With the 20th anniversary of the Apple iPhone edging closer, the company is planning something big as part of its “monumental” year for new gadgets in 2027. There’s only one little problem; there are still two years to get through before that happens. When Apple-watcher supreme Mark Gurman cautions that “it’s been a while since we saw something intriguingly new,” you know something has to change. Fast.
Polishing the Apple
This “current lack of breakthrough designs” and “lack of groundbreaking change has taken a toll,” the Bloomberg columnist wrote in his must-read Power On newsletter.
The iPhone, which still generates the most revenue and profit of any device for the company, has seen sales slide to less than what they were two years ago, while the Big Fruit Company’s Watch saw a 14% revenue fall last year, according to Bloomberg.
“It’s clear that Apple needs something bigger and bolder on the horizon. But the speed of its innovation engine is slower,” Gurman wrote. “The days of getting frequently redesigned devices and a major new product category every few years are long gone.”
Apple’s much-vaunted artificial intelligence, dubbed Apple Intelligence, has been as much of a flop as the Vision Pro, which costs $3,500 and is simply too heavy to wear for long periods.
During testimony at the Google antitrust trial, Apple’s senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue, reminisced about his forty years of working in Silicon Valley.
“The most successful companies that were there either don’t exist today or are significantly smaller and much less impactful,” he said. “That goes from HP to Sun Microsystems to Silicon Graphics to Tandem Computers.” Cue puts this down to the breakneck pace of the tech industry, which is constantly creating new ways for businesses to “supplant” the current leaders.
“I worry about this for Apple. We’re highly successful – that doesn’t mean we’re going to be around 10 or 20 years down the line. People still are going to need toothpaste 20 years from now, 40 years from now. You may not need an iPhone 10 years from now, as crazy as that sounds.”
To counter this, Gurman says “an Apple product renaissance is on the way,” but you’ll have to wait two years for it to arrive. Gurman is expecting Apple’s first foldable iPhone, which some Apple insiders “consider one of two major two-decade anniversary initiatives”.
There’s also a “mostly glass, curved iPhone, without any cutouts in the display … that will mark the 10-year anniversary of the iPhone X, which kicked off the transition to all-screen, glass-focused iPhone designs.” That means no cutouts at all in the display – and a camera baked right under the glass. It’s certainly a n novel idea, but is it one that’ll put an end to its innovation drought?
Perhaps not. But that’s not all Apple has on the horizon. It’s reportedly busying itself with a pair of smart glasses, currently in development, and meant to rival Meta’s own Ray-Ban smart glasses, as well as a new set of AirPods that could include cameras. It’ll manage the feat with the help of a new line of chips designed to power its smart glasses, new Macs, and the company’s own AI servers.
“Then there’s Apple’s push into robotics, which will include a tabletop machine with a robotic arm (building on the company’s still-pending plans for a smart home hub). That would feature an AI assistant with its own personality.”
“Apple has other major new initiatives on its road map, including a product that will cross a foldable iPad with a touchscreen Mac. That likely won’t arrive until 2028,” he said before adding: “The timing is fluid for much of this, of course. But it at least gives Apple fans something to look forward to during this period of incremental updates and slow progress.”
