What is on the Horizon for Apple Research Paper

What is on the Horizon for Apple - Research Paper Example Users were given choice to buy single songs instead of buying a complete audio disc. The iPod was different than an already saturated mp3 player market at the time. It offered superior user interface and hence better user experience. The iPod represents a start for the company to lead the revolution. The innovations did not stop and new products that invented completely new categories followed. Apple plans to grow their product lineup as well as improve existing products. Some of the possible future plans are discussed in detail; Mac Macs have been the main product for Apple since long. The company was mainly founded as a computer company. The lineup includes Mac Pro, iMac, Mac mini, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. Macs currently run on Intel processors. MacBook Pro and MacBook Air represents major portion of the sales in Macs. Both products are made with unibody enclosures, which add durability and aesthetics. The MacBook Airs are ultra thin laptops running on low power processors and incorporate Solid State Drives (SSD) instead of convention Hard Disc Drives used in MacBook Pros. Apple plans to introduce high resolution Retina Displays in both MacBooks (Chen & Shen, 2011). This will improve real estate available on desktop as well as improve sharpness, in particular for texts. Furthermore, MacBook Pro is rumored to have a design overhaul in 2012 and will adopt design cues from the existing MackBook Air (Kim, 2012). The two lines of models are expected to merge into one product in the future. iPad The iPad represents the leading post-pc device from Apple. Apple invented a completely new category with the introduction of iPad in 2010. The tablet has been an astounding success and is liked for its ease of use and portability. The iPad has capitalized the tablet market till now and Apple has dominated the category. Competitors have introduced Android based tablets of varying size and price to compete against the iPad. It is rumored that Apple is planning to introduc e 7.85 inch iPad variant as compared to 9.7 inch current iPad’s screen size (Faust, 2012). The 7 inch screen size was dismissed by late Apple CEO Steve Jobs to be very small and incapable of expressing the software. Though, with the new iPad carrying Retina Display (resolution 2048 x 1536 pixels), there is a possibility that Apple may introduce 7.85 inch variant carrying a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. The major competitor to the iPad would be Windows 8 tablets planned at the end of 2012. The Windows 8 operating system would be a complete operating system working on a tablet device as compared to relatively limited mobile based Apple’s iOS on the iPad. For now, sales of the new iPad are phenomenal and Apple sold record breaking 3 million iPads in first four days of launch (Golson, 2012). iPhone The original iPhone introduced in 2007 revolutionized the mobile phone industry and left competitors struggling to cope up with its advanced features, usability and user expe rience. Over the years the phone market has become saturated with Android based devices and manufacturers offer various type of phones based on the platform. Apple’s iOS on the other hand has been a stable platform and has standard parameters. Android is running on devices with varying hardware parameters and is, therefore, fragmented. This means that applications are not designed to run on every phone with varying hardware specifications. For the next generation iPhones Apple plans to improve its camera with an aim to replace everyday point and shoot cameras. The next iPhone is rumored to have