Substitutable and non-disruptive innovation: Apple doesn’t need to acquire GoPro and Tesla

Recently, some foreign analysts suggested that Apple acquire sports camera manufacturer GoPro and electric car manufacturer Tesla due to the lack of innovation in its overall products (such as iPhone, iPad, etc.) and the fact that it has about $200 billion in cash, and based on the consideration of growth in the next 10 years. Although the analysis gave many reasons for the merger, from the perspective of the market and innovation, we believe that Apple does not need to acquire GoPro and Tesla.

GoPro first

Just looking at the sports camera market where it is located, there are now Cool Shot launched by Sony, a more established camera manufacturer, the low-priced Xiaomi Yi sports camera, and Virb launched by Garmin, a large manufacturer specializing in outdoor sports equipment. GoPro no longer has the unique advantages it had before its listing (one of the main reasons for its stock price plummeting 60% in the past year and being downgraded in the future). At the same time, as competitors increase, the market demand for sports cameras is weakening. According to Citigroup's annual survey of US consumers on sports cameras, only 5% of US consumers plan to buy sports cameras in the next 12 months, down from 7% last year. For this reason, it has also lowered its shipment forecast for GoPro by 2018 from 10.6 million units to 9.3 million units.

Speaking of sales, it should be added that the annual shipment volume of 9.3 million units proves that action cameras are a niche market. At the same time, it is just a drop in the bucket compared to Apple’s existing iPhone and the declining iPad. In addition, its price is low and continues to decline, so even in the future, its contribution to Apple’s revenue and profits will be minimal.

In terms of the use of photographic equipment, Flickr, the world's largest photo sharing website, recently released its 2015 annual inventory report, announcing the most popular pictures of the year and the most commonly used photographic equipment by users. Among them, 42% of the pictures were taken with iPhones, 27% with Canon EOS SLR cameras, and 16% with Nikon D series cameras. In terms of the types of photographic equipment most commonly used by Flickr users, 39% use camera phones, 31% use SLR cameras, 25% use point-and-shoot cameras, and only 3% use mirrorless cameras.

In fact, up to this point, we can see that even without the acquisition of GoPro, mobile phones and Apple's iPhone are already the most widely used camera devices in the world. To some extent, GoPro has fallen to its current state with plummeting stock prices and slowing growth, and its biggest rival outside the industry is Apple.

Substitutable and non-disruptive innovation: Apple doesn’t need to acquire GoPro and Tesla

In addition, GoPro only obtained 56 patents from its founding to February 2015, so from the perspective of innovation and technology, Apple is not worth acquiring. In other words, Apple, which has a lot of technical expertise, can develop sports cameras independently without acquiring GoPro.

In fact, at the beginning of this year, among the 34 patents approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office, there was already a patent for a remote control camera system. It is said that this new patent is related to a digital camera system, which is a digital camera with remote control function. This image and video capture system can be fixed on a diving mask, motorcycle handlebars, surfboards, hot air balloons, and various places where sports cameras can be installed. Apple's move made the capital market worried about GoPro's prospects and caused GoPro's stock price to fall by 12% overnight.

Faced with the above challenges, Nick Woodman, founder and CEO of GoPro, began to emphasize that content is the core of GoPro's development, that is, GoPro must ensure that a large amount of investment is in software development, and hardware is only a platform and starting point for development, which is auxiliary. Industry insiders who often pay attention to technology will definitely feel that this transformation statement is familiar, because this statement seems to always be accompanied by manufacturers with declining hardware sales (has it become a common excuse?). All these facts show that GoPro's products are highly substitutable, and they are rarely worth acquiring by Apple.

Tesla

In the industry, Tesla has always been considered to be an innovative company that has subverted the traditional automotive industry, so Apple's acquisition of Tesla will be of great benefit to Apple's future entry into the emerging electric vehicle market. But is this really the case?

For example, Harvard University previously concluded that Tesla is not a disruptor at all, based on Christensen's definition of "disruptive innovation", or that Tesla's innovation model does not belong to disruptive innovation, but rather a typical "sustaining innovation", that is, continuously improving performance at higher prices and entering the market at lower prices and with more categories. Which type of innovation Tesla belongs to is crucial to traditional automakers, their suppliers and investors. Because if Tesla is a "disruptive innovation", competitors may not respond strongly to it, but if it is a "sustaining innovation", competitors will gradually emerge and the competition will be very fierce.

According to statistics, the United States sold 16.5 million cars in 2014, but only 119,710 pure electric vehicles, accounting for only 0.7% of the market share. The reason why traditional car manufacturers have not invested too much energy in the electric vehicle field is not because they do not have the strength (including technology, capital, marketing, etc.), but because few people are willing to use electric vehicles.

Even so, traditional automakers have not completely ignored electric vehicles. For example, the sales of Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt both exceeded Tesla in 2014, and the new Chevrolet Volt has a more beautiful appearance and a longer range. In addition, Chevrolet will also launch the lower-priced Bolt EV next year, while BMW and Audi are also launching more electric and hybrid models.

All of this proves that if electric vehicles really become mainstream one day, traditional automakers such as GM and Toyota are fully capable of quickly turning to this field and using their existing production capacity, supplier networks and dealers to counter the threat of Tesla. At this point, we believe that, similar to the above-mentioned GoPro, although Tesla appears to have its own market, the market is still niche. Even in this niche market, Tesla is not in a leading position and has strong competitors, not only from the electric vehicle market in which it is located, but also from traditional automakers in the larger automotive industry.

In addition, the automotive industry is capital-intensive and scale-intensive. Speaking of capital-intensive, it costs more than $1 billion to mature a new car, spend on engineering expenses, and finally bring it to market. Traditional automakers, such as General Motors and Ford, have accumulated huge cash reserves. General Motors has set a cash reserve target of $20 billion, and as of June 30, 2015, it had a total of $28 billion in cash equivalents. In contrast, as of the end of the second quarter, Tesla only held $1.15 billion in cash and cash equivalents, down from $2.67 billion in the same period last year.

As for the scale, Tesla slightly lowered its full-year car shipments this year, and the current forecast is 50,000 to 52,000 vehicles, which is only equivalent to Ford's weekly car production. This means that once Apple acquires Tesla, not to mention the burden of its losses (based on the sales and losses in the second quarter, Tesla currently loses about $4,000 for each car sold, and future new models will increase costs in the short term), it will also have to continue to invest on a large scale. It is unknown when it will be able to bring Apple the high revenue and profits that investors are most concerned about.

Substitutable and non-disruptive innovation: Apple doesn’t need to acquire GoPro and Tesla

More importantly, judging from Apple's current and future strategies involving the automotive industry and market, it hopes to integrate its own CarPlay, or even replace the in-vehicle systems of major traditional mainstream automakers. That is, the car is deeply integrated with the iOS ecosystem, providing iOS-style interfaces and applications through the car's display screen, such as allowing users to make calls, use maps, control music and more applications, and has received good market feedback.

For example, CarPlay landed on 27 GM models this fall, which boosted GM's sales, and Mercedes-Benz recently confirmed that it will equip some 2016 models sold in the United States with Apple's CarPlay system. In addition to GM and Mercedes-Benz, many other car brands, including Honda, Nissan, Ferrari, and Chevrolet, have already cooperated with it. It seems that this strategy makes it easier for Apple to enter the automotive market and is conducive to the use of its own advantages, with the least risk.

Of course, we are not denying that Apple will enter the electric vehicle market in the future, but it should definitely not enter through an acquisition of Tesla. At least for now, acquiring Tesla is not feasible, let alone necessary, whether based on Tesla's innovative model and the resulting market performance as shown above, or Apple's own strategy.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.