Apple: Incrementally Disruptive?

Back in the era of Steve Jobs, Apple Inc. was often recognized as one of the most disruptive companies on our planet. And it was, right? Jobs created a product (the iPod) and a service (iTunes) that allowed any customer to ‘carry’ up to 1,000 songs in their back pocket. And then he combined it all into one product, the iPhone (even then it had a camera other smartphone manufacturers could only dream of). He disrupted the music and mobile phone industry and was gaining a small advantage in the photography industry, a very small step at a time. This led to gradually gaining market share from Blackberry and Nokia, the bigger players back then, and eventually sending Kodak into bankruptcy. Ever since, Apple has updated its products, launched a series of iPads and smooth-looking laptops. But what is it at now? Still disruptive? Incremental? Or disruptive again? Opinions differ. Here is mine.

Disruptive innovation is defined as “an innovation that creates a new market and value network and eventually disrupts an existing market, displacing market-leading firms and products”. Incremental innovation, on the other hand, is explained as “a series of small improvements to an existing product or product line that usually helps maintain or improve its competitive position over time”.

What was once so disruptive, has now become a company that can strongly illustrate its incremental changes and has been able to prove the value of a wide variety of small improvements and updates. When Jobs presented the first-ever iPhone, he disrupted several industries during one Keynote event. Last night, when Tim Cook showcased the latest iPhone 11 series, he focused on the incremental changes to the phone, mainly the camera, besides the battery duration improvement, the fancier screen display (Super Retina XDR), and the A13 Bionic chip. Apple spent a good 15 minutes of the 20-minute iPhone 11 Pro Series presentation on its cameras. Sure, the optical image stabilization, 120-degree field of view, and TrueDepth camera are cool features and new additions to an already astonishing iPhone. Yet many enthusiastic Apple fans have been waiting years for something as disruptive as the first-ever iPhone. Let’s be honest, what has Apple really done in the past years that have changed the world? We’ve awaited many rumors about self-driving cars and wireless chargers, yet the only entirely new product we as customers have been given is the AirPods.

In short, Apple went from one of the most disruptive tech giants in the world to becoming a stable, market-leading company which is now continuously adding incremental innovations to their current products. As much as many of us have awaited something disruptive from Apple’s side, a large percentage of customers is also very satisfied with the (relatively small) incremental changes in the existing products. And so, they should be. Why? Because they have the potential to lead to disruption, somewhere else.

As mentioned previously, Apple’s incremental changes are disappointing to some, yet satisfying to others. If we take the incremental changes outside of Apple’s core focus, we will see that these improvements, especially on the iPhones, are slowly setting foot in different industries, in a rather disruptive manner. Over the years, and yesterday’s Keynote event highlighted this once again, Apple is set to disrupt a few different industries that were unknown and perhaps also irrelevant to the company back when Steve Jobs launched the first iPhone. Three industries that stand out the most are healthcare, retail, and media (or graphics and marketing, or photography, however you want to see it, it basically comes down to the updated cameras on the iPhones).

Healthcare
Tim Cook has been talking about a “great legacy” for a few years now, and many believe he is aiming to inject into the health-care industry. The Apple Watch, for instance, can give consumers a much bigger role in their own health care. Even the iPhone tracks your steps and analyzes your sleep on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. And based on that, the devices will even remind you when to go to bed. Cook strongly believes that the impact of Apple on the health-care industry will be as similar to the iPhone’s impact on the photography industry (more on that later). Several years ago, when Apple introduced the HealthKit, ResearchKit, and CareKit, it has not only been at the forefront of unlocking personal health data of you and me, but it has also been sharing this with care teams, researchers, and even first responders. Change in this industry is certainly not happening overnight, but these moves by companies like Apple demonstrate that disruption is bound to happen sooner than later.

Retail
By mentioning the fact that IKEA rolled out an AR Application all built on Apple’s ARKit, almost enough has been said about how Apple is aiming to disrupt the retail industry in the near future. Apple’s ARKit (Augmented Reality Kit) allows IKEA users to choose from over 2,000 IKEA products to view and move them around virtually in any room. Based on room dimensions, and with an accuracy rate of 97%, the app (and so Apple’s ARKit) can scale products. As one of the biggest retailers in the world has already adopted Apple’s Augmented Reality opportunities, it will only make sense for other big players to create their own AR Apps. Sure, Apple may not have illustrated its innovations in its hardware, but with its ARKit it aims to open the door for many more retailer AR activity.

Media / Photography
By now it should be obvious to you that Apple continues to drive home the power of the camera(s) on their new iPhones. You would almost consider it to be their USP. Perhaps it is, but there is a lot more to it than just the hardware updates. Sure, the design looks slick (especially in the promotional videos Apple created) but it’s the power of the processors and the machine learning capabilities that get the perfect shot; that smooth looking portrait picture, the optical image stabilization when shooting videos and TrueDepth functions when shooting long-range photos. iOS is even becoming a pro software for image and video editing professionals. Adobe has now brought a large amount of its software to Apple’s operating system, allowing professionals to accomplish their great works on Apple phones and tablets.

The question we can now ask ourselves is, can a company that was once disruptive apply incremental innovations for a given period in order to slowly disrupt other industries? I personally think Apple outsmarted others and played the right cards. Whereas many thought Apple was at its peak in the era of Steve Jobs, I think Tim Cook took the time to shift focus yet acted fast enough to disrupt industries no one had first imagined yet is amazed by it now when they think beyond only the hardware updates Apple has been presenting in the past years.

Smart move, Tim. Well played, Apple.