What will Apple’s (AAPL) downfall look like? According to several industry watchers, the company’s inevitable fall from the top will be tied to the rise of products with no screen and no user interface.The Huffington Post recently spoke with a number of experts in an effort to learn what might finally knock the $620 billion king off its throne, and the feedback was interesting. The consensus, it would seem, is that one of Apple’s greatest strengths — its ability to build touchscreen devices that mass market users trip over themselves to buy — may eventually be a contributing factor to undoing.
First, the obvious: Apple is currently the most successful consumer electronics company in the world, but its time at the top is limited. “It’s like king of the hill: you stay as long as you can on top, and then things change. Some day, there will be a company that will have a higher market cap than Apple,” MIT lecturer Howard Anderson told The Huffington Post. “No tree grows to the sky and the real issue is that it’s grown so much in the last year that it’s unsustainable. That’s not going to happen in the long run.”
HuffPo’s Bianca Bosker goes on to state that Apple’s huge lead in the industry may be tested by the advent of devices that don’t rely on touchscreens or user interfaces to function, but instead sync with cars and devices in users’ homes.
“The new categories are going to be things that do not necessarily have a user interface. One that’s talked about a lot is the TV play, and it’s still to be determined whether that will be one of Apple’s successes or failures,” Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe said to Bosker. “Another area I’ll point at that they’ve talked about — but people have not talked about much since then — are cars … I think that’s going to be a surprisingly big category for a lot of people.”
Howe concludes by stating that despite the potential challenges ahead, Apple’s run at the top isn’t likely to end any time soon. “They’re certainly going to be one of the most valuable companies for probably the next decade, and that’s if they just keep doing what they’re doing,” Howe said. “If they have new products in the pipeline equivalent to the iPhone, they’re going to be here for the next hundred years.”
A report from late last week suggested that Apple’s next major venture — an entrance into the TV industry — will not achieve the same level of success as the iPhone.
