So Where Should Apple Go Next?

The fourth leg is integration and improvement of the first three legs. With MobileMe, Apple has tied together your iPhone, Notebook (preferably Macbook), and Desktop (preferably iMac). With SnowLeopard, they will make the Mac perform much much better than any Windows machine. With new chips from their PA Semi acquisition, the iPhone will become far far better than it currently is, and perhaps the Mac will gain functions nobody will be able to copy.

The Apple experience will get better and better, and an even more compelling value proposition.

There's more money to be made in TV and movie sales and rentals than there is in music. With Pandora and Simplify, who needs to pay for that any more? The Apple TV is the under-the-radar fourth leg.

Something to move Apple more solidly into the living room would seem to be the logical fourth leg.

Say what you will, Apple's perceived problem is really only one....The Economy!.. With new and innovative products that people still have not waned on, the real story is their computers...They continue to gain strength in that market at the same rate Microsoft enjoyed in years past regardless of this falling economy. Their numbers prove it. Once the market turns around the stock will once again accelerate. At that time your story will change.

Next: The AppleTV entertainment console running a new console version of Mac OS. It is an AppleTV upgraded with a wicked fast processor, Big 500GB Disk for the included DVR, BlueRay player and 1080P. Full Spore for the device ships at the same time, and is available in the new AppleTV App store using the included $25 Spore-branded iTunes gift card (Also works with whatever else you want to buy with from the App Store - since more than one major title will ship). All the iPhone developers get an upgraded SDK to work with for the AppleTV and Apple will take it's 30% to subsidize the low price of the box. A TV Remote application is shipped for the iPhone and iPod touch and a wii-like hardware remote is available as an option. This "brick" is also compatible with Apple's Wireless Keyboard and mouse. Cost is $299. This is how Apple takes on casual gaming and the Living Room. Watch out Sony and Nintendo!

I disagree with prior posters. To think in terms of a stool having 3 or four legs like a real stool might have is simplistic. In the Jobs context, a leg of the stool is a product platform, each capable of generating billions in earnings. The three existing legs of the stool each represent a major market sector such as Computing (Mac, Pro Apps, AppleCare etc); Entertainment media (iPod and AppleTV); and Telephony (iPhone). In order to qualify as a further leg, I believe that Apple must venture into technology product(s) that serve altogether new territories. The problem is to guess which territories (sectors) they are focussing on. Potential areas might include entirely new products for home management and security, devices that shift the education paradigm, automotive systems (although this could be accomplished by extending the Computing leg. It's hard to second guess Apple on this because they have this annoying habit of surprising us with forays into fields so obvious we would not imagine their ripeness for an Apple revolution. I don't they spend too much time thinking inside the box. Personal medical monitoring and reporting is a possibility although with the right transducers, sensors and software this could be accomplished on a Mac or IPhone/iPod Touch. There is the whole field of virtual reality systems.
Of course there are many non-consumer areas that Apple could attack - everything from military devices to scientific and medical instrumentation done the Apple way. Others, like HP are well established in these fields but there is nothing to prevent a truly innovative approach to carve out a decent market share and these are high-value item and hence lucrative fields indeed.
Think of some truly significant sector or area of human activity and you may get closer than I have in these off the cuff speculations.

NO DVR!! Death to linear delivery! Death to cable and satellite!

One you go download/streaming, you will never care if television signals come to your home and certainly wouldn't want to spend cash on a device to attempt to wrangle it!

Work on the cause of the problem, not the symptom! Kill linear delivery!

"Maybe there is a fourth leg coming, as most stools actually have a fourth leg"....Apple could simple turn the stool by 180% and make the common top become the BASIS for very many BRANCHES growing out of the COMMON PLATFORM.
With Nokia making big moves into mobile web Apple could play the RAPID PRODUCT INNOVATION game by REPACKAGING the COMMON PLATFORM (recently acquired chip technology).
Rolf Bork, BOD mediaf.com & sensitivetech.com

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Apple & innovations?? Is this a joke. All apple can do is produce luxury models of various electronic gadgets.It is probably the Merc or bmw of the gadget industry. Apple still has to produce a useful product.There are numerous luxury product manufacturers across products.Apple is just one of them.

The fourth leg is Apple Electronics. With the greatest design and quality assurance team on the planet, there is no reason why Apple should restrain itself to selling Apple socks and armbands. Apple electronics can break it into a large volume driven business at value to consumer prices for everything from laser pointers, to home & office electronics.

In The Future, even apple will focus their innovation to content, not merely about the hardware or gadget. Content is the future business.

For the stool to be stable they must be of equal height. Except for the Music world , Apples' share in either the PC Mac or Telephony is not huge. I think they will work on acquiring the customer base in these areas to make the stool PF more stable. This will necessitate innovations in allied fields like mobile internet , content and application delivery & Management for hand-helds , bridging the gap between Windows and Mac (getting into intel might be the first step)..etc. We may not expect any disruptors in these fields , but bring in more territories as Chano puts it for adaptation of these established technologies.

Surely, you can't be serious????

You go out there, and you make a statement to the world that you think Apple has no more innovation left to it.

Now you want to create a blog entry that says you might have been wrong with that assertion, but you want ideas as to why you might have been wrong??? This somehow absolves you of the fact that you didn't know what you were talking about when you made your initial statement? You've got no idea what Apple has planned, you just spouted an opionion with no backup.

Geez. No wonder America is in trouble with 'insight' like yours.

They will establish themselves as a very stable communication company within the cell phone market, undoubtedly. Within the next few years I expect to see them as a go to provider for cell phone service. That means more and more people flocking to the iphone, new apple options with non-iphone cellular devices provided by AT&T and most importantly, they are currently planning on focusing their attention on making it extremely easy for small business owners as well as large to switch to OSX systems.

@JohnB: You misunderstand. I argued not that Apple is out of innovation. I merely argued that further innovation would likely be more focused within well-defined and understood product classes. The Mac, Music, and iPhone. There can and will be a great deal of innovation within those groups. And also a great deal of growth. Besides, I don't think now is the time to be launching some fundamentally new product, economically speaking.

Couldn't disagree more. The iPod and Mac stuff is essentially an innovation-free zone at this point. The iPod won't get anywhere much with video because the form factor just doesn't work, and its already tapped out the music market. The iPhone is the way forward, and its got potential because of both a visual way to manage your calls/messages (a unified inbox) and also because its wirelessly broadband connected, but it needs a fatter pipe. Its form factor also supports video, but its got to stream it. But there's still a big gap in how you do things 'at home' as a media server where you store your own library, or non-linear delivery (i.e. you decide what you want to watch, when) rather than streaming it from a service. The portable devices just don't have enough storage to take video with you. This covers both films and TV-type shorter programs, as well as sports events. AppleTV is the next innovation place, which would be a 4th leg.

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