iSheep

I closed my Facebook account two months ago. The reason was the “value for time” of Facebook had been declining for me continuously and the interest graph offered by Twitter fits my much better than the social graph offered by Facebook. The other reason was I felt Facebook has peaked. As a company and as a service. It has peaked because I am not alone in my decision. There are many like me. Including some well-known members of FB’s board. May be they have not closed their accounts but will soon. And for me it was time to move on. The nature of mine is to abort declining trends and to embrace rising ones. The reason number three was to learn if life without a Facebook account would be possible. It certainly is and I miss nothing.

Apple has peaked too. Yes I know I called Apple peak back when the stock was $300 (I posted this on Facebook at that time, so cannot give you the link, sorry). Way too early, two years ago. Or maybe just in time? It was two years ago when Apple ran short of new concepts and stopped accelerating. The results we have today. The iPhone 5 (yawn). So long awaited and so yesterday’s. It is just a remake of the 4/4s. There is no new technology introduced in the 5. It is better shaped to fit in your hands. Hey I heard the 4 was shaped to fit perfectly. Have my hands changed then?

iPhone fans were expecting the jump to be at least as big as was the jump Samsung did from the Galaxy S2 to the Galaxy S3. The S2 was a no event, while the S3 has turned on tomorrow (pun intended), outselling iPhone during the previous quarter and is admired even by the diehard Apple fans. It is likely the S3 will continue to outsell the iPhone. Because there is very little in the 5 (German link) to justify the upgrade for the remaining faithful iPhone 4 owners. Who by the way got very little in exchange for their patience – the Passbook App (which does not create any barrier for competition) and the new, already famous, Maps App. And a new connector. In the meantime Samsung (with the help from Google’s Android) dropped a dozen new technologies into the S3. To name just a few: NFC(near-field communications), face detection, a gorgeous amoled screen that tracks your eyes knowing when you are looking at it. And the Google Now app, that has to be tried to see how smart it is. The S3 is also the first Android device I’ve had, which has absolutely no lag between user’s action (like a screen touch) and the system’s reaction - the lag that plagued Android for years. So certainly not every iPhone 4 user will upgrade to the 5. And even less Android users will switch to iOS (I cannot think of a single reason to do this), while Apple fans will be moving in the other direction at a pace accelerated by frustration and fatigue caused by Apple’s mistakes like the iOS 6 Maps.

Having said all that, the iPhone 5 with all its failures and unmet expectations is not the biggest problem for Apple. The real problem is the same Facebook has. The social problem called iSheep. Judging by the number of Samsung default notification whistles I hear at airports, which is becoming as iconic as the Nokia ringtone was ten years ago, we are approaching the inflection point where consumers think Android is smarter than iOS and has passed it in the “cool factor”.

“I’m a PC. And I’m a Mac.” – do you remember the commercials? Now we have “I’m Apple. And I’m Samsung” reloaded. iPhone has always been a social status upgrade. People owning Apple products were standing out from everybody else. Buying an iPhone was universally considered a smart decision. It no longer is. Because the world has caught up with Apple. And passed it. It is not only Samsung. It is also Motorola with the new edge-to-edge screen, Intel-powered RAZR i. It is also Asus with the PadPhone. Why the iPad cannot be a wireless display to the iPhone, sharing the CPU, memory (content!) and network connection? Why you cannot transfer photos between an iPhone and an iPad just by touching them (like Samsung S3’s)? Why there is no wireless charging like in the LG smartphones? And no pico projector (like in the Galaxy Beam) and no read-ahead cache in Safari (like in Chrome). And finally no iWatch on the horizon. Let’s face it. The iPhone 5 does not have enough fuel to last for another two years. What it offers is “just ok” today and will be below average tomorrow. By that time Samsung will have flexible / transparent OLED displays and NFC will be taking the world by storm.

Apple also faces losing two other markets – the desktop computer and the TV screen. A few days ago I walked into an Apple Store and (forgive my ignorance) asked for a computer with a touch screen. “Apple does not make touch computers” was the answer (can you believe this, by the way?). Despite the mobile revolution, desktops will not disappear. They will be losing the “top” part, morphing from being desktop computers to being computing desks. Microsoft can win back the leadership here, with the Surface experience, and Windows 8 being focused on touch. In the second market, GoogleTV that is just about to be released in set-top and embedded form factors, will make AppleTV a poor looking runner-up. Especially the embedded is important: the GoogleTV – powered TV sets will be catching the next wave of upgrades. And yes, Google TV has the App Play Store. Porting an Android app to Google TV is easy and straightforward. It is a sign of time that Apple, the company which invented the apps, will not have an application platform for the big screen.

Of course there are voices who keep on saying Apple has surprises around the corner, so we should just wait. But then we’ve waited two years for the iPhone 5, which has just proved waiting is a not the best option.

Finally, the world works in cycles. And each cycle has its own leaders and peaks. The current cycle for Apple has just peaked. The risk is, doing no matter what, there may be nothing Apple can do about the iSheep effect. So the ramp down may be quite steep.