14 DAY TRIAL // Tim Cook promised an incendiary 2014 referring to the announcements to come, but 2015 promises to be even more ground shaking, if the products poised to make an appearance this year – including the rumored ones – are any indication.
In between flagship releases, Apple will continue to tweak away at existing product lines, systematically assigning more value to them. But there are two key devices that might just take Apple to the height that Wall Street so vehemently projects.
The year of the watch
Everyone knows what to expect from the California tech giant in early 2015. It’s stated right smack in the middle of the Apple website and there’s no shortage of rooting for this wearable computer so densely packed with features.
Ask the Internet and Apple will either revolutionize the wearables industry, or fail to do so and experience its first flop in years. The reality is no one can fully assess the potential of the Apple Watch until it rolls out. Remember that the iPhone only truly won our hearts over with some well-deserved apps and price adjustments.
With the iPad – essentially the first tablet that mattered – it was also a matter of what you could do with it. Until the apps arrived, it only worked as an Internet machine. Not that it wasn’t awesome enough - to be able to carry the whole internet in such a compact form factor with such insane battery life - but it still needed some topping for everyone to see its prowess.
To try and gauge the success of the Apple Watch right now is premature, and somewhat naive too. But expect it to matter. Just like the iPhone and the iPad before it. Heck, even the legendary iPod needed a hand to pick up some Steam (think iTunes).
iPhone 7 just around the corner
Or so say well-connected people in the Far East, where Apple’s suppliers are. According to checks done by analysts whose track records are not exactly stellar, Tim Cook and his troops at 1 Infinite Loop plan to speed up the refresh cycle of their lucrative iPhone by introducing the S-upgrade a few months earlier, and the full-circle redesign a full 1 year earlier.
In other words, with the iPhone 6S supposedly landing in early 2015, Apple has made room in the fall for the even bigger iPhone 7 announcement. It all sounds very tantalizing and even doable, but not necessarily plausible. At least not until the suppliers leak a part or a schematic of the next-gen device.
But if it does pan out like the analysts peg it, expect Apple to dominate every chart in 2015, from customer satisfaction polls to Fortune's CEO rankings, and everything in between. If Tim Cook can squeeze in the iPad Pro and a Retina MacBook Air, there’s no reason not to believe those bullish analysts who expect Apple to be the first trillion-dollar company in the history of... well, history.
Disclaimer
This is a Personal Thoughts piece reflecting the author’s personal opinion on matters relating to Apple and / or the products associated with the Apple brand. This article should not be taken as the official stance of Softpedia on Apple-related matters.