#苹果失去乔布斯的10年发展如何 #
On October 5, 2021, we will have a meaningful day for the technology community.
Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs died of illness on this day a decade ago. His death has been lamented by many consumer electronics enthusiasts, a man who not only has a distinct personality and philosophy, but also led the company he founded to have a huge impact on the world with several products.
The iPhone redefines the boundaries of mobile phones, integrates communication, entertainment, work, life and other functions into one, and is a personal mobile information terminal that can be called "changing the world". Pc Mac, Walkman iPod, content distribution ecology iTunes and App Store, tablet iPad and other products, with similar philosophy in more scenarios completely affect human life.
On the tenth anniversary of Jobs's death, in addition to mourning the deceased, we also began to think about a series of changes that have taken place in the world: What changes and changes have occurred in the iPhone and Apple? What are the far-reaching impacts on consumer electronics and more people? And, of course, the question that has been asked repeatedly: "When will the next iPhone" appear, and whose men will it come from?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="10" > Apple still leads the mobile phone and tablet market</h1>
In the past decade, there have been more and more voices saying that the iPhone has declined, and Apple is no longer the absolute hegemon in the field of smartphones. Indeed, there are many changes in mobile phone manufacturers outside of Apple, Samsung occupies the largest share of the smartphone market, and domestic mobile phone manufacturers have gained more markets while also bringing a lot of innovation, in contrast, the annual upgrade of the iPhone is relatively conservative.
This does not mean that the iPhone has not changed, there have been a larger screen, biometric means, multi-camera and image algorithms and other aspects of the upgrade, hardware performance has been ahead of the Android camp. However, in the face of innovations such as full screen, fast charging, and folding screen, Apple rarely has an evolution that can be called "changing the world again", and more is a conservative update.
The market's feedback on the iPhone is still very positive, and it may not be possible to reproduce the past growth rate, but the sales volume is still first-class. Taking the data of a number of research institutions in 2020 as an example, Apple's total sales ranked second after Samsung, the price of the iPhone was several times higher than that of other models on the list, and it also achieved the first sales of a single product, and its reputation and actual performance in the high-end market were quite stable.
On the other side of the tablet market, Apple maintains an absolute leader status. The iPad product line ranked first in 2020 with 58.8 million units sold and a 37% market share, and the performance supported by A series chips and the experience supported by iPadOS and application ecology are also quite a distance ahead of other products. In this context, Apple is also trying to introduce desktop-level chips and new screen materials.
The tablet category was defined by Apple at that time, and the direction set by Jobs and the team for the iPad such as the big screen and mobile Internet has not undergone essential changes on the tablet so far. When the tablet lost its freshness and once faced a decline in market size, it was also Apple's use of the iPad Pro to introduce professional production concepts and other products to enhance entertainment, so that the demand for tablets returned to the growth track.
Ten years after Jobs's death, Apple is still a frontrunner in mobile phones and tablets. This is closely related to the decisions cook made when he was CEO, and he and his team continued to make the iPhone and iPad the most attractive consumer electronics, but the shape that Jobs set was equally critical, so that Apple products can continue to improve after a long period of expansion.
The death of the core leader is regrettable, but Apple has achieved the continuation of innovation and quality, and has affected more companies in the industry in different ways. The iPhone popularized multi-touch and high-resolution screens, and now different companies are increasing their research and development efforts, and are more and more afraid to try technologies that have not been verified by the market. The major advances in smart devices in the future may come from it.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="29" > China into the world's most important market</h1>
The Internet has affected everyone's daily life, but the social, cultural, economic and other fields have entered the post-globalization era, and human beings who have the opportunity to communicate with each other in information have still created an unexpected estrangement. In the context of the new era, there are new challenges to building a global brand, whether from the United States or China, need to face uncertainty and differentiation.
Apple may be a role model in the field of consumer electronics in terms of globalization, and it is still the most popular mid-to-high-end mobile phone brand in the world, with the influence appeal that most brands are difficult to catch up with. In the fields of high-end tablets, wearable devices, thin and light laptops, Apple has also gained a lot of market share with a relatively streamlined product line.
One fact that cannot be ignored is that Apple is inseparable from China. According to the performance report released in 2021, the revenue contributed by the Chinese market increased by more than 50%, which is quite close to the size of Europe, Apple's second largest market. Some people will think that this is the space that Huawei has to shrink after the sanctions on high-end mobile phones, but China is indeed the world's largest smartphone market.
In the short and short decade, China's impact on global smartphones has exceeded the imagination of many people, not only most mobile phones, including the iPhone, but also nearly 300 million annual sales in China. In order to win a larger market space, the innovation of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers has gradually surpassed the world, and many new technologies have debuted in this market.
In the entire field of consumer electronics outside of mobile phones, there are also more and more innovations in China. Many of the Apple product innovations we've seen recently often happen in this land, such as the true wireless connection experience of AirPods, the night mode of the iPhone, and so on. This also allows other manufacturers to quickly follow up and improve the level across the industry, not only the size of the market.
Consumer electronics software and hardware innovations originally appeared in the United States, Europe, Japan and other places, and now a considerable amount has moved to China, which is also the largest market. In the next ten years or even longer, what role will the Chinese market play, and how many technologies will promote product leaps and bounds will be jointly participated by consumers, media and the industry, which is also the direction that Lei Technology will pay attention to for a long time.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="45" > electronic products can not escape the conference</h1>
Since Jobs returned to Apple, he has hosted almost every launch that has been enjoyed by the media and enthusiasts. The new iMac and MacBook, iPod and iTunes, iPhone and iPad, Jobs not only showed the heights that Apple can reach on stage, but also refreshed people's cognition with these products, pushing the entire industry forward.
This man with a clear shape, a lot of information and occasional humor, after a series of conferences, turned himself into a symbol bound to Apple. The significance of the conference itself has also changed, which was originally only a way for manufacturers to announce new products to the industry, media and target consumers, and gradually evolved into a global broadcast of product promotion and value evangelization.
Jobs personally introduced product and company changes, which was once the main content of Apple's conference. After Jobs's death, these jobs were done by Cook and several executives, and the CEO was no longer the absolute protagonist in the show. If you are a little more careful, you can even infer from the details of the business in charge of the executives, the order of appearance and the length of the speech, etc., that the power change that has occurred within the 200 million-dollar market value company has occurred.
In the past, consumers were obviously more concerned about how the product was used, so it did not matter how many words the executives said at the press conference and how much applause they received, the product page parameters and the actual performance after they arrived were what they cared about. Starting from Apple, the process of purchasing consumer electronics is more like a ceremony such as a conference, and the emotions and messages conveyed by the speakers can motivate people to make decisions more than the naked specifications.
Whether it's the United States, Japan, South Korea or China, tech vendors around the world are learning from Jobs and Apple and trying to create more influential conferences than they do. Latecomers initially pursued a one-to-one reproduction of Jobs, even the black pullover + jeans clothing had to be copied, and later days had their own styles, but they always had a "fancy tribute" to apples.
Among the countless "Jobs apprentices", Luo Yonghao is likely not a qualified founder of a mobile phone manufacturer, but the conference he presided over must be the most influential in the industry. Other vendor executives probably won't remember how much of their speech is worth learning, but they'll be sure to remember the huge potential of a small hammer launch and gain influence on the core user base.
As for the level of apple-like bustle to go directly out of the circle, basically only dare to think about it and dare not have extravagant expectations. In any case, from mobile phones to almost all consumer electronics, the conference has become the standard of publicity, trying to expand the influence of the product in its own way, leaving an impression on the minds of consumers who expect to cover.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="64" > wearable and smart home are on the rise</h1>
When Jobs died, Apple's hardware product line was relatively simple, computers, mobile phones, tablets, Walkmans are almost all, and the Apple Store even has areas dedicated to selling other brands. At that time, the imagination of the outside world about the evolution of Apple products was still stuck in the discussion of whether the mobile phone would always become larger after the iPhone 5, and some people joked that the "iPhone 20" would look like a lightsaber.
A whole new field of smart devices is quietly growing. The motion recorder led by fitbit began to get more attention, and evolved into a smart bracelet and smart watch similar to the traditional watch form. Advances in IoT technology and home networks have made the smart home that was conceptual in the 90s have the prerequisites to build an intelligent home device experience entirely through wireless networks.
Apple, which lost Jobs, still maintains its ability to innovate and practice, as early as 2014, Apple released the smart watch Apple Watch and the smart home platform HomeKit. Apple Watch has established what is a high-end smart watch, with the refinement of traditional high-end watches, the general fluency and function expansion of the iPhone, and the experience within the Apple ecosystem.
For a while, the Apple Watch was seen as the crowning work of the post-Jobs era, and Jony Ive, the former head of industrial design, poured a lot of effort into the product, and there were luxury versions that sold for tens of thousands. HomeKit is relatively low-key, Apple did not personally create products but attracted the participation of third-party manufacturers, can become a smart home control center HomePod, more often than not just a smart speaker.
The ideas carried by these two products have caused an uproar in the world beyond Apple. Xiaomi, Huawei and other smart phone manufacturers have joined the wearable device market, and have made many achievements in smart bracelets that can be popularized on a large scale at low prices, smart watches with high-end outstanding texture and design, and have come up with products comparable to Apple on the battlefield outside mobile phones.
The field of smart home is more exciting, large manufacturers have built their own platforms with comprehensive experience to harvest a vote from consumers with money, small and medium-sized manufacturers can launch excellent products in the ecology of multiple platforms, each with its own way of survival. From basic appliances to black and white, the smart home experience has truly changed from concept to reality in this decade.
If divided by market share and product price alone, wearables and smart homes still look like they are dominated by Apple, but in fact there is more diversity, but like the iPhone, it has a greater advantage in the high-end market. In the direction of customization and popularization of public demand, or the actual needs such as long battery life, other manufacturers other than Apple are more flexible.
When we talked about smart devices ten years ago, we probably only subconsciously thought of mobile phones, but now there are more choices for locations other than mobile phones. Wearables related to the quality of life and experience of individuals, as well as smart homes that meet the needs of family life, these two markets have not yet shown signs of peaking growth, and are still worth continuing to look forward to.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="85" > head manufacturers will eventually build cores</h1>
Starting with the Apple A4 chip, Apple officially embarked on the chip design path and quickly covered all iPhone and iPad product lines. This soon brought positive feedback to Apple: each generation of A series has obvious performance advantages over other mobile phone chips in the same period, which in turn makes each generation of iPhones have a huge comprehensive experience over the flagship machines of the same period, and sell more expensive but can be favored by more people.
Ten years after Jobs's death, Apple stuck to the chip design path, and expanded from mobile phones and tablets to more categories, from smart watches and true wireless headphones to laptops and all-in-ones. So Apple products have selling points that are difficult for other manufacturers to obtain, such as the rapid connection of wearable devices, the Mac still has good stability after changing the processor architecture, and the battery life is far beyond other notebooks.
Own chip = exclusive competitiveness, such an equation that has been widely recognized in the field of smartphones and other consumer electronics after being personally proven by Apple. After fierce competition and cruel reshuffle, several major domestic mobile phone manufacturers that have survived so far have now chosen to build their own special chips starting from ISPs, which may still be very immature in performance and actual experience, but they have taken the first step.
For these manufacturers, the difficulty of making chips is not to express the attitude of learning Apple's route, but to whether they can persist in a more correct direction and wait for output. Whether it is Apple or Samsung, which also has a chip design, today's relatively leading position is inseparable from long-term investment, and powerful chips are inseparable from years of high investment, and if you want to gain something, you must be patient and iteratively improve.
Huawei is the manufacturer who chooses the direction of chip design the results are closest to Apple, insisting on improvement, so that the HiSilicon Kirin chip from the original weak performance, obvious heat, poor battery life, gradually upgraded to a qualified high-end mobile phone chip level, Apple even began to take the initiative to mention the comparison in the conference. Caring about the opponent is the greatest respect. However, Huawei's encounter is also very regrettable, and it is difficult to directly compete with the new chips of the A series in a short period of time.
It is gratifying that other manufacturers have accelerated the pace of chip design or manufacturing: Xiaomi turned around after the surging chip did not go well, and has invested in dozens of related companies to cover a variety of chips required for its products; vivo has taken out a V1 chip that improves the shooting experience, promising to upgrade and improve periodically in the future; OPPO is very courageous, and the subsidiary ZEKU, which is responsible for chip research and development, has grown rapidly to more than 2,000 people, and the first product has also been streamed.
In addition to Chinese mobile phone manufacturers, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Tesla, which want to occupy the lead in the field of consumer electronics and artificial intelligence, have also begun to make cores. Who will build product barriers through core building to create the next iPhone-level product? This question cannot be answered for a short time, but it is certain that Apple has made the relationship between products and chips more close than ever.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="104" > no one else can build another iPhone</h1>
Jobs founded Apple, launched a Macintosh computer with a universal graphical interface, and after being expelled and returned, the story of revitalizing the company through a new Mac product line and iPod is legendary, but what really makes him have today's social popularity is the iPhone that "changed the world". It has refreshed people's understanding of mobile devices and even the mobile Internet.
Before the advent of the iPhone, the concept of smartphones has long appeared, and there are not a few mobile phones with richer and more powerful functions than the original iPhone, but these products are only the "geek devices" of a few users. Jobs and Apple's most important decision on the iPhone was to establish a simple interaction built entirely on touch, and the smartphone went from a tool that needed to be mastered to a portable device that could be easily used by both men, women and children.
Before the iPhone, no one had ever been able to integrate mobile phones, intelligent experiences, entertainment functions, mobile Internet and other capabilities into such a self-consistent integration into a device. At the beginning of this device, human beings finally have a real sense of "one machine to go the world" product, entertainment, learning, office, life and other needs in the palm size finally found a balance. To exaggerate, it is the iPhone that points the way forward for all mobile phone and smart device manufacturers.
Nowadays, mobile phones have developed to a situation where the marginal effect is becoming more and more obvious, and the explosive innovations that have emerged in the past decade have become a thing of the past, replaced by more and more powerful cameras, faster and faster speeds, better and better screens, and other restorative improvements, and even the growth of the entire market size has reached its limit. For Apple and the industry as a whole, the question becomes how to build the next iPhone.
"The next iPhone" is more of a symbolic meaning, which means that when the company participates in technological innovation, it not only fully defines the product to make it have extraordinary leading significance. Latecomers are trying to replicate the iPhone route, such as Tesla's hope to rewrite the rules of the car market with pure electric drive and autonomous driving, and Facebook's creation of products in the VR field that have content and experiences that can be accepted by the public.
Even Apple itself is pondering how to repeat the same trick, to bring the previous success to the field that no one has successfully set foot in, and to "change the world" once again. It's just that Apple is not going well, augmented reality products are an example, Apple opened ARKit to developers early and integrated lidar in multiple flagship products, but has never been able to carry the actual use of AR glasses. Apple's car-making business, which was announced a few years ago, has been constantly changing its route, and it has not yet seen the actual product.
It's hard to tell how many of these projects were planted in the time of Jobs, and how much has evolved or even stopped entirely in the decade. But it is certain that Apple, which has been in a state of thriving and stable stock growth for a long time with the iPhone and other "cash cows", still hopes to open up a new path, although it is likely to be achieved in the form of creating another iPhone.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="123" > conclusion</h1>
When looking back at Jobs, the Apple years, which occupied most of his life, were always the most exciting, and he was able to make a major impact with this company with a special temperament in different eras of personal computers, the Internet and the mobile Internet. So much so that when talking about Jobs today ten years later, you can still find his shadow in the changes and invariances of the consumer electronics field.
Although there are repeated arguments every year, to this day, we still don't know who has a chance to become the "next Jobs". What is obvious is that this man whose personality will not be liked by everyone has left enough traces on the world.