Well, I guess it can go either way.What is troubling is that the iPhone accounts for 69% of Apples profits. Think about this for a second Apple Inc is afloat on the performance of a single product category. If their mess up even a single iPhone release that will significantly hurt the company.
Apple is clearly using the iPhone as an anchor with which all their other products and services revolve around. The iPhone usually gets the best tech first or exclusively. Products like the Apple Watch and AirPods exist to sell more iPhones. Apple Pay, Homekit, Siri, Apple Music, Healthkit, iMessage, all are useless without the iPhone.
The end result is an ecosystem which is clearly designed to lock users into the Apple platform and get them to stick with an iPhone for as long as possible. Which is irritating because it's so effective.
It's clearly a gamble, but I don't think it is as risky as some are making it out to be. Even if Apple does screw up an iPhone release, I am betting that the ecosystem is sticky enough that customers might just stick around with an older iPhone and wait for the next iteration, rather than abandon ship for Android. That affords Apple a little leeway in a sense.