They recently acquired Fitbit so I expect we should see some brand new product developments within that category soon enough in the future. I do feel they have not participated as much within the IoT market which still has so much potential unrealized. Perhaps the market is not ripe yet without 5G availability? It's incredible that we have all these new AI and ML tools and still they don't really have a lot of meaningful impacts yet in improving our daily lives if we really think about it. The main opportunities still remain mostly unexplored.
I wouldn't expect to see a new kind of product coming out of Google. They have 0 track-record of product innovation. Their main innovation power is in the back-end, on the implementation side.
Internet search existed before Google, but they came up with a newer and much better way of implementing it. Internet email existed before Gmail, but they vastly improved the offering. The iPhone already existed, but they came up with an alternative in Android. Same story repeats with GSuite, Chrome, Chrome OS.
YouTube was sort of new, but it was an acquisition, so I don't know if it counts.
When they do have ideas for innovative products, they fail to deliver.
Waymo is a new kind of product coming out of Google, as was Chromecast, as is the so-far-successful Stadia. I'm there there are others, but those are a few I can think of off the top of my head that are delivering very well for the technical challenge they pose.
Waymo is so far unproven, but you're right, it may turn up to be a successful product.
I forgot about the Chromecast, that's a good point.
Stadia is close to being new, though there have been similar efforts for some time now. However, it is by no means successful so far, most reviews I have seen from the gaming press have seen it as impressive, but ultimately not a great way of playing games, and Microsoft's offering is likely to quickly outshine it by sheer force of games catalog.
Stadia is at best an incremental improvement to PS Now or OnLive afaik. Other companies, notably MSFT and Sony, have been developing this same stuff for years, and Nvidia even has their own version I think.
You can say the exact same things about the supposedly 'innovative' companies. Did Apple invest desktop computers? No, they copied the concept from Xerox. Same story with the iPod (Rio), the iPhone (Blackberry) and Watch (Garmin).
Sure, there are no completely innovative products. But the difference I see is this: going from a clunky, ugly, essentially business-only phone like the Blackberry to ubiquitous smart-phones is a more close to a difference in kind. Essentially, before the iPhone, most people did not believe they needed a smartphone. On the other hand, most people before Gmail did know that they need a mail provider, Gmail was 'just' a much more convenient mail provider. Most people did know they need a browser, Chrome was just much nicer. When Android rolled out, people already knew they want a smartphone, Android was cheaper and less walled-in.
A good example would be if Google's Stadia succeeds. Even though there have been attempts in the past (e.g. OnLive), the mind-share is so low that they are almost irrelevant. If Stadia gets anywhere near console-level market penetration, I would consider it an innovative product that Google created. I don't expect it to succeed, though, based on the track record.
> Essentially, before the iPhone, most people did not believe they needed a smartphone.
I think that's way overstating it. Long before iPhone people were asking for more software features out of their phones. Browsing, email, music, etc.
Even the touchscreen and the development model were things tried in the past with many attempts by various companies to make the PDA a success.
Apple did exactly what you say. They took a few ideas whose time had come, ideas that just happened to be in their wheel house from the work they did on iPod and presented them better than anyone had before.
