If you think Apple (AAPL, Financial) has lost its innovative touch with the death of the legendary Steve Jobs, you may be wrong. There are many institutional investors and analysts who fail to see any future in Apple’s upcoming inventions and they feel its peers are posed better to take on the growing demand and necessities of the gadget-mad consumers. On the other hand, the current Apple CEO, Tim Cook believes very strongly in what is in Apple’s pipeline.
In Apple’s shareholder’s meeting held this Friday, Tim Cook tried to explain to the shareholders that the iconic company is way ahead of its peers and there is no reason to be concerned though the stock lags behind that of its peers. Cook reassured the audience that the company is working on projects that will expand and diversify the company’s offerings way beyond smartphones, tablets, music devices and PCs.
Tim Cook’s point can be well taken since Apple has invested as much as $4.5 billion in research and development to come up with new-age stuff and has completed more than 20 acquisitions in the past one and half years. All this can be summed up to be a small part of a big picture that Apple is busy painting. Obviously Apple isn’t sitting idle while its competitors are catching up. The company has always innovated and proved itself to be of a different breed altogether.
While Tim Cook understands the anxiety of the consumers and shareholders and also understands that if he even hints at what Apple is working on, the stocks of the company can again gain whatever price it has lost, he strongly believe that suspense is required. The CEO is certain that once the new gadget or gadgets hit the market, there will be no stopping, like we have already seen in case of the iPhone, iPod and the iPad.
The element of suspense is of utmost important and even the analysts and industry experts will agree to that. It hasn’t been long since Apple launched the iPhone 5S with finger print reader and already Samsung (SSNLF, Financial) is known to be working on a device that will come with a similar feature. Rumors about the finger print reader started circulating months ahead of the launch of the 5S and it can be assumed that the Korean smartphone giant started working on the concept immediately. Still, it took a longer time to incorporate the feature in its designs, thus providing Apple the well deserved first mover’s advantage. It is already out that both Apple and Samsung are working on health apps – Healthbook from Apple and S-Health from Samsung – that will use the finger print sensors to provide crucial health information to its users. Unless Apple can protect its secrets, any player will try to imitate and catch up.
To drive home the discussion, there is nothing much for the investors to worry about. Apple shares not doing that good against the peers is nothing new. Time and again we have seen this happen, only for the share price to soar once the company comes out with its breakthrough innovations. There are plenty of things that the consumers are eagerly waiting for, such as the next iPhone that is rumored to have a bigger screen, the iWatch, the next iOS and the reinvented iTV. With so much going on, and much more that the world is still not aware of, its seems there is a lot of upside potential in the company’s stocks and all an investor has to do is wait for the right time and then gain from the price rise hike.
