The future belongs to Amazon, not Apple
The latest Internet Trends report by Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker contains some very bad news for Apple and some exquisite news for Amazon, all in a single slide.
Here's the slide:
On the left is the prediction that iPhone unit shipments will fall by around 11 percent during 2016 (actual figures are on an earlier slide), the first time since its release that Apple's flagship device has suffered a drop in sales. All this while Android is expected to see shipments grow by 7 percent.
On the right are estimated sales for Amazon's Echo voice-powered home assistant, which are projected to have topped 1 million during Q1 of 2016 (Amazon is tight-lipped when it comes to hardware sales).
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Driving devices such as the Echo are the consumer benefits. Voice-control is fast, easy, and keyboard-free. The devices are also low-cost, in that they only need a speaker, microphone, and processor, with the rest of the work done at the server.
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