What’s in Apple Product Roadmap

When Steve Jobs passed away, on one hand, there were speculations that Apple won’t survive. On the other hand, a majority of Apple fans believed that Steve left some sort of a four or 10-year product roadmap for Tim Cook. I believe that by 2011 Apple had proven its unique innovation model that the idea of some sort of product roadmap is not a far-fetched one. After all, after Steve’s passing, Apple didn’t really skip a beat in the main street or on the Wall Street. It didn’t happen with Steve resigned. So the question is, what’s in Apple product roadmap?

It’s pretty clear that desktops would become obsolete. So would the keyboard and mouse. We can also easily predict the convergence of laptops, and tablet PCs. However, when I think of Apple product roadmap, I envision a combination of specific categories of products and a set of strategic set of guidelines for its product strategy.

Apple’s Product Roadmap

Commerce

• Payment – cashless economy
• Apple Retail Store user experiences
• Bluetooth and RFID based proximity sensing

Consumer Electronics

1. Home Central Operating System
2. Battery technology
3. Voice interface
4. Internet of Things and home automation
5. Digital displays
6. Hologram technology and screen projections
7. Cloud servers for real time access and storage
8. Apple TV Set-top, and content streaming
9. Virtual Reality
10. Artificial Intelligence
11. Robotics

Durable Goods

1. Appliances. Motivated by Internet of Things (IoT)
2. Apple car. Would Apple actually manufacture its own car?
3. Home and utility robots

Mobile Phone

1. The home button moved to software or removed altogether
2. Wireless audio
3. Wireless charging
4. Memory and storage technology
5. Reduce health risk

Sports and Healthcare

• Wearable devices
• Information Management Systems for healthcare and medical records
• Vision-correcting smart display screens.
• Real-time performance and health feedback

Apple’s Product Strategy Guidelines

Apple dropped hints of its long term product strategy with three historical events. First Apple adopts NeXT operating system based on a flavor of Unix OS.  Second, Disney buys Pixar but the winner is Apple. Third, Steve re-names the company “Apple Inc.” and re-positions it as a mobile devices company and a consumer electronics company.  Here are some of the guiding principles for future product innovations at Apple

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1. Consumer electronics and mobile devices
2. Center of our digital life
3. “Complete” products where “everything just works”
4. Disrupt industries
5. Human Computer Interactions
6. “Ski to where the puck is going to be”
7. Enterprise market
8. Brains behind the products (devices, appliances, durable goods)