PayPal Co-Founder, Peter Thiel, Recently ‘Confirmed’ the Age of Apple Is Over – Here’s Why He Is Wrong
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While Apple is hard at work, developing and readying for market a myriad of the most exciting and magical, next-generation products we never knew we needed, some Silicon Valley insiders aren’t quite ready to paint such a rosy picture of what the Cupertino-company believes will be many more years of innovation and advancement to come.
Earlier this week, in one of The New York Times’ daily “Confirm of Deny” feature pieces, Peter Thiel — the outspoken venture capitalist, PayPal co-founder, and surrogate to the President-elect — expressed his sentiments that Apple, as a company, may actually be “on the way out.” In his response to the opinion piece, “The Age of Apple is Over,” Thiel seemed to actually assure readers of the Silicon Valley tech-giant’s impending doom:
“We know what a smartphone looks like and does. It’s not the fault of Tim Cook, but it’s not an area where there will be any more innovation.”
It was probably a bit near-sighted on Mr. Thiel’s part, especially for basing his assumptions on just one, single aspect of a broader, technological machine, all its own. Of course, while the iPhone accounts for as much as 63% of Apple’s annual revenue, the handset, in and of itself, is certainly not the company’s only product, right?
In any case, Mr. Thiel’s assessment is certain to fuel plenty of debates between the naysayers, like himself, who believe Apple can’t possibly innovate beyond their current point — and those like Apple CEO, Tim Cook, for example, who are adamant about his company’s future and continue to tease us of all the wonderful and exciting things looming over the horizon.
I suppose you could try to reconcile the comment from several different vantage points. Yet your ultimate consensus, either way, will more than likely be somewhat biased and skewed in the nature and direction of your personal relationship with Apple products. And while the iPhone has evolved quite a bit over the last 10 years — leading some to accept the naysayer’s narrative — any Apple fan, or foe, also has to consider what the company has in store for the foreseeable future.
As far as we know, Apple has a bunch of exciting new products in store for the year ahead, including a trio of new iPad models that will be debuting within the March-April timeframe; as well as a trio of new iPhones which are likely to be touching down sometime in September of this year. Word that some exciting new Mac computers are in the works also surfaced recently, courtesy of Mr. Cook, himself.
So while the naysayers may say what they will, the bottom line is that with billions in the bank and products rolling off the assembly line as we speak, Apple more than likely isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.
