The picture above was at Grand Central Station in 2011 when a throng of people (including me) were waiting to visit the new Apple Store. People love Apple products. It remains to be seen if people will love Apple services as much. I suspect they will, but it will take time. However, the products remain the heart of the company for now. The June 3 Apple Keynote to introduce the upcoming software updates to the Apple platform lineup including tvOS, watchOS, iOS, MacOS, and the new iPadOS was done with great marketing aplomb. Apple has it down pat. Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them works every time. What has changed in very recent years is Tim Cook has shared the stage with a diverse team of senior and upcoming executives from Apple’s team of 132,000 full time employees. The bench is impressive.
There are many skeptics who worry about profit margins, China, market saturation, tariffs, and other potential problems. If you watch the keynote, which I highly recommend, or visit an Apple store, you can feel the enthusiasm. I do not know when or if the the stock will go up or down, but I see a very bright future for Apple.
A number of reasons make me feel so positive about Apple. First, their products are really powerful and easy to use. The Apple support structure and approach is second to none. Third, and equally important, is the ecosystem. With Apple TVs, Watches, iPhone, iPad, iMacs, AirPods, etc., I have 13 Apple devices. If I take a picture with one device, it appears on all the devices (except the AirPods). If I receive a phone call, I can answer it on an iPad or my Watch. I can start a task on one device and finish it on another. The platform integration got even stronger with this week’s dozens of announcements. The platforms and services create an ecosystem which keeps users locked in and loyal.
Another reason is privacy. Amazon, Google, Facebook, and others are defending their strategy to collect and use personal information from its users. Ultimately, I believe this will become highly regulated, as it should. Meanwhile, Apple makes your private information private. The devices are incredibly powerful. Artificial intelligence is not dependent on the cloud like the others, Apple’s AI runs on the devices and your data stays on your devices. If you want your data in iCloud for whatever reason, the data is encrypted and nobody, not even Apple, can read your information. This is particularly important when it comes to the increasingly abundant amounts of personal health data. In my opinion, the government scrutiny unfolding on Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook will be a slam dunk on the latter three. Scrutiny of Apple will run counter to how much hundreds of millions of users love their Apple ecosystem.
