new chipset into the 5S chassis. As Forbes' Gordon Kelly notes, the SE is the handset that Apple did not want to make and it sits uncomfortably at the bottom of the portfolio cannibalizing the iPhone 6S sales and leaving the iPhone 6 as a lame-duck. The latest MacBook updates simply keep pace with the competition's chip speeds and fail to address customer concerns.
Where is the innovative spirit? Where is the feeling that Apple not only knows what the future of the smartphone is, but is confident enough to present it to the public? Where is the risk-taking Apple that defined the American smartphone market?
Apple can package everything up very nicely. Its focus on retaining power in the ecosystem lends iOS many advantages (such as the ease of software upgrades). And it has strength in the retail space thanks to a unique relationship with customers built up through the Apple Stores, online interaction, and brand power.
But all of these tools in use today were built by Apple many years ago. 2016 is shaping up to be the year that Apple doesn't do anything new. The year where it sits back and relies on momentum to see it through not just this year, but the bulk of 2017 as well. Where it hopes the presumptively titled iPhone 8 will be able to convince everyone that the technology you could pick up in an Android handset in 2015 is still 'magical' and 'brand new' when it shows up at the iPhone launch in September 2017.
This is how Apple falls from being the seer of the future to just another company trying to convince us its white box is better than the competition's identical white box. It forgets that you need to stay ahead of the competition and you need to take risks, you need to stay creative and keep challenging what the iPhone offers.
Apple believes it sets the agenda. It expects this message to be magnified by the media at every product launch. That belief is becoming harder to justify. Apple should not be taking four years to refresh its smartphone line-up with the Android technology that was debuted at CES four months after the iPhone 6 release.
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