The Apple Watch and new AirPods may seam like silly side projects to fans, but some analysts on Wall Street believe the company is using the two new products to lay the groundwork for the next era of personal technology.
While Silicon Valley is obssessed with virtual reality headsets, Apple is obsessed with making gadgetry less visible. UBS analysts Steven Milunovich and Benjamin Wilson told clients that while many firms see a lot of downside for Apple, the company’s “ambient paradigm” could be a huge money maker.
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“The ambient paradigm consists of many devices providing different input/output methods that can be flexibly utilized depending on the situation (sitting, walking, running, driving).” Milunovich told investors. “Devices become extensions of one another rather than discreet, computing platforms. It is an expression of what Tim Cook has described as ‘iOS everywhere.”
Rather than expecting a big game changing product like the iPhone, UBS thinks a batch of smaller products — like Apple Watch and AirPods — will evolve over the years to connect seamlessly, with Siri acting as the glue.
Apple is rumored to be working on Siri-powered speaker that functions similar to Google Home and Amazon Echo. It also introduced the Home app with iOS 10, putting smart devices all in the same hub.
The iPhone-maker will have some catching up to do in some areas though. Google revealed a new Wi-Fi router and Chromecast to go with its smart speaker. And Amazon keeps rolling out new Alexa-powered devices. Even though Apple won’t be the first to the market with its iOS everywhere devices, the company has shown in the past that first rarely means best.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
4 responses to “AirPods point to Apple’s domination of ‘ambient paradigm’”
The “ambient paradigm” is a trendy buzzphrase, all of the business publications have run with it now. What we’re basically talking about is interconnected devices. Apple is thus far the only company to get it anywhere close to functional. Samsung and Google are still miles behind. Of course they can make dramatic improvements, but their company cultures are parasitic on Apple, at least as far as hardware is concerned. They don’t innovate on a level anywhere near Apple’s ballpark. They emulate but with explosion-prone batteries and a security nightmare OSes.
Have you actually tried Google’s implementations of this?
It works on almost every platform – syncing my Galaxy S7, my Microsoft Surface tablet, my iPad Pro and my iMac/MacBook Pro/MacBook Air. Their apps, services and data are available regardless of what OS you’re running, contrary to Apple’s “iCloud only works with our devices” system.
Google and other companies do actually innovate, as does Apple. It’s not a case of one company always being ahead and the rest always following, but companies that innovate in different ways, and then incorporate other companies’ designs into their own. Google takes from Apple, Apple takes from Google, etc.
This for me is the next shift into the next phase of data everywhere whether it be IOS, Android whatever combined with The Internet of Everything. Home kit to smart appliances to smart objects. I could liken it to Spotify but for everything where you just pay an annual subscription but its for access for devices in your house, your phone, your watch, your car, your health, literally IOS everywhere. The flip side of that is the data and then over time the importance of that data to you in your everyday life. So as our photos and videos now live in the cloud and I pay Apple an monthly fee for that storage imagine that but for everything.
Am I going to paying apple a monthly fee for the rest of my life??? You times that by a few billion people….. Does anyone else find those Google Home adds sickly. I mean wheres the “Hey Google is my husband watching porn at home.” add
“Apple is obsessed with making gadgetry less visible”
Yeah, that’s why I now need two or three dongles to charge my phone and listen to music, which I could do without any issue with every previous iPhone.