Is the Apple going stale?

A star shines its brightest right before it burns out.

Apple had always been about transforming lives. Since the death of Steve Jobs, however, Apple has lost its focus on living up to this image. The brand is known for changing lives with concepts like the Macintosh, iPods, iPhones and iPads.

The iPad Mini, however, is nowhere close- it cannot be considered a world-changing device. We hear rumors about an iWatch on its way, but it is not a Google Glass, that we're told, will change our lives. Apple seems a step behind. We also hear rumors that Apple's iTV might only be similar to Samsung's Smart TV.

Strategically, Apple has been focusing on making small changes to big products, and followers are rightly worried. The main challenge Apple faces today is not around creating innovations that change the world, or coming out with the perfect device at one go. Its biggest problem is to live up to the expectations of the public - an image it created for itself -and we wonder if it holds true today.

All great companies have their time. Nokia, Kodak and the Dutch East India company changed the world profoundly, but burnt out in the end. Two days ago, Guardian published an article titled Is Apple running out of juice. The next one was Is Google the new Apple published in Forbes. Since the death of Steve Jobs, Apple has been going downhill - in terms of innovations and share value. The stock price of Apple has gone down nearly 40% from last summer and some shareholders are revolting. Whereas, Google is up about 20% since mid-January. Google has also had 13 green weeks out of 16 since early November 2012 and six consecutive weeks of new all-time weekly closing highs. Another addition to Google living up Apple's fame is - analysts are falling all over themselves in upping Google's price targets, with $1000 now being bandied about.

The Guardian states: Google's business model is to organise the world's information so that it can sell ads against all that content. Perhaps even to ultimately predict what we want before we know we want it. Android is merely a Trojan horse for this business model, to harvest gargantuan amounts of information about the world and maintain its lead as the world's biggest ad platform.

Whereas, Apple's business model is different. It doesn't need to invent anything - Apple didn't invent it the PC, tablets or smartphones. It only needs to take an idea to use its ecosystem, and offer the best product innovatively to the world. No doubt, Apple's got talent, but we need to see some signs of game-changers to keep faith.