Has Apple stopped innovating?

Innovation by Apple:

Apple has stopped innovating like it once used to, people are not that  impressed by the latest  iPhone. The iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max are Apple's newest phones and both tout a triple camera setup, but wait...Why does it sounds familiar? As many die-hard Android fans will remind you again and again that iPhone is not the first to have three cameras. LG added an ultra wide-angle lens to its G5 and V20 phones in 2016 and Samsung introduced the same spec on the Galaxy S10 and S10 plus in the early 2019. In these years, Samsung was really pushing the boundaries of cameras, and has also experimented with folding screens, mobile desktop interfaces, gesture controls and other different kind of features in the previous years. So why now? Why is Apple, the company that wrote the book on smartphones, resting comfortably while other companies racing through the technology at a much cheaper price to the customers. Data says, Apple spent a record amount on research and development this year but the phone looks almost similar as it did the previous year. Apple, without any doubt has been a hardware pioneer since its birth, iconic products such as the Macintosh, iPod and especially the iPhone paved new roads in the technology industry. The Apple 2 redesigned the personal computer in 1977, Apple designed Disc 2 floppy disk drive the Macintosh, brought together a graphical interface (GUI) with an easy-to-use mouse and keyboard setup in a compact design  and that too for a price that was not that expensive and the iPod blew people's minds with its portability, storage capacity, ease of use and feel. All of this led to the creation of the iconic iPhone in 2007. We can still observe some big improvements in things like the iPad moving to face ID, but it does not bring the same feeling as it used to be there when the first iPhone came out.

The Rise of Android:

Now let’s talk about iPhone's biggest rival-Android, which was acquired by Google in 2005, two years before Apple released its first iPhone. Though Android was originally developed for phones with buttons, not touchscreens but it didn't take much time to expand into the touchscreen market.. Android is an open source mobile operating system that first showed up on the t-mobile g1 by HTC in 2008. It allowed various tech companies to focus on hardware instead of the software and now holds around 76 percent of the global market share for mobile operating systems leaving Apple's iOS at a 22 percent.

It's Hardware Competitors:

Android based companies have a huge list of infinite number of “firsts” smartphone, that later found their way to Apple products. Motorola built a fingerprint sensor into its Atrix 4G phone two years before the iPhone 5s brought touch ID in 2011. Samsung brought huge phones into the market with its whole note series creating the phone-tablet hybrid. Apple took note of it for its plus and max versions of its iPhone starting with the 6 plus in 2014. Till now One of the most consistently upgraded features of any smart phone is its camera, each year it comes with more megapixels, better night time photography, more apertures  and some other upgrades. Samsung has been a big player in the smartphone camera game even before Apple started it in its flip phones. Over the years, Samsung was really pushing the boundaries of cameras, then came pixel and now Huawei.

The path to pioneering legacy:

Despite everything that android has to offer, it was the iPhone that gave us the modern-day smartphone. Think about the way that you use your phone or any touchscreen device slide typing on a virtual keyboard, scroll through the glass. All these things were introduced in the industry by Apple. Since then, Apple hasn't always been the first to innovate but the fans continued to be excited by the updates like the App Store in 2008, Siri in 2011, touch ID in 2013 and countless others.

Among others, Samsung and similar companies such as One Plus  on Android like to hustle for new technology, whereas Apple really can't do that. Some fans were disappointed, as usual because they set their expectations too high, but that doesn't mean people stopped tuning into those beloved Apple events. Stats says that around 1.9 million people were watching Apple launch new products on YouTube and that's a huge number

A few years ago Apple revealed that they had 800 people working on the iPhone camera, but we can assume that the number is even higher now. I think it's a place where Apple sees that you know it's expertise in software and hardware can match up and they can do something that other companies can't. During the 2017 keynote, Apple spent just 10% of the iPhone 10 announcement discussing the camera system. In the 2018 keynote, it spent 27% of the iPhone 10R announcement discussing the camera system. And in its most recent keynote, Apple spent 49% of the iPhone 12 pro announcement discussing the camera system, which makes it clear that cameras are one of the most important features on a smartphone according to customers.

But people are still divided on whether or not we even need better smartphone cameras. Cameras have gotten really good but not that good enough, and that happened probably three or four years ago, where you had pictures that were great.

The legal battle:

In the beginning though, Samsung might have been less innovative and more imitative getting the company into a lawsuit with Apple. Apple filed a complaint in 2011 about Samsung's alleged emulation of Apple's intellectual property including the design of its phone and operating system quote instead of pursuing independent product development. "Samsung has chosen to slavishly copy Apple's innovative technology, distinctive user interface and elegant and distinctive product and packaging design, in violation of Apple's valuable intellectual property rights". This dispute was settled in 2018 with Apple receiving $538 million from Samsung.

Samsung’s Strategy:

And when Samsung does innovate on its own beyond adding another camera at times those innovations can come at the cost of quality, the Samsung Galaxy fold created the most buzz around the technology at least in the US, but the phone has not been in good standing reporting numerous problems with the screen and hinge mechanism. But many think that Apple is smart and it is safe for them to be playing to its strengths and what it knows consumers want, which is like said battery life and cameras.

Apple's product strategy:

Apple has been putting more and more emphasis on its cameras and that consists a large part due to the company's increasing dependence on safer common technologies to please customers. The iPhone is still the most important thing Apple hands down and because it's such an important product, the company can't take too many risks. It also gives the company room to explore and expand its services along with other products we might not have seen yet. Just because they're working on projects they haven't announced, that doesn't mean that they don't have a lot of people working on the software and the hardware for the new iPhone. It's definitely the number one corporate priority. If you strengthen the things that work around the iPhone you make the iPhone stronger and you give it more resilience against the competition even if the opposition might have something better.

And Apple's safety regarding the iPhone has not hurt the brand, Apple has built an ecosystem that customers enjoy and don't want to leave. If you have an iPhone, you're used to iMessage, you're used to getting those blue bubbles, etc. and thus the whole ecosystem is more important than any feature improvement in the camera. And what if there's more we can do with smartphones?

In the late 2000's Apple pioneered the modern smartphone industry but it hasn't wowed audiences in a few years and that's not necessarily a bad thing, innovation for the sake of innovation can compromise quality. A recent poll suggests that the camera is one of the top five most important features in a smartphone.The same poll also suggests battery life, ease of use, memory capacity and durability as important to phone buyers and most of them were already addressed during the most recent announcement.

It's not just the headline improvements that they were doing, there is a lot of improvement on the inside, the chip, camera, software bump, etc. Along the way, Apple has started to figure out what really sells phones. This brings the question that does Apple really need to innovate like it once used to, if it can simply target what customers want?

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