The multi-billion dollar company, Apple, has lost the cutting-edge innovation it had in the tech industry in its beginnings. This innovation is what had set it apart from other competitors, but now, it seems like Apple is sacrificing its ingenuity for quick cash.
Some welcome this new iPhone with excitement due to supposed innovations such as the latest colors and build. However, this is troubling because Apple has continuously advertised their new colors with each iPhone and has repeated the same iPhone structure.
Additionally, as each new iPhone is released, the same new improvements are emphasized, such as prolonged battery life and better camera resolution. Apple’s reliance on rewording their past improvements represents them forgetting their true goal: creating a never-before-seen product.
In March of 2024, the U.S Justice Department classified Apple as a monopoly. Apple demonstrated its monopoly-like power by diverting profit from numerous markets such as small businesses, content creators, and publishers. Through this monopoly lawsuit, the U.S Justice Department seeks to reinstate competition, and as a result, generate more income to other markets.
Technology officials have also spoken out against Apple’s decline after the death of Steve Jobs. Tripp Mickle, a New York Times technology reporter and the author of, “After Steve: How Apple Become a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul (William Morrow)”, states that, without Steve Jobs, Apple became a soulless machine producing products for mere profit. Apple’s newfound focus with economic efficacy taints the legacy of the original Steve Jobs, who amazed the world with his invention of the iPhone.
When Steve Jobs released the iPhone, regular consumers experienced the expanses of the internet at their hands. The revolutionary announcement in 2007 combined the iPod, communication abilities, and a camera into a singular device. However, because Apple has been delivering the same products for the past decade, consumers should lean towards buying Android phones.
Samsung smartphones running the Android system offer a zoom that can highlight the striations of the moon, a unique feature iPhones have not been able to offer. Android phones are currently zooming past lackluster Apple devices as a result of their intense innovation regarding not only their zoom feature but also their compatibility with other devices not within their company.
Apple has also been declining in its major position in the smartphone market, representing the lack of ingenuity compared to up-and-coming smartphone companies. According to CNBC, Apple lost its place in the top five smartphone brands in China as a result of a shift in proportion of users, from 16% of Phone users having Apple products down to just 14%. Apple is seemingly losing its grip in China’s booming market.
Additionally, according to PYMNTS, whilst the European smartphone industry grew 21% in 2024, Apple’s European market grew only 19.5%. From the developing country of China to the largely developed countries in Europe, Apple’s market is continuously dwindling as other companies present smartphones with new and more sophisticated features.
Apple’s iPhone 16, however, includes interesting technology, such as the new Apple Intelligence, which allows great personalization for the user. Forbes reported that because of Apple’s privacy commitments and their impressive AI capabilities, Apple is setting a new standard for personal computing. However, previously in the year on May 14 at Google’s I/O 2024 developer conference, Google revealed their advancement in AI, their new chatbot called Gemini. Gemini was created in response to the infamous ChatGPT and easily competes with it due to Gemini’s approximate 90% score on the MMLU(massive multitask language understanding) test. The test consists of a combination of 57 different subjects such as medicine, math, and science. However, on the MMLU test, Apple Intelligence was reported to score a mere 63.7%, according to VentureBeat. Apple’s AI may have improved from before, but considering testing, Google’s AI is superior.
Additionally, much of Apple’s innovations on the upcoming iPhone 16, which are declared new by them, are in fact just recycled versions of older phones. For example, the new pill-shaped camera looks just the same as the iPhone 10’s camera.
The underwhelming iPhone 16 appears as a disgrace to the legacy of Apple’s revolutionary original release of their iPhone, angering technology experts due to the lack of novelty. Android smartphones also have numerous cheaper devices, an alternative to many compared to the overwhelmingly expensive iPhone. Exploding Topics states that the iPhone 15 price starts at $799, compared to the average smartphone running the Android operating system is $286. Though Android offers cheaper smartphones, numerous high-end flagship models can easily be considered superior to the iPhone, such as the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, which starts at $1,299. The wide variety of Android phones provides for numerous consumers, whereas the iPhone only seems to benefit the wealthy.
The solution is simple. Turn away from the conformist idea of wasting money on a new iPhone every year and consider the superior Android phones.
