Apple - The Company Of The Two Decades

Recently I have been provoked to make a second approach to the Decade Of Decadency post. And while I firmly stand behind the general opinion expressed there (oh yeah... I would be delighted if we would return to the Moon on the 50th anniversary of the first landing...), there is another perspective we may look at. Vision and execution.

Among the ten companies with the largest market capitalization we have Exxon Mobil leading the pack, followed by Microsoft. There are two other tech companies - Google and Apple, some more oil companies, a few banks and one retailer - Wal-Mart. The question of interest is obviously how this top-ten chart will look like ten years from now...

Let us try to picture just the information technology related ones (I am still open for other discussions like energy or genetics...). Everybody agrees the star of Microsoft is fading. Yes Windows 7 is really a great operating system. But other areas are shaky... Mobile seems to be lost to Apple and Google. Gaming is difficult and rapidly transforming as it will largely move its mass from consoles to web browsers, with players like Zynga and its clones going for the low end and OTOY and the likes taking the high end.

So Apple and Google - the clash of the titans? Well may be not necessarily the clash, as their courses are not head to head collision. But they are not entirely parallel either. Google has taught people the Internet. And Google owes a lot to Apple, who essentially brought mobile Internet to the masses. But it is Apple - the new "iPhone Apple", not the "Mac Apple" - who has taught people the mobile Internet. We had the "before iPhone" era and now we live in the "after iPhone" one. Everybody tries to catch up, but iPhone is and will remain symbolic. What not everybody realizes now, Apple, who initially filled Google's cache with search queries coming from iPhones, is gradually taking the business away from the search giant. Instead of using just the Web browser on their devices, people use apps. An Amazon app to search for books. A Time app to follow the news. A Bloomberg app to screen the stock market. A Pandora app to discover music. And please note all of them come via the iTunes store.

Let us switch the thread for a moment and try to imagine how the iPod will look like 3 - 5 years from now. Audio / music seems to be solved now. Picking any iPhone we can furnish our needs. Either having the small, ultra portable Nano, or the Classic able to hold the entire library of audio content. Plus a variety of sources to buy the music from (iTunes included).

The next frontier is video. And what is pretty sure, it is the 3D video, the battle is about. We have just had the Avatar. With phenomenal sales record since the premiere, the Avatar is just a harbinger of what the Studios are working on. Some people say movies like the Avatar will prolong the life of the big cinemas and will preserve the established revenue chain. I say they will not. 2010 CES starts on Thursday. 3D at home will be the leading story, no doubt. Today almost everybody can recreate cinema - like environment at home. I did this within quite a limited budget - a good HD projector powered by the PlayStation 3 and a wall 200 inch wide. Watched the Lord Of The Rings trilogy last week and believe me, it works. Now 3D, technically, is nothing new. Just a higher frame rate, with alternate left/right frames and synchronized glasses, exactly like the iMax, only at home. I bet we will be watching 3D Avatar at our homes this year. I hope to be more specific next week after visiting CES. But Sony already has declared they will be selling only 3D displays "soon". Well with the global rebound coming, it is good to have a new technology wave supporting the companies willing to ride it...

You may say not everybody has a piece of 200 inch empty wall at their disposal. Weren't you thinking of 3D at home while planning your house? Worry not... We won't need walls and screens soon. The image will be drawn directly on your retina. Fantasy? No... reality. It was - I think - five years ago when I first saw the system developed by Microvision, called Witness. There was a set of glasses with a small red laser, reflecting its beam from a tiny moving mirror. The mirror was painting the image with the laser beam exactly the same way CRT TV sets were painting the image using controlled electron beam. Then the laser beam was reflected off a piece of glass and thrown directly on a retina. It was a monochrome system at that time, but the image quality was excellent, and importantly, it was focus free. Not long ago Microvision introduced a pocket color video projector (the SHOWWX) using the same concept. It is on sale now at around $300 and can be plugged to Nokia N97 or similar video sources.

I am sure Microvision will get back to the original idea of building this into the glasses. You need glasses for 3D anyway, so this is just natural evolution to build the projector into the glasses. Once the glasses are your screen, you do not need 200 inch wall anymore. And with a power source built in too (BTW: note how little power is needed for direct on-retina projection), we just need some storage and connectivity, that is already mastered today. So this is your iPod / iPhone a few years from now. Apple should consider buying Microvision, for both the technology, that has been developed over the last ten years to finally have the first commercial product in 2009, and for the IP rights to lock other players out of the game.

At the same time the iTunes store will become the dominating content distribution platform. Something Google lacks both commercially and - I think - strategically. With the content distribution ecosystem (the store and the most popular personal 3D video players), the company will be the winner of the next decade, operating the tollgate to our emotions. The next 3D iPhone will rule the masses of Avatars.... Cinemas, want it ir not, will remain just for the nostalgic types and lovers, like in The Friends Of Mr. Cairo.... The continued far stretched vision and flawless execution may propel Apple to be the largest company on Earth. It is really not that far goal for them... they need to grow 65%. They have already grown 2700% since the first iPod started the digital media revolution in 2001.

I just don't know when we will get rid of glasses though...