Original 2021 statement: One day, Apple will be delisted - every company eventually becomes irrelevant
What Jim has written about this
From “Decoding Tomorrow: Your Daily Future Inspiration – Innovation Sclerosis: “Slow innovation, timid ideas, process over imagination, small-minded thinking, diminished ambition: these are the signs of an abandoned future.”” (June 2025)
What was trend #24 for 2025 on the list? I suggested this: Apple is delisted
company, Apple enters a new phase in 2025 when it is delisted
Tongue in cheek, my main point was that eventually, unless they keep relentlessly focused on creative innovation, every company eventually fumbles, makes mistakes, loses its mojo, and starts to fall behind. (C heck out trend #25 on my list from 2014 - it’s kind of fun! And I did a full analysis of my prediction from 2014 in a post last December - read it here .)
From “When Apple Fails…” (November 2015)
Once one of the world’s most innovative, cash-rich, highly valued company, Apple enters a new phase in 2025 when it is delisted from most global stock markets.
I was thinking about this post last night, when I packed up my new 4th Generation Apple TV to send it back to Apple. What a failure of a device. Without the ability to link to it via a Bluetooth keyboard or App as with prior generations, it just became a madly infuriating failure. It’s the first Apple device I’ve ever returned — and my family and I probably have some 50-75+ Apple devices in our lives through the last decade. I don’t know what the Apple Engineers were thinking with this decision, but to me, it just seems like such an obvious failure that perhaps they are losing touch with their customers and the evolution of their products. Do they care? Are they complacent? Perhaps, probably. Will they even both to respond to one small customer in a customer base of hundreds of millions? Probably not. Could they engineer themselves into extreme failure in the future? Perhaps. History has taught us that no organization is guaranteed success into the future!
From “Daily Inspiration: “Every smart company eventually does a stupid thing! It’s not too late to avoid your fate!”” (May 2022)
“Every smart company eventually does a stupid thing! It’s not too late to avoid your fate!” - Futurist Jim Carroll
Research in Motion? Maybe one day, people might use phones without physical keyboards. Apple might one day become a significant competitor? Jim Balsillie looked me in the eye and told me, straight-faced, that RIM had nothing to worry about. Oops!
Read the full pieces on jimcarroll.com:
Decoding Tomorrow: Your Daily Future Inspiration – Innovation Sclerosis: “Slow innovation, timid ideas, process over imagination, small-minded thinking, diminished ambition: these are the signs of an abandoned future.”
When Apple Fails…
Daily Inspiration: “Every smart company eventually does a stupid thing! It’s not too late to avoid your fate!”