Quite simply the analogy for Apple is that of Apple being a cruise-ship where the captain just fell overboard with the keys to the bridge. If you are a passenger on that ship everything is looking pretty good. The chef just put out a fruit display with carved ice decorations and the ship seems to be steaming at full speed to your next interesting destination. After a bit you might notice some crew members are quickly walking around with a panicked look in their eye but they are saying soothing things so you don’t worry. But then you notice them lowering the lifeboats and fleeing. It is only as the cooks and guys from the engine-room fling themselves over the side that you might notice that things are going very wrong.
To carry on this analogy there are a few options. One is that the cruiseship has lots of fuel and hits nothing so the cruise, while uninteresting, keeps going until they run out of fuel or food. Next is another cruiseship pulls up along side and rescues the passengers before disaster hits. Next is they ram right into land and explode. And the most probable outcome is that one of the people from accounting breaks onto the bridge and tries to steer the ship. This will look good and the accountant will be hailed as a hero. But the accountant has a terrible idea of what the passengers want and the ship is doomed the moment a storm comes that the real captain could have handled with ease.
So my prediction is that the iPhone 5 and the iPad 3 are the ship continuing on course. But the accountant is going to have a hand in the iPhone 6 and the iPad 4. These are going to be disasters. I foresee extra buttons on them. I foresee a sudden urge to compare checklists with other products so things like flash will appear. They might even be able to run java. I see someone reaching out to the enterprise market instead of making them come to Apple. I foresee a whole lot of marketing 101 advertisements that don’t portray Apple as Bill Murray cool but as plastic cool. So a whole lot of celebrity endorsements.
So as a stock pick look at RIM now to see Apple in 5 years.