It’s no surprise that Apple has changed the game from the beginning and brought us true innovation since the launch of the original iPhone. For anyone to deny that the Apple iPhone is anything less than “good” is seriously in denial. The success and popularity of the device along with the iPad was simply unprecedented. That being said, founder of Digital Chocolate, Trip Hawkins, compares Apple to the Roman Empire in that as successful and dominant as it was, it was still bound to fall. As far as I can tell, however, I don’t see any industry proof or evidence as to why there would be a decline in the works for Apple. Hawkins seems to draw his conclusions simply on the analogy alone as he states the following:
“The thing is, it may take another year or two before it starts to decline, but it has to – everything does. Everything revolves so much around Steve, and no matter how good his lieutenants are, they’re not Steve. None of us is going to live forever, though I hope he lives for a really long time,”
While I’m not inclined to disagree, I do have to wonder why Hawkins thinks a decline is on the verge. Is this a classic case of fact or opinion? And while I’m not normally in the business of defending Apple by any means, according to the quote it seems he thinks the company cannot succeed without Jobs holding the reigns. While that may be true, no one can know for certain. The same could have been spoken of when Eric Schmidt stepped down and Larry Page took over as CEO of Google. Based on that premise alone, is Google and Android heading for a fall? I think not. In fact, I think Android is just getting started. The Android operating system is like a huge freight train, you know it’s coming but you can’t do anything about it.
In all fairness though, Hawkins goes on to further state his case as to why he thinks a fall is in the works. He adds that their is a problem with Apple’s “closed model” and points to the fact that there is still no Flash support on their devices.
“Digital Chocolate’s games will always be in the App Store. But I think it would be an incredibly positive thing for the industry if Apple decided to support all of the web standards, because then Apple could be the best about everything. Right now they make a conscious choice. They want you to be in the App Store rather than the browser, so they cripple the browser,”
Closed model and no Flash, enough for an empire to fall? We’ll let you be the judge of that. Meanwhile, feel free to leave us your rants, thoughts and foreshadows in the comments below.
[via industrygamers]