Apple losing its focus, there is no Steve Jobs to rescue

Before Steve Jobs, Apple never focused on few of the important things that could make the company a success. Despite operating as a big company, Apple went under a lot of trouble in 1997. It lost a lot of money. With the variety of products for sale, Apple was unable to advertise the computer differences among customers in simple terms leaving the shareholders completely outraged.

Return of Steve Job changed a lot for the company the insanity of numerous products was soon ended.  Around 70% of the Apple’s product line was cut down by Steve Jobs by September 1997. This unique strategy saved Apple from getting grounded with the burden of its own products. The company suspended more than 3,000 people retrieving the company’s balance sheet. Because of this, Jobs was able to announce Apple’s first profitable quarter in years by January.

Apple’s focus paid off:

Steve jobs returned to the company and focused on the production of a fewer number of products. This idea was strictly followed under the control of Jobs himself and Jony Ive, the head of company’s design team. This approach brought an unprecedented success for Apple and its products including iPhone, iPod, and iPad changed the behaviors of people towards technology. This success made Apple the leading tech company of its times.

But with the death of Steve Jobs in 2011, Jony Ive became less involved in the company and failed to accomplish much.

Going back into the same failure zone:

Today Apple has almost 46 models of its various hardware products including phones and tablets. But the problem is that all these products are having complaints from its customers. Each one of Apple’s product has flaws. A list of its products is given below

iPhone:

iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s are being largely complained to have a bug that shuts down the phone even when there is a lot of battery life. Although this issue has occurred a short time ago but Apple is unable to find the solution to this problem.

MacBook Pro:

The battery life of MackBook may have been advertised to stay uptill 10 hours but in reality many customers are getting only seven to eight hours of battery life. This model costs a lot more than the previous versions but it has failed to satisfy its customers.

Air pods:

Apple’s new wireless ear buds cost $130 more than the wired ear buds. But they are not liked by the customers at all with their ugly appearance and easy to lose possibility.

Apple Watch:

Designed as water resistant and with GPS facility, Apple watch released in September is not much different than its original version. Customers are not happy with its bulky piece of hardware and ugly interface.

Apple TV:

Apple TV’s awful design of remote control and sensitive touchscreen along with too many buttons is also not a perfect product to be claimed by the company.

Siri:

Siri has been left behind by its other digital competitors in terms of language recognition, response time, and cognition.

iCloud:

The interface for iCloud is still confusing and the fundamental design is unreliable.

Apple Music: 

It is not easy to find music of a customer’s choice with Apple Music.

iTunes:

Too many sections and list of options has made it a complete mess.

App Store:

With no personalization, App Store is no fun to browse on.

Also Apple Mail, Weather, News, Wallet, Calendar apps, Clock, and Health are need improvement to compete against third-part alternatives.

Still time to turn this around:

There is still time for Apple to bring changes by shrinking the number of its current projects and executing them well. A good move in this direction is the end of its WiFi router line but the company still needs to cut down on many other projects. There are some products that seriously need to be stopped if the company cannot get them fixed.

iTunes:

There is a whole replacement of iTunes is required with Apple music. The iTunes store should be ended and efforts should be focused towards selling of digital music, movies etc.

MacBook:

Instead of two MacBook Air and MacBook Lines that have different strategies of their own, Apple should combine both in order to present a laptop that features both facilities.

Apple Watch:

It’s a good time for Apple to bring an end to its Edition watches. Instead of wasting efforts of a whole design team on a watch model, company should spend the resources on better ideas.

Titan:

The self-driving car project by Apple is facing a lot of issues despite of all the efforts by the team. Apple has taken a lot of time for this project along with wasting a number of resources therefore Apple should abandon the self-driving car approach.

Dongles:

Dingles for iPhones need to be ended immediately as these are an extra thing to be carried by the customers.

It would be sensible of Apple to stop focusing on products that are not of much importance and should spend all its efforts and resources on products that can make the company a success again.

Via: Business Insider