At its annual Worldwide Developers Conference today, Apple is expected to announce several new products and advancements to existing lines from across its portfolio of smart devices. Jan Dawson, chief telecoms analyst at Ovum, highlights what Apple needs to do to maintain its impressive performance:
“To start, Apple needs to do two things in the TV space. Firstly, create a subscription model that combines the back catalog of Netflix with the timely content of Hulu for a single price. Secondly, it should create an software development kit followed by an App Store for the Apple TV device to allow third party apps to proliferate there as they have on the iPhone and iPad. What it does not need to do is launch a television set.
“Elsewhere, Apple needs to begin to evolve the iOS user interface on iPhone and iPad, which has been the inspiration for many other platforms, but at five years old it’s beginning to show its age. Proper support for widgets (including third party widgets), whether in the Notification Center or the main screen, is critical. Apple also needs to add a broader set of APIs to allow better cross-app interaction akin to what is possible on Android.
“Finally, Apple must find a way to replace the remaining third-party services, which are core to many users’ experience on the iPhone, with its own. It is likely to fix this problem with Maps in iOS 6, but it has a similar problem in web search, in social networking, and in PIM (email, contacts and calendar). Without really compelling offerings in each of these areas, Apple’s users will become increasingly ingrained in third party services which may be better supported on other platforms.”
Further insight will be included in Ovum’s forthcoming profile of Apple’s smart device strategy. Ovum (http://www.ovumn.com) is a company that “provides clients with independent and objective analysis that enables them to make better business and technology decisions.”