Has Apple lost its mojo?

 

Could Apple drop a "one-more-thing" bombshell one more time?

The late Steve Jobs used to whip his product-launch crowds into a frenzy with that famous keynote postscript -- "Oh, there is one more thing" -- just before blowing them away with the latest gadget. But on the eve of Tuesday's big product announcement, many Apple watchers are wondering if Cupertino's dream-catcher has lost its knack for innovating technology that time after time would take the world's breath away.
"The wow-factor is wearing off at Apple," said analyst Laurence Balter with Oracle Investment Research. "Innovation has been put on the back burner while the company focuses on market-share penetration. But unless they pull one incredible rabbit out of the hat next week, the pressure is going to be even more intense on Apple to somehow surprise us all again."
While the rumor mill expects Apple to unveil an iPhone 5 successor along with a lower-cost iPhone that will come in multiple colors, Balter scoffs at the offering: "It's almost become like the fall catalog from JCPenney. 'Ooo, look at the new colors for the new season.' But it sure doesn't scream 'innovation.'"
No one is suggesting Apple's days are numbered. It remains the world's most valuable company in terms of market capitalization, even as the growth of sales of its signature iPhone slows and its stock price is stuck far below its highs. Its crack team of creatives, led by the legendary Jony Ive, is presumably hard at work on the next major product. And a second announcement expected next week from the company will reportedly showcase a blockbuster iPhone deal with China Mobile. The behemoth carrier's 710 million customers would lend Apple a staggering heft in the world's largest smartphone market, a place where Apple hopes to step up its game.
As Apple continues to serve up new versions of a product arguably long in the tooth, at least in Internet years, analyst John Jackson with IDC admits there is some "iteration fatigue" among consumers. Still, Jackson insists next week's product launch doesn't need to be of biblical proportion to please fanboys everywhere.
"I don't think Apple has to do much," he said. "And they certainly don't have to create something entirely new right now to get a wow from people, as long as it's slick and sophisticated. I think there's a huge appetite out there for something, anything, new from Apple, even if it's a variation on a current theme."
The spotlight is turned up high on CEO Tim Cook, now more than two years at Apple's helm, where he's had to not only try to fill Jobs' shoes, but do damage control for product snafus like "Mapgate" and fix an important hire that went south when Apple Store chief John Browett was shown the door last October after only six months. Whether it's boosting the bottom line after two quarters of disappointing earnings or finally delivering on what he's hinted at several times as a product pipeline extraordinaire, Cook's under the gun. And overshadowing it all is the not-so-distant memory of Apple under Steve Jobs.
"This is a transcendent moment," business strategist Pam Murtaugh wrote recently on Huffington Post. "Apple became Apple when Jobs brought 'post-computer products' to the world. While Jobs thought the iPod was 'a thousand songs in your pocket,' its magic came from giving people a thousand feelings in their pocket. The iPod was a bank of feelings."
It's hard to imagine that sort of emotional geyser unleashed by simply a new colored iPhone or, as is expected later this year or early 2014, a new version of the iPad. And while Apple busies itself with its product pipeline, which eight long months ago Cook described as being "chock full" of "incredible stuff," the clock is ticking.
Literally. Samsung's release this past week of its new workout-tracking, photo-snapping smartwatch, the Galaxy Gear, puts one of Apple's fiercest rivals a few steps in the lead, at least on this one path of innovation, while the Cupertino brain trust reportedly works on a smartwatch of its own.
But before anyone starts ringing the funeral chimes, said analyst Joel Achramowicz with Merriman Capital, Apple could still make history with a piece of wearable technology that blows Galaxy Gear right off your wrist. Achramowicz finds it intriguing that Apple, simply by its silence, "appears to be falling behind. Maybe it's good that Cook has been so quiet for so long, because Apple could very well come out with a version of a smartwatch that nobody has even thought about yet, and then it's 'Bingo!'"
Think iPod, he said, or iPhone. In both cases, it was as if Apple were lying in wait while its competitors stumbled about releasing their own not-insanely-great portable music-players and mobile phones until -- Bingo! -- Apple finally weighed in. If Achramowicz's instincts are spot on, Cook and his crew may be sitting on an egg of innovation that, once hatched, will blow everyone away. Or maybe not.
"It's hard to believe Apple would come out with, say, a smartwatch that's not really exciting," Achramowicz said. "But either way, this is it for Tim. He's got really smart people in the organization, but you've got to take risks or you don't get anywhere. Now's the time for him to come up with something really surprising, like Jobs always did, and to create his own legacy."