It was opening night for Tim Cook as CEO of Apple. He had a tough act to follow: the legendary Steve Jobs.
As Bhuvnesh Chawla said to FirstPost Tech on Twitter before the announcement:
“media would be judging star of the evening -Tim Cook or iPhone5”
The flash verdict is in – the stock market reviewed Cook’s debut and they think he flubbed his lines.
Apple’s stock dropped like a fainting diva after the company failed to deliver an iPhone 5, instead announcing only an upgraded iPhone 4. To get a sense of why markets are so disappointed, let’s look at a study from inMobi ahead of the launch announcement.
Apple CEO Tim Cook. Robert Galbraith/Reuters
It Pro Portal said the study found:
“BlackBerry users are, according to the study, the most enthusiastic new customers. 52 percent of them will make the switch to the iPhone 5, but only 28 percent would buy an iPhone 4S if that model hits the shelves . Even if owners of Android devices seem more loyal, 27 percent of them plan to switch sides when the iPhone 5 is comes to the market, but only 11 percent are interested in an iPhone 4S.”
That’s why Apple’s stock was down 5% at one point after the announcement. Apple definitely underwhelmed, and the failure of the company to release another game-changing design at the first launch announcement after Steve Jobs announced he was stepping down as CEO will filtered through fears that, without his obsessive drive, the company will lose its edge. Steve Jobs was about inspiring design, not about faster hardware stuffed into last year’s gadget.
This announcement felt like Apple catching up with the market, not pulling head of the pack as it has for the last few years. From a hardware standpoint, Apple’s move to a dual-core processor trails its Android competitors by several quarters. Apple announced an 8 megapixel camera for the 4S, while Nokia’s N8 boasts a 12 megapixel shooter.
Some tech pundits pointed out, quite rightly, that the smartphone market isn’t driven by hardware but software. But apart from the Siri personal assistant, many of the features announced felt like Apple saying “me too”. The announcement of notifications allows the iPhone to catch up with Android. The iMessaging announcement seems a clone of Blackberry’s BBM.
Launching only a speed-bumped iPhone 4 when the competition is moving aggressively forward is going to really hurt Apple. The rumoured iPhone 5 was supposed to have a larger screen, but Samsung’s Galaxy S2 and several other Android handsets already have larger, bright screens, and in that market the iPhone 4S now seems a little small. The rumour mill expected data speeds of up to 21Mbps, but the iPhone 4S will top out at 14Mbps. It’s still twice as fast as the model that it replaces and, truth be told, a lot of people won’t ever experience faster speeds because their networks don’t support them. However, this launch undershot the hype at almost every turn.
In some ways, this might have been Apple’s legendary secrecy coming back to haunt it. Rumours can build excitement and anticipation, but they can also build unrealistic expectations. This isn’t the first time that the Apple rumour mill has got a little carried away. But big questions remain about Apple, post-Steve Jobs, and this lacklustre announcement will raise doubts rather than quell them.
