Apple To Meet Same Demise As Blackberry?

There are concerns that Apple may end up the same way as Blackberry. This comes after the company's dismal performance in the market recently.

Business Insider reported that top Apple follower Marco Arment is worried that the company may meet the same fate as Blackberry. He claimed that Blackberry was initially great at creating phones and even dominated the market before the iPhone came about.

While Blackberry was a genius at creating a device for email and phone calls, it was not enough. Apparently, Apple's iPhone changed the way people used smartphones with the introduction of the App Store.

This time, though, there are concerns that Apple may be following Blackberry's footsteps. Amazon, Facebook and Google have been focusing on the development of advanced AI, futuristic assistants as well as future interfaces in efforts to find the next things that our devices should be for.

"Today, Apple's being led properly day-to-day and doing very well overall," Arment wrote in a blog post. "But if the landscape shifts to prioritize those big-data AI services, Apple will find itself in a similar position as BlackBerry did almost a decade ago: what they're able to do, despite being very good at it, won't be enough anymore, and they won't be able to catch up."

According to The Register, Microsoft has overtaken Apple in Britain's biz slab sales. The iPad Pro, which was released in October, sold only 107,000 units in the U.K. This is lower compared to Surface Pro's 275,000 units sold.

"One of the problems facing Apple is price, the other is familiarity and applications," Tim Coulling, senior analyst at Canalys, said. "It is a difficult market for Apple."

Meanwhile, Warren Buffett's recent investment in Apple has shown a deviation from the investor's portfolio. Forbes noted that Buffett usually places his money in high quality businesses that have had long histories of success. Only time will tell whether the risk is worth it or not.

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