Trades with cats wrote:I have to agree the Apple Services area looks good. My concern is ... going from an area they invented and monopolized ...
Sounds like you are misremembering Apple's past, or their method.
Apple did not invent the portable compact music player. There were numerous other succesful products around when the iPod shipped, and the competition did not roll over right away. iPod eventually become the dominant product, but not for lack of competition.
Apple did not invent the mobile phone or even the 'smart phone'. Blackberry and Nokia were successful, and quite dominant. The iPhone was 'late' and 'too expensive'. Andoid became significant while iPhone was still establishing itself. To this day, the majority of the smartphone sales volume is Android handsets. Somehow the iPhone became sucessful.
iTunes Music store gerw out of the iPod era, and eventually music sales become a revenue driver. While music label physical CD sales were a thing, the 'real competition' was mostly piracy, actual 'free music' from numerous online sources. Somehow iTunes managed to accumulate paying customers.
Areas that Apple did 'pretty much' invent might include the iPad, Apple Watch and Airpods. These product lines are current growing at rates ranging from quite good to impressive.
The
wearables category is now a significant revenue portion for Apple.
There may never be another single product as huge as iPhone. Asking Apple to create another 'iPhone' may not be a good way to look at it. iPhone is not going away anytime soon, and it may not matter so much whether year over year sales rise or fall a little.
The surrounding product categories, services and new directions Apple is extending not only defend the desiability of using Apple devices, they reduce the overall influence of iPhone current sales on the company's future viability.
Apple is now the only company from which you can have an integrated computing environment. Watch, Mac, iPad and iPhone all natively coordinate. And not just with Apple software. Third party apps also work across the device types. Software from all the major players works on Apple devices - Microsoft Office, Outlook, Google Maps, Google Docs, Adobe, etc
And so on. Apple is just not going to suddenly evaporate. The Windows PC dominant era is a distant memory and not a useful paradigm. Mobile has outrun PC market scale for a long time now. Not just in devices sold but in money scale.