The Forrester Research Apple report few will buy

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Saturday, 24 May 2008 16:38

Opinion and Analysis

Forrester Research has put out a US $279 report that few will buy, as it has been dissected across the web and its “important” predictions are now well known. Will Apple actually do any of the things Forrester has specula- er, predicted?

Hey, let’s all become analysts! That way you can make guesses and then charge people US $279 – or even more - for putting them on paper (and PDF documents) with nice formatting!

Seriously, though, analysis is a big business, generating millions per year for the companies analysts work for, and they do need to actually explain their predictions and come out with fancy graphs, charts and reasons for their prognostications.

The latest report from Forrester is entitled “The Future of Apple Inc.” and is sub headed as “by 2013, Apple’s product mix will make it a credible hub of the digital home”.

The executive summary states the following: “Consumer product strategists frequently ask Forrester how Apple's product strategy will evolve: What will Apple's product portfolio look like five years from now, and how is Apple preparing for that future today?”

The summary continues: “Forrester notes that Apple has completely remade itself from a PC maker to a consumer devices and digital music leader over the past eight years — thus setting the precedent for additional radical change over the next five.”

“While there are a number of speculative industry hypotheses for the future of Apple — including scenarios like Apple as a media pure play or Apple as the "American Sony" — Forrester sees a future that ties together many of these hypotheses into a coherent consumer product strategy: Apple will aim to become the hub of the digital home, offering eight key products and services to connect PCs and digital content to the HDTV-stereo audio-visual infrastructure in consumers' homes.”

And the summary ends with: “To fulfill this strategy, we predict that Apple will launch new products, re-engineer the Apple Store, and expand into in-home installation services.”

Making moves into the digital home space is something Apple has been doing now with the iMac itself, iPods, iPhones, and the Apple TV – so it should come as no surprise to think that Apple might well go further down this path – especially as it no longer sees itself as a “computer” company first.

Unfortunately, when it comes to Apple, such prognostication is usually fraught with difficulty, because predicted what Steve Jobs really will do is like try to herd cats: basically impossible - but we all love trying anyway!

Let’s face it, even right up until the iPhone’s pre-launch at Macworld 2007, few on the planet actually knew whether the iPhone would finally launch, or not, even though many expected some kind of iPhone with telephony capabilities. And what we ended up getting blew us all away beyond what we had expected.

So, what does the media say is in Forrester’s research report? Please read on to page 2.