Peter Thiel - Age of Apple is OVER!!!

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Silicon Valley investor and Donald Trump transition-team member Peter Thiel says Apple is past its peak.

Here's what he said in a Q&A with Maureen Dowd of The New York Times when he was asked to confirm or deny that "the age of Apple is over":

"Confirm. We know what a smartphone looks like and does. It's not the fault of Tim Cook, but it's not an area where there will be any more innovation."

Thiel is best known in Silicon Valley for his early investment in Facebook. He also sits on Facebook's board and was the cofounder of the secretive data-analytics company Palantir.

Apple had a disappointing 2016 by the company's standards, with iPhone sales falling for the first time.

I don't think the age of Apple is over, but at some point people need to come to terms with the fact they might not always have "the next big thing". Their last major product was the iPad, which is well behind for productivity purposes and high priced for a saturated media/PoS market. The rhetoric of "remember what people said about the iPhone" doesn't make their current offerings any better. Smartphones might still have some innovation to come, but it's important to keep in mind that the iPhone was at a time when the infrastructure for mobile data was just becoming available, no mobile OS had been properly developed and mobile hardware was in its infancy. Between upcoming 5G networks, mature operating systems/ecosystems and technical walls for mobile hardware being reached, all of the low hanging fruit has been picked. The industry has been moving towards AI/deep learning, AR and autonomous machines, these are 3 areas that Apple has barely touched (if at all).