Apple's hardware growth is flat. The iPhone turns 18 this year and unit sales have stalled. The iPad, Watch, and AirPods, each once called the next big thing, have all plateaued. The only segment posting real growth is Services, which generates strong margins but works by extracting more value from existing customers, not by finding new ones.
The record is more complicated than the stagnation narrative admits. Since 2007, Apple built three additional category-defining product lines: the iPad, the Apple Watch, and AirPods. Watch and AirPods each crossed $10 billion in annual revenue. That is a credible track record. But all three now show the same flat trajectory as the iPhone, and the iPad remains, by Apple's own implicit admission, an unfinished product, with repeated revisions to its keyboard and multitasking still failing to resolve its identity.
The central question the original piece forces you to sit with is structural: can a company that has pulled off four category-defining platforms in four decades do it again on demand, or does the next platform, whether it is spatial computing, AI hardware, or something else, require a different kind of execution than Apple currently has? The answer is not settled. Read the full piece for the revenue breakdown and the argument about what Apple's next move actually requires.
[READ ORIGINAL →]