Apple wins the race for laptops -- now what?

Apple is successful, in part, due to its hardware design. Its products are lovely to look at and comfortable to hold. Its portable devices are thinner and lighter than the competition. Apple has defined the concept of laptop for the last several years -- perhaps the last decade. Apple has set the standard and other manufacturers have followed.

The latest MacBook design is light, sleek, and capable. It is the ultimate in laptop design. And by "ultimate", I mean "ultimate". Apple has won the laptop competition. And now, they have a challenge: what to do next?

Apple's advantage of the MacBook will last for only a short time. Already other manufacturers are creating laptops that are just as thin and sleek as the MacBook. But Apple cannot develop a thinner, sleeker MacBook. The problem is that there are limits to physical size. There are certain things that make a laptop a laptop. You need a display screen and a keyboard, along with processor, memory, and I/O ports. While the processor, memory, and I/O ports can be reduced in size (or in number), the screen and keyboard must be a certain size, due to human physiology.

So how will Apple maintain its lead in the laptop market?

They can use faster processors, more memory, and higher resolution displays.

They can add features to Mac OS X.

They can attempt thinner and sleeker designs.

They may add hardware features, such as wireless charging and 3G/4G connections.

But there is only so much room left for improvement.

I think the laptop market is about to change. I think that laptops have gotten good enough -- and that there are lots of improvements in other markets. I expect manufacturers will look for improvements in tablets, phones, and cloud technologies.

Such a change is not unprecedented. It happened in the desktop PC market. After the initial IBM PC was released, and after Compaq made the first clone, desktop PCs underwent an evolution that lead to the PC units we have today -- and have had for the past decade. Desktop PCs became "good enough" and manufacturers moved on to other markets.

Now that laptops have become good enough, look for the design of laptops to stabilize, the market to fragment among several manufacturers with no leader, prices to fall, and innovation to occur in other markets.

Which doesn't mean that laptops will become unimportant. Just as PCs had a long life after they became "good enough" and their design stabilized, laptops will have a long life. They will be an important part of the IT world.