I'm surprised by your optimism here. Over the last 5-10 years, Apple seemed to have receded in to the clunky monolith of its former mid-90s self. While their supply and distribution chain is amazingly streamlined, they're still dining out on the cachet of their innovative product line from 10-15 years ago.
I just cannot understand how an increasingly risk-averse, profit-driven company will summon the chutzpah to again create category-creating products once more.
AirPods, Apple Watch, Apple Music, Apple Pay, FaceID, huge strides in mapping, Privacy-aware services and much more were all created in the past couple of years and have tremendous category-defining value.
I don't think you can overlook those things and take them for granted.
There's still not great alternatives to AirPods or Apple Watch to this day. Music streaming is pretty much just Apple and Spotify at this point. Also, few companies have been able to align privacy and embed it into their business models.
Apple has also quietly built one of the best chip design teams in the industry - pumping out various custom silicon that is powering FaceID, ML, Photography, and AR among other things. The # of custom chips Apple uses in their products grows every year.
So they've done a ton of innovative things over the past couple of years, it's just that you're not going to get another product like the iPhone which is perhaps one of the best businesses of all time.
We may never see another business like it anytime soon, from anyone. So I think it's a bit unfair to grade everything Apple does on the "iPhone Curve".
Sure, tremendous innovation on componentry and services. But I think it's being a bit generous putting the Apple Watch or the Airpod anywhere near the game-changing legacy products of the 2000s.
I still can't see how Apple will surge again. The brand equity is based upon Ramsian aesthetics (which have been mimicked to point of being passè in 2019), coupled with category-defining products that became cultural phenonenas (nope: the Apple Watch is hardly holds a candle to those). Not to mention they've all but deserted the power-users with lacklustre notebooks and having 6 year silences between Mac Pro's.
I want to be wrong, by the way. I really do. But you are mainly describing features and not products when you talk about their strides.
The actual product is the Apple ecosystem and that's the bet Apple is making.
Right now, the ecosystem is tied together by iOS whose most popular incarnation is iPhone. But iOS was so successful that it has an install base of over 1 billion users.
That's nothing less than an incredible user-base - a hell of a foundation. If they can sustain that install base while strengthening their ecosystem through value-add products like Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod and Apple Music, then they have potentially many cash cows with dramatically high ceilings and reach.
This is a good bet for them because it plays to their strengths and they've earned incredibly loyal customers over the years.
iPhone may not be the future of Apple, but it is the core from which many futures will emerge. It'll still be a critical product for Apple, but no longer a key top-line growth driver. And that's OK, that's how innovation cycles go. iPhone made it possible for them to start on 3rd base for the next cycle.
iOS adoption of new versions is extremely strong and has typically always been that way. Rate of adoption is fast as well. From release of a new version to 50% adoption is often just a few weeks.
I just cannot understand how an increasingly risk-averse, profit-driven company will summon the chutzpah to again create category-creating products once more.