iPhone sales are falling down, falling down, falling down, iPhone sales are falling down and Tim Cook ‘aint happy!
The whole world is singing this tune these days, predicting the doom and death of the company and saying Ye to hona hi tha …
Is the iPhone’s charm ebbing? Is it time for another to take its stead? But what could take the place of the mighty iPhone?
The truth is we haven’t the foggiest notion of what Apple’s “next big thing” is because Apple likes to be secretive about everything. What we do know is that the company is pumping an obscene amount of money into research! Billions of dollars. On research. Mind blown!
A recent report from Quartz lays bare the truth: “Apple spent $2.56 billion on research—more than it spent in any year-long period before 2012—in just this past quarter alone. It’s spent $7.5 billion on research for the year, and is on track to outpace last year’s spend.”
Have a look at this chart:
As you can see, Apple has been rapidly increasing its investment into R&D since the beginning of the decade. In fact, they are almost matching Facebook and Google’s spend on research. Whoa!
And why not, you may ask. Why shouldn’t Apple invest in R&D? It’s a huge company that prides itself on its innovation. R&D is just the thing they should be investing in.
Good point. But let’s just take a look at what the other two companies are investing in.
Facebook:
- Drones
- Household robots
- Weather balloons that stream high-speed internet
- The world’s most advanced facial recognition software
- Virtual Reality
Google:
- Self driving cars
- Internet of Things
- Quantum A.I.
- World’s most advanced natural language processing capabilities
- Smartphones that can be assembled! (Project Ara)
In addition, these two companies are also heavily invested in Machine Learning and Big Data.
And what does Apple has to show for the billions they’re spending – Not very much, really.
They sure as hell aren’t spending $7.5 billion to make the iPhone a wee bit thinner or the iPad a wee bit faster. And neither is all that research going into giving the iPhone battery a longer life or ensuring the lightning cable stays taut and strong!
So where is all that money going?
Reporters have been asking this very question whenever they’ve had the opportunity to ambush the Apple bosses. But, obviously, the answers have remained sneaky and elusive. This is what Tim Cook had to say at the last Earning’s Call press conference:
The products that are in R&D, there is quite a bit of investment in there for products that are not currently shipping or derivations of what is currently shipping. And so I don’t want to talk about the exact split of it. But you can look at the growth rate and conclude that there’s a lot of stuff that we’re doing beyond the current products.
That’s as good an answer as we’re ever going to get – “There’s a lot of stuff that we’re doing beyond the current products”.
We wonder what that “stuff” is. We know for sure there’s a car on the menu. It might have hit a few roadblocks on the way, but it’s coming along. What else can we expect? A completely immersive virtual reality game perhaps? A super advanced toaster that can make you bread and do your taxes? A foot massager that doubles as your bodyguard?
I don’t know Nobody knows!! But, when the time comes for Apple’s big reveal, it’s definitely going to blow our minds! At least, we’re hoping it will!