• by Todd Wasserman , Staff Writer, December 21, 2022

In September 2014, Apple announced its first new hardware product in years, Apple Watch.

Since 2014, Apple has upgraded its Macintosh computers and iPhones and introduced AirPods in 2016. Lately, there’s been a shortage of new products from Apple.

Compare the 2010-2022 period to 2000 to 2010, when Apple introduced the iBook, the MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air, the iPhone, Apple TV+ and the iPad.

If you compare the two periods, it’s tempting to conclude that Apple’s period of innovations was attributable to the leadership of Steve Jobs (who died in 2011). Or it may have been that 2000-10 was just a period of rapid change for the tech sector, and such a period won’t come again.

According to Business of Apps, Apple’s iPhone sales fell by 14%  from. 2015 to 2020. Partially, that’s because Apple has failed to innovate. Samsung, for instance, included features like fingerprint scanning and water resistance before Apple.

It could be argued that without Jobs, Apple doesn’t have the vision to create products like the iPhone or iPad anymore. Apple, now the largest public company, with a market cap of $2.13 trillion, is much like IBM was in 1980:  a wildly successful behemoth that doesn’t need to challenge smaller companies for dominance.

Instead, IBM found itself challenged by upstart Apple, which would surpass IBM within a few decades. As we head into 2023, the time is right for an Apple challenger.