How Successful Will A New Apple Product Need to be to Considered Successful?

The iPod, iPhone, and iPad are unequivocally considered to be profound and world-changing technological breakthroughs that forever changed the world we live in. They sell by the millions and account for staggering quarterly revenues.

The funny thing is, none of them really sold well on the first generation. The first iPod is barely a blip on the sales radar coming in well under a quarter million units.

Image credit: Wikipedia

Okay, so what about the iPhone? Nope - 270,000 units in their first quarter. Sales did pick up a bit for a total first year sales of a little over 5M, but they sell that on opening weekend now.

Image credit: Wikipedia

Fine, but surely the iPad was a grand slam, right? Comparatively, yes (at 3.27M units the first quarter). But by today's standards? Not so much.

Image credit: Wikipedia

So what exactly are "today's standards"? Every time there is a new sales record, that seems to become the new standard. If a company returns to their previous normal revenue, normal sales, or normal product volumes it is usually viewed as the end of days for that company. Growth is important, don't get me wrong, but Apple's repeatedly mind-boggling quarterly revenues are dismissed because some of the growth numbers are flat.

I've written about the flat iPad growth and so has Ben Thompson, so I won't rehash it, but suffice it to say they're selling a lot of iPads. The speculation for their next product is, well, creative to put it nicely. Many things are products that could certainly be interesting, but often many don't address a real problem like these iDevices did. This tweet from Benedict Evans hits the nail on the head.

Before the iPhone and iPod we knew the problem but not the solution. With smart watches we don't know the problem

— Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) April 19, 2014

Apple's next product could be a health wearable where the total addressable market is technically every human, but realistically far, far smaller. It could be a watch. It could be television. Each of these has inherent problems, but did many of their past breakthrough products, all of which were overcome.

Suppose Apple does the Apple thing and overcomes the battery life or content delivery or whatever hurdles stand in their way. Suppose they introduce the next leg of their product stool at WWDC in a few weeks. What happens then? Is there any sales number that would draw a positive result from the masses? They sell 50M iPhones per quarter, so do they have to beat that? It sounds insane, but after seeing the 50M number, 1M doesn't sound so good to those that are so hungry for something, for anything new, that they live with blinders on and won't stop writing about how innovation is dead at big companies like Apple.

If it isn't the sales number that gets people, perhaps it'll be the revenue. As Ben Bajarin has pointed out several times, for any product to even show up on their revenue pie chart it would have to make many billions of dollars. That's a stretch, even for Apple.

I certainly hope a new product is met with new (and realistic) sales volume expectations, but I'm not holding my breath. News agencies are pushing this sense of urgency that a monumental breakthrough is absolutely required for Apple as we know it to stay relevant. Once the stimulus bar has been raised, it (apparently) can never go back down.

What is the magic number of unit sales or revenue they've got to hit? Will it even matter, or will the next round of pessimists start immediately beating their tired drum? Only time will tell.

Additional Considerations for Gassée's Conclusion for Declining iPad Growth

To proclaim understanding of such a young tablet market is a fool's errand, but I think there are some additional considerations to be made beyond Gassée's article where he concludes that the iPad is a tease and it cannot fulfill the duties it promised to fulfill.

To evaluate the tablet, it is worthwhile to consider smartphones. Smartphones replaced their predecessors entirely, and with ease. It wasn't a "good enough" solution and the way we use phones didn't have to change. Sure we got all sorts of new ways to use phones, but the same old ability to make calls and send SMS usage was fundamentally still there. All of the things people needed to do, they could do.

The same cannot be said for tablets right now when you measure them as PC replacements. Tablets enable us to do a lot of work, a lot of the same work, and a lot of new work, but it doesn't allow us to do all of the work we can do on a PC. If there is even one critical task you must accomplish that isn't possible or realistic on a tablet, you suddenly need a computer. One tiny little thing can throw a wrench in the gears that easily. Sure a new piece of software with a unique way of interacting with or producing data to fulfill the same need is possible, but it might not be adopted at your company or it might have shortcomings.

So why this massive difference in how things turned out? For starters, the phone industry was an infant when smartphones replaced them. Okay not technically an infant but they never really added usage-changing features, for all intents and purposes people just needed their phones to make calls and send messages. The computer industry is a lot older and has some extremely entrenched workflows. It is much easier to dethrone something so young (dumb phones), especially if you (smartphones) are vastly superior in every single way. Computers aren't young, they aren't dumb, and they are absolutely critical in just about everyone's job, if not their life.

The other thing that complicates this discussion is that tablets are being framed as needing to replace traditional PCs to be successful. I think that is a misguided notion. There is certainly a lot of overlap between the two, but surely it isn't realistic to expect tablets to eliminate the PC industry. It isn't clear where this will all end up. Even though iPad sales growth is declining with no obvious explanation, the tablet market is nicely establishing itself in peoples' lives and won't be going away any time soon. 

(My thanks to Jordan Hendry for a thought provoking discussion that lead to this train of thought.)

UPDATE: Updated the title to reflect the tone of the article more, I'll leave the URL to keep links live.

What is the Next Interaction Model Breakthrough after Touchscreens?

The only undisputed champion of interaction models/devices since the mouse is the touchscreen. No contest. The trend and industry is trying, often too hard, to push the next frontier of interacting with devices toward voice. While I think voice interaction is crucial, I don't think it is being thought of in the right way yet.

There are inherent problems with voice. Natural language recognition isn't perfect, and likely won't be for a while. If the system has "keywords" you've failed before you shipped and the biggest concern of all is probably privacy. I'm not talking about Google or government knowing your every move type of privacy, I'm talking about old fashioned privacy. "Don't let the guy next to me know what I'm saying to my wife" privacy. There is a reason messaging is still king (cough, WhatsApp for $19 billion). Messaging is, and will be for the foreseeable future, a major player in how we communicate. Yes people will dictate messages, but often we're in public or a quiet place and just don't want to share what we're saying with everyone. Expect a piece on this soon, but let's leave it there for now.

So how do we advance to the next interaction model if it isn't voice? There is nothing left between us and our content; we are literally touching it. No more mouse or scroll wheel in the middle. To answer the question, you've got to change the perspective a little bit. 

I think the next interaction model is going to be proactive and intelligent technology. We have seen signs of it today, Google Now being the best example by far, but don't forget Android's (third party) context aware lock screens. These are just the start, but it is a sample. Your first thought is probably "that isn't an interaction model, I still touch the screen or use voice commands." That is true, for now. That changed perspective I was referring to is to accept that voice and touch are likely to be around for a very long time. They'll be a big part of this. This proactive technology isn't replacing touchscreens any time soon, but it will fundamentally change how we use technology. For the first time, the interaction will be a two way street. That is the interaction model breakthrough.

There are concerns and problems to be solved. We've gotten used to getting this type of thing for "free," but nothing is really free. If you aren't paying for the service, then you are the thing being sold. To achieve this level of proactive technology, the devices will have to know us very intimately. This means collecting data, a lot of data. For now that means privacy is diminished, but eventually that will (largely) come to pass. Encrypted devices send encrypted anonymous data to servers to process and analyze with anonymous (encrypted) results sent back. As with anything with technology, this can and will be hacked, but if the value is high enough people will allow it. They've moved all of their communication to free email and free (or free-ish) messaging haven't they?

It is tough to say what the solution will look like, but I anxiously await the day my technology drives the interaction with me and not always the other way around.

Heisler: A spoiled generation of tech observers yearn for Apple innovations on-demand →

This piece by Yoni Heisler is the most refreshing thing I've read in a very long time. Do yourself a favor and go read it (and don't miss the embedded Louis CK video - so accurate). 

Apple does one thing, and it does it very well. In Yoni's words:

Apple may be an immensely private company, but its modus operandi is hardly a well-kept secret. The company releases finished products that it believes will fundamentally have a positive impact on the way people interact with technology, and in the process, make them truckloads of money. 

This also stood out to me:

The "what have you done for me lately" attitude is pervasive amongst talking heads who seemingly employ a running counter that precisely measures the last time Apple released a game changing product.

Yoni, thank you. I am equally excited about what comes next while being equally thrilled about how great technology is today.

How Long Until Wireless Display is Open and Ubiquitous Like WiFi?

Intel has branded wireless display as WiDi, Apple has AirPlay, Google has Chromecast, and now Amazon has entered the market. The value of platform lock-in is tremendous for these companies, so the incentive to move to a more open standard isn't very high. But how much longer can that be the case?

This isn't comparing apples to apples, with wireless displays the control has to be tighter since only one person can have control of the screen at a time (or perhaps a small subset of people) unlike WiFi which can handle huge numbers. Yet the principle is similar. A protocol to dictate who is in control as an admin, who controls the screen, how the bit rate and quality are negotiated, and more. This protocol isn't unlike the 802.11 protocols that dictate the security, handshaking, and data transfer for WiFi.

At work we plug into 1024x768 projectors with a VGA cable from Dell laptops. That sentence could have been written in the late 90s and would have been relevant... ouch. 

I use AirPlay at home frequently. Many family members have Apple TVs that allow the same, but with Chromecast costing a third as much and Android sales booming, it stands to reason that cross platform wireless screen sharing is going to be in high demand soon*. Or are people (and companies) going to need to buy one of each? Google has gestured toward cross platform screen casting, but it is far from ubiquitous. What level of cultural adoption would be required for Apple to consider adding support for it at the expense of AirPlay?

I don't know how long it will take, but eventually something (probably) has to give. 

*I know Chromecast is cross platform, but iOS limits the support to apps that build in support themselves. I'm talking about native system-wide screen casting.