Starting from CES before the Spring Festival, smart homes and wearable smart devices have become hot topics in the tech world. As a giant in the technology industry, Google has been acquiring a series of smart hardware and robot companies since last year. In contrast, Apple is still focusing on the iPhone and iPad. Why?
Since 2012, giant companies such as Google, Sony and Samsung have launched their own smart hardware products, and startups like Nest, Smarthings, Pebble, Fitbit and Withings are competing to launch their own smart home products and wearable devices. In this wave of smart hardware and smart home, Apple is still waiting for the right time to shoot.
The current smart hardware market is still small, and it is not worthy of Apple's entry:
For Apple's annual revenue of hundreds of billions of dollars, it will only focus on the market with a scale of tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars. At present, the smart hardware and smart home market is still at an early stage, and its scale is far less than that of smartphones and tablets. And the PC market.
Take Control4, a smart home business listed in 2013, with a market capitalization of less than $500 million and a revenue of only $100 million in 2012. If you add the valuations of a series of smart hardware startups such as Nest, Control4, Withings, Fitbit, Pebble, it is estimated that it has not yet reached 10 billion US dollars.
So it is not surprising that Apple has not yet entered the smart hardware and smart home market.
On the contrary, Apple has shown great interest in the automobile market, and has the ambition to have a car. The reason is simple. The current auto industry is at the level of trillions of dollars. Only GM's revenue in 2012 reached $152.3 billion. The market value of Tesla, which focuses on electric vehicles, has also exceeded $20 billion. This is not difficult to explain why Apple is coveted by the auto market.
Apple has limited energy and still needs to focus on core products:
According to Apple’s earnings report for the first quarter of 2014, which was released on January 28th, iPhone revenue ($32.4 billion) accounted for 56% of total revenue ($57.6 billion). In the face of such a strong cash flow, Apple should put more energy into ensuring its leading position in superior products such as smart phones.
In addition, according to market research firm IDC, global smartphone shipments will exceed 1 billion units in 2013, up 39.3% year-on-year. In the face of a smartphone market with 1 billion shipments and still growing rapidly, Apple has no reason to be distracted to do other products.
The market's positives have attracted Apple to continue to focus on the smart phone market, and the increasingly fierce market competition is spurring Apple to focus on the smart phone and tablet market to ensure its leading position in product and user experience.
As the shape of smart phones matures, Apple's pressure on innovation will require more energy and capital to ensure a leading position in product innovation. In this context, Apple acquired a number of technology companies that can be integrated into the iPhone, such as voice recognition company Siri, chip design company Intrinsity, 3D sensor company Primesense, processor company Passif Semiconductor and fingerprint recognition company AuthenTec.
Apple is not a good Internet company:
Apple is an excellent combination of software and hardware, but not an excellent Internet company. Apple is absolutely world-class in terms of soft and hard experience, but Apple has yet to find a feeling in Internet services, and there is no small gap between Google and Facebook.
Apple itself has recognized the shortcomings in this area, and will acquire some excellent Internet startups in the past few years. For example, Apple has acquired five map service providers in recent years, trying to catch up with the Google Maps service.
In addition, in recent years, Apple has also acquired social data company Topsy, personal search company Cue, mobile data compression company AlgoTrim, note-taking application Catch and video recommendation service company Matcha.
It is foreseeable that Apple will continue to make up for its lack of Internet service delivery capabilities through acquisitions, narrow the gap with companies such as Google and Facebook, and integrate its core Internet services into the iOS system.
Apple needs a healthy ecosystem, not everything:
For Apple, the APP Store built on the iOS system is the core of its ecosystem. Apple will attach great importance to the maintenance of the APP Store ecosystem and will not easily stimulate and harm the developer's behavior.
Taking intelligent hardware as an example, Apple is fully supporting intelligent hardware companies around the iOS platform to help them sell products; currently APP Store online stores and physical stores have become a core channel for intelligent hardware distribution.
It seems that in the short term, Apple will not easily get involved in the terminal hardware, and more is to encourage smart hardware and smart home enterprise Made for iPhone to re-enrich its own ecosystem through intelligent hardware. Apple's volume of companies is more concerned with the platform and entry-level opportunities, and will not be satisfied with doing one or two terminal products.
Under the guidance of this strategy, Apple will copy its own iOS platform and APP Store ecosystem into different fields, such as the smart car market, the smart watch market, and the future smart home market.
Of course, for the smart watch and smart car market with relatively high market potential, Apple has already taken action. For the early intelligent hardware, wearable devices and smart home products, Apple will make more patents and technical reserves, which will not be easy. Launched a terminal product. It is reported that in terms of smart watches, Apple has hundreds of people in the research and development around the clock, is expected to be released within 1-2 years.
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