Apple WWDC – Developer love.

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Developers are only increasing in their importance to Apple.

• Apple’s WWDC conference showcased a lot of catch-up upgrades, a serious nod to the importance of China as well as some delicious eye candy for messaging.
• More than ever before the developer was front and centre of everything that Apple does with more and more of the phone being opened up to third party apps.
• This makes complete sense because I have long believed that Apple’s differentiation lies mostly in its ability to distribute the apps and services of third parties in an easy and fun to use way.
• Consequently, it is of paramount importance for Apple to keep developers happy and to offer them a constant stream of new features so keep their apps fresh and earning money.
• Apple has really distanced itself from Google Play over the last 18 months but it is in no way resting on its laurels and is doing everything to keep the environment fresh for developers.
• WatchOS / MacOS / TvOS received incremental upgrades which addressed many of the well-known shortcomings of these platforms, moving them to be more in line with competing offerings for the same device categories.
• As one would expect, iOS got the most attention with iOS 10 launched which will be available as a free upgrade in the autumn.
• iOS 10 upgrades were focused in 10 areas but the ones that appeared to matter most were:
  • Messages. Apple enabled a raft of features that give the user more options in terms of expressing himself with text messages.
  • This included large emoji’s, background animations, photo editing and so on.
  • This moves Apple to the forefront of messaging, but I am be pretty sure that Messenger, Weixin and WhatsApp will quickly copy these ideas.
  • Lock Screen. Further enhancements have been made to the lock screen which improve usability but in my opinion undermine security and privacy.
  • iOS 10 now allows a whole raft of data to be accessed from the lock screen without necessarily unlocking the device which is great for usability, but also means that anyone can access that data if they pick up the device.
  • The more Apple increases what the user can do without unlocking the device, the less secure the user’s data becomes.
  • I suspect that this feature will appeal strongly to Chinese users where RFM’s research indicates that Chinese users care much less about data privacy.
  • Apple Music had a big user experience upgrade and the offering is now much more intuitive and easy to use.
  • Apple has also taken a leaf out of Spotify’s book and is offering more curated playlists for the user based on his tastes.
  • However, the user experience is the easy bit where accurately understanding users and cataloguing 40m media items is very difficult.
  • Time will tell how well Apple can do this but I think that it is still playing catch up in this area.
  • HomeKit is evolving exactly in the way that I have been expecting.
  • A new app called Home was launched that allows all of the devices in the home to be controlled from a single app.
  • This brings together all of the devices such that they can be part of a usage profile rather than individual elements.
  • For example, the user can put the house into night mode and with one click lock the doors, turn off the lights, close the blinds and so on.
  • I see HomeKit along with HealthKit as one of Apple’s key strategies to keep the iPhone differentiated long term as its edge as a developer platform will only last so long.
  • Of HealthKit there was no mention, but I still see this as early days.
• The net result is that Apple has done enough to keep ahead of Google Play as the preferential developer platform and so there is no imminent risk of Apple losing its edge there.
• China was also featured highly for the first time reinforcing Apple’s dependence on this market despite the fact that its services and app store do not fare very well in China.
• None of this will solve Apple’s most pressing problem which is its lack of growth but with the valuation where it is today, I do not see this as a major problem.
• Consequently, I still prefer Apple to Google but for share price appreciation in a 12 month window, I would look to Samsung, Microsoft or Baidu.