Apple no longer ranked as world's most innovative company, drops down to 17th place

June 29, 2007, Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, a small piece of technology that changed the world forever. The years passed and we saw the evolution of the smartphone into something that is much more powerful, smarter and capable than the first Apple iPhone. The Cupertino company, then, changed its focus on improving current products rather than changing industries with new innovative devices.

That is now reflected in the Fast Company’s 2019 edition of its Most Innovative Companies list. The magazine has a rank with the top 50 innovative companies that are listed according to how innovative they've been over the last year, that according to the company's own judgment. The Cupertino based company was on the first spot in 2018 due to the release of AirPods and iPhone X. The list was made at the beginning of last year, and the magazine considered the new design introduced with the iPhone X, the notch, and Apple's FaceID, that still is the more secure face-scanning technology in a smartphone. You may not agree that the iPhone X was a game changer, but soon after its release, we saw a myriad of smartphones coming with the notch and Face Scanning technology.

However in 2018, the small refresh that was the iPhone XS showed the company's last of interest in bringing something innovative to the market, and then it has now dropped to the 17th spot on the 2019 list. In order to be on this list, a company needs to have at least one innovation, and the magazine has chosen Apple’s A12 bionic chip, as the biggest thing of iPhone 2018. The chipset is really powerful, but we think that the ECG (Electrocardiogram) feature on the Apple Watch Series 4 was way more important and innovative, but unfortunately, the magazine begs to differ.

At the top of the list, we have companies that you probably never heard of, Meituan Dianping takes the crown, followed by Grab. These two applications are used by hundreds of millions of users in Asia, providing multiple services, from financial operations to movie tickets. The third place was taken by NBA (Yeah the BasketBall league). Its achievement is moving into the esports scene and improving streaming services. The rest of the list is composed of a mix of various startups and massive corporations.

No matter how you consider this list as a relevant factor, but it's an undeniable fact that since the last year Apple has lost some track in the mobile industry, for companies such as Huawei, and its major rival Samsung. This year, we remain to see if the company will shift its focus into services, or if it will promote a massive change on its iPhone lineup, after the sales fiasco of the 2018 iPhones.