Gurman's weekend Newsletter stated that "Apple has struggled to move beyond its core strengths in recent years. It lacks a coherent smart home strategy, its car project was a failure, and the company arrived late — with unimpressive results — to the AI party.

To rub it in, CNBC posted a segment of "Power Lunch" on YouTube Friday titled "Innovators vs Operators" – With Meta being the innovator and Apple being the Operator. "  Even long standing supporter of Apple, Gene Munster, was siding with Meta to a certain degree. While Munster did attempt to point out Apple's car project was innovative – it was a bad example considering that it's become Apple's largest failure to date. 

Weeks earlier, Huawei release the world's first multi-fold smartphone hours after apple introduced the iPhone 16 lineup. It was to send a message that Huawei was innovating while Apple rested on their laurels incremental improving the iPhone at a snails pace. Huawei is challenging Apple on tablets throughout 2024. China's Vivo smartphones have overtaken the iPhone.

Lastly, Kantar published a report on September 25, titled "How Samsung has continued to grow through innovation" – adding "Innovation is a key driver for Meaningful Difference." When Apple introduced the iPhone and the iPad, there was a buzz in the industry of how a tiny failing computer company had attacked a market that no one in the industry ever conceived could have succeeded. Apple out-innovated the tech sector as we watched Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia and others collapse from their high and mighty market positions based on wickedly hot innovation.

Today, the Chinese have beaten Apple in smartphones overall. The EU is down their throat trying to break Apple's business model as is the U.S. DOJ for that matter. The aura of Apple being an innovative leader is being challenged and eroded and even their fan base is grumbling. To make things worse, Apple killing the ad business have begun killing off  some Apple blogs, the little guys that promoted Apple in the media when times were hard.   

Kantar's report reflects what many in the industry is seeing. "Kantar BrandZ data reveals that Samsung’s strong brand profiles have all the hallmarks of an innovative brand, scoring well on such attributes as ‘leading the way’ and ‘having a good range.’

But what does that mean for Samsung as a business? Today, Samsung has strong penetration in the market and also enjoys elevated Future Power, meaning there’s a high probability that it will grow value share in the next 12 months based purely on the strength of current brand associations.

But Samsung is an innovative brand precisely because it is unlikely to rely solely on the strength of its current offers and associations. Innovative brands know that to remain Meaningful and Different, they must seek alternative sources of growth from rich new spaces.

Samsung has done this well, offering a wide array of electronics beyond smartphones, but even within that domain, its range of handsets is far more extensive than that of Apple, in line with its guiding principle of ‘Innovation for all’. Today, Samsung’s smartphone offer encompasses everything from its more affordable Galaxy A series (meant to attract less affluent consumers) to its cutting-edge Galaxy S24 phone (targeted towards ‘tech enthusiasts’ who want better cameras and productivity).

Samsung has also innovated into the foldable phones space, with its clam-like Galaxy Z flip-phone aimed at Gen Z women who want a more unobtrusive phone to put in their back pocket. Today, Samsung dominates the foldable phones market – eight out of every 10 foldable phones owned by consumers are from Samsung according to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech data.

Samsung also has a wider vision around ‘connectivity in the home’. Compared to other electronics and tech manufacturers, this gives it such a strong opportunity to create a competitive space in which to grow, especially through innovations like its SmartThings home hub app and its Family Hub refrigeration line. Samsung has realized the need for technology to be less intrusive within people’s lives and homes and, to that end, has driven low-profile aesthetic innovations though its Frame TV range (which recently expanded further with the introduction of the Music Frame).

Traits of Innovative Leadership

1. Innovate to remain Meaningful and Different

Brands need to build from strong brand and consumer insight foundations. From there, they must use Meaningful Difference as their ‘North star’, guiding them to meet needs and exceed the competition as they develop innovations into new spaces.

2. Fuel your imagination

To get to richer opportunity spaces, brands must fuel their imaginations. That means taking both an ‘inside out’ approach to identifying opportunities (for example, from market understanding), as well as an ‘outside in’ approach that incorporates macro-forces, trends, consumer disruptive behaviors and learnings from adjacent industries.

3. Learn, test, and learn

Samsung, like all innovative brands, excels at experimenting and learning. After some challenges with its early foldable phones in 2019, it went on to dominate this space with a series of increasingly superior phone offerings for the more tech savvy consumer.

4. Be brave with data

Innovative brands use data to build confidence within their business, to continue making innovative bets. It’s about staying with the uncomfortable as a brand continues to open up to much ‘stretchier’ spaces.

5. Execute effectively

Brands should always look to expand into new spaces, but those spaces themselves should be carefully defined. Spaces that are too widely defined run the risk of a brand not being able to execute effectively across all areas, thus diluting its core brand message. In a similar way, messaging should reflect the range of audience segments and scenarios the brand plays in – but the emotive territory should remain somewhat cohesive."

It was a little difficult to read the Kantar report considering that the #1 smartphone in the world is the iPhone; The #1 tablet in the world is iPad; the #1 smartwatch in the world is Apple Watch and the #1 earbuds in the world are AirPods. Sounds like a winning company to me based on innovation. And in each category, Samsung was a copycat follower, not an innovator. 

While it's easy to give Samsung credit for Foldable smartphones and possibly scrollable tablets that will soon be coming to market, foldables are currently only about 2% of the smartphone market globally. It currently matters more in China where's it's become a popular premium phone that Apple has no answer to at the moment. Foldable are giving Chinese OEMs enough sales to knock Apple into a tie for fifth spot in "Mainland" China according to an analytical report from Canalys.

The media seems determined to call Meta and Samsung innovators, discarding the many innovations from Apple. Yet, it does seem that Apple is a little too content with incremental iDevice and Mac updates.  While Apple has filed many creative and innovative concepts in patent form, they seem to lack the courage to bring some of these fresh ideas to market. for instance, that new Samsung Health Ring that recently came to market was actually patented by Apple well before the Samsung Ring was even a thought. But Samsung was smart and ran to market to beat Apple and gains the "innovator" label.    

Perhaps Apple should create a new brand or subsidiary dedicated to bringing new products and concepts to market that push the envelope and set new market trends instead of always trying to release only big perfect products. Apple Vision Pro was a technological marvel, yet it missed the mark with a lack of a killer app and sky high pricing that allowed critics to cut it to shreds.  

For now, it seems that the the media is starting to turn on Apple, as are analysts. Yet Apple missing the AI boat was a telling sign that Apple isn't on top of emerging technologies as we thought. Killing off 'Project Titan' earlier this year was another colossal failure. Big Back-to-back failures really dinged Apple's reputation.

When I think back to Steve Jobs and Jony Ive being the dynamic duo in the tech industry, I never thought those days would end. But they have unless Apple could turn things around.

Here's to hoping that Apple's recent missteps are nothing more than a temporary lull before roaring back in 2025, because reading about Meta and Samsung being considered the new innovators of our time is like the sound of nails on a chalkboard to most.