I think people in the mainstream media and even most people period just don't understand innovation cycles. They expect novelty every year, but they don't realize that revolutions are created by consistently great evolution over a long period of time.
We're nearing the top of the S curve with regards to the smartphone business. Upgrade cycles are getting longer. Phones are getting as powerful as laptops and people are finding them good enough for most things, for longer periods of time.
You can't expect the same level of novelty and change every single year. This headline also under-appreciates just how much the world has changed in the past 10 years because of the smartphone. Everything is wildly different and even as I type this, it's really hard to have perspective about just how significant the changes have been especially since we experience them incrementally. 10 years isn't even that long of a time period.
It's all about the ecosystem and services now. Companies are investing deeply into integrated bundles of services and ecosystem add-ons (HomePod, Watch, Apple Music, iCloud etc) with the smartphone sitting at the center tying everything together.
Each piece might not be the iPhone in terms of size, but that's unrealistic. The iPhone is probably one of the greatest single business lines of all time. That type of step function product doesn't come along every year let alone every decade.
It's not about any single product anymore. It's about integrating technology deep into your life with the smartphone at the center (or in Amazon's case, Alexa since they missed the Smartphone era).
Ecosystems are inventions in their own. How they grow matter. What values they espouse matter. Focusing on the individual parts instead of how the pieces tie together to make a powerful whole is missing the forest for the trees.
Apple also isn't the same company they were in 2007. Just look at the iPhone install base growth: https://www.valuewalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Screens...
That's just iPhone. If you count all iOS devices (iPad, iPod Touch, etc), they're well over a billion users globally. They serve more customers, in more countries, with more preferences than ever before in the company's history. If you're expecting the company to move the same way they did when they were barely international and had a tiny fraction of the operations and customers they have today, then that's also unrealistic.
Look at complex multinational products like Apple Pay and how difficult it is for anyone to deliver a service like that seamlessly in every country in the world (even Apple hasn't launched it everywhere). Services like that require multi-year planning, complex dealmaking, geopolitical factors, operational risk, complex financial operations, etc. Things like Apple Pay are severely under-appreciated because it doesn't make for a good headline and it doesn't make for a fun product review on The Verge or YouTube.
If Apple can make iPhone your only wallet and convince banking partners and retailer around the world to accept Apple Pay AND do it in a way that respects the privacy of every transaction. THAT is innovation. THAT is magical. But that is also hard to appreciate and it will happen incrementally over the years. We'll take it for granted, move on, and demand more.
As Bezos said in his previous shareholder letter: "Customers are divinely discontent"
