Apple’s Decline Being Spurred By Samsung’s Success?

With all the uproar and clamoring over the newest Samsung Galaxy Launch, Apple seems to be falling through the cracks faster than ever! With few rumors about whether or not we will be seeing an iPhone 5s or an iPhone 6 anytime in the near future, it is Apple’s turn to make a move and reclaim the smartphone industry that they launched to fame as well as their steadily declining stock.

Apple: Is the End Near?

This week, Apple’s stock scraped the bottom with another 52-week low. The price for a piece of the Apple, Inc. pie will run you about $419, which is way (way…way..) down from the intraday high of $705 that the iPhone giant’s stock hit just six months ago. You heard right…this huge decline happened over the course of a mere six months. To add insult to injury, the Dow Jones actually rose 4%  during the same time span. With news like that, investors are starting to wonder just how low Apple’s shares will plummet before they hit bottom. Yikes.

Reasons Behind the Rotting Apple

As you can see in the infographic above, there are a couple of factors that play into Apple’s decline over the last six months. The two obvious reasons are their decelerating revenue growth and declining margins. It goes without saying, when a company stops making as much money as they used to, their stocks are sure to decline.

That statement, of course, begs the question : Why on earth is a tech giant like Apple suddenly losing money? The answer to that question is a complicated one, laced with opinions. However, it cannot be ignored that most of the opinions regarding Apple’s problem all point a decided finger to the same place: Samsung.

Samsung: Apple’s Bane

As we already know, Samsung is Apple’s biggest competitor.  Unfortunately for Apple, while their stocks were plummeting due to lack of growth, Samsung’s business has been booming. The Korean giant made $8.3 billion in the fourth-quarter of last year alone with a grand total of $18.8 billion in profits for the entirety of 2012.

Recently, Samsung made headlines when they passed the 100 million mark in sales of their Galaxy smartphone line. They managed to reach this goal in only 2 short years after the launch of the first Galaxy smartphone. It took nearly 4 years for Apple to reach the same milestone with the iPhone. If Samsung’s momentum is any indicator, they will take advantage of Apple’s downturn and quickly surpass them in sales and market share.

The Next Move for Apple

Obviously, something has to give. If Apple wants to remain viable in the ever changing world of smartphone technology, they are going to have to step it up. The decline in sales, popularity, and stock seemed to come just when everyone realized that the iPhone 5 wasn’t really a far cry from the iPhone 4s, specs and hardware-wise. Sure, it has a bigger screen, but what really made it worth upgrading to?

As Samsung preps to launch their Galaxy S4, there have already been leaks confirming a new eye-scrolling technology that we haven’t seen before. It seems that every time Samsung launches a new phone, there is really something to be excited about. Outside of Siri and a larger screen, not much has happened in the way of features on the iPhone in a long, long time.

So what’s it going to take for Apple to stay in the game? Innovation, plain and simple. They have done it before and could do it again, right? Apple has been the king of innovation for the last 5 years, why stop now? People are no longer content to settle with the same old thing just to have the Apple logo plastered on the back of their phone. They want new, different, innovative products that push the limits of everything that we have seen so far in the smartphone industry. Until Apple can take their products to this limit and show the consumer what they are capable of, it is likely that Apple will soon be the placed on the back burner in exchange for a shiny new Samsung Galaxy S4.