Thinkervine

Apple announced the release of the new iPhone, called 3Gs, during the World Wide Developer Conference 09, held on June 8th. Rumors and speculations have been going on, long before, as it usually does before any WWDC. Many of which were quite promising.

While the announcement was going on, a foule of people was there, following each of them, waiting for the breath-taking one. But it never came. Several interesting features have been announced, but most of them were rather tied to the Firmware 3.0 (which will be available as of June 17) rather than the 3Gs.

The innovative stake at Apple during the last year has been pretty low, or at least, not focused on the iPhone. There has been no improvements on the design, one of Apple’s major focus. No improvement on the screen quality. No improvement on useability. Not even a frontal camera for 3G conversations.

Among the improvements, you can find:

• 3MP Camera and video recording
• OpenGL support
• Compass
• Voice control
• 32GB storage

Complete list is here.

Mainly, the focus was purely technical: better speed, better battery life, better camera, more storage, Nike+ support. But again, this is far from creativity, far from revolution. I am not saying the 3Gs won’t be a great phone. And I will be part of the guys upgrading, since I’m still keeping a vintage 2G as I was not particularly seduced by the 3G and was expecting more from the next-gen.

The innovation slowdown is not just iPhone related. You can see it slowing in every major Apple line of products. Macbooks just got greener, Snow Leopard had the same focus: technical improvements, less features introductions than what Leopard did.

Is it a sign that Apple’s creativity is slowly reaching its limits ? Or is it because the main driving force (aka Steve Jobs) is leaving the business inch by inch (mainly due to health reasons) ?

Apple will, for sure, have to react if they don’t want to lose the market they’ve been winning. Palm Pre and Android are there as big threats and if you have to SWOT the smartphone market, you’d notice that Apple would face a great list of Ts (Threats) despite the Ss (Strenghts) and the Os (Opportunities) which they share with their competitors.