Is Apple's Next Product the iZune?

With the introduction of Apple's iPhone 5 nothing less than a debacle, this might be the time to entertain the heretical thought of shorting AAPL.

 

Here's my reasoning:

First of all, Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs--he lacks the humanism, the vision and the poetry Jobs had.

Second, the iPhone 5 could have been made by Microsoft--it was nothing revolutionary, just a facelift.

Third, there's now too much competition in the smartphone market and the competitors' hadnsets are not only better than the iPhone, they are outselling the iPhones.

Fourth, as everybody knows, the iPhone 5 has been a disaster on many counts.  The smaller port is going to force iPhone customers who have iPhone accessories such as docks, charging cords and clock radios into purchasing a lot of outrageously and needlessly expensive adaptors.  The new map feature is so bad that it's  driving people crazy and the forums are full of the worst errors: my pick of the worst of the worst is that the map shows a new airport for Dublin, Ireland, in a place that is actually a farm!  And the revised Siri has troubles, too: it can't distinguish between towns with the same name, confusing New York, TX with New York, NY.  And sales of the new iPhone fell below expectations.

Fifth, Apple continues to manufacture its products in Communist China adding $1.9 billlion to the U.S. trade deficit with that country. The Foxconn factories making the Apple products employ virtual slave workers being paid around $315 per month.  On the other hand, according to Reuters, in November 2011, Apple  announced that it gave six of its top executives bonus of $60 million each in company stock in the form of 150,000 restricted Apple shares that would fully vest in 2016.

And finally, as financial commentator Reggie Middleton pointed out recently on his BoomBustBlog, with all the lawsuits against Samsung [one of which, in Korea, Apple lost], Apple has shifted from innovation into litigation.  Accoridng to Middleton in an interview with Max Keiser, "Apple no longer out-innovates the competition, but out-litigates the competition. And that is a sign of decline."

My own view is that the days of spectacular growth at Apple are over.  We all know how how Microsoft stock stagnated between 25 and 30 for a decade or so; this could happen to Apple, too. No stock--just like no real estate--can go up forever. We learned that in 2008.  AAPL took a hit yesterday and may never see 700 again.

It looks as if Apple may now be entering its "Microsoft" phase of development i. e. making trouble-prone, user-unfriendly products.

What will Apple call its next device, the iZune?

Jagor

[Full disclosure: I own an iPhone 3GS and have no intention whatsoever of trading it in on an iPhone 5.]