Honestly, I think their most imminent danger is of history repeating itself. Apple in the 90's had a confusing and ridiculous array of SKU's. To the average consumer, the difference between the iPhones 5S, 6, 6S, 6S+ has got to be getting confusing. Every time we add a 'S', '+', 'pro', 'mini', etc. designation, things just get a little more convoluted.
This. So much this. I remember Steve Jobs slashing all the products with exception to two desktops and two laptops. Bringing everything back under one roof was a huge move too. But I find a lot more people asking what all the differences are. Choice is good to an extent.
If I recall correctly there was a poster at one point to help you figure out what computer to buy.
This is somewhat true, but some of the slashing at the time was more due to the fact that Apple had so many product lines that it couldn't manage all of them. They made more accessories than main products which landed it in the same ball park as HP is in now with their printers, displays, etc.
Apple doesn't currently sell a bunch of accessory product lines. If you buy a product from Apple, you aren't buying it to use as an accessory to another company's main product like you would with the printers or cameras. The device most likely to be considered a fringe device of this nature would be the Apple Watch, but again, it's used to add to Apple's ecosystem, not someone else's. I would assume (possibly incorrectly ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) that this is one of the major reasons why Apple decided to keep Beats as its own brand rather than integrating their hardware department under the Apple banner.
The fragmentation doesn't exist as much as it did in those days either. Now every device is using the XNU (Ironically X is not Unix even though they marketed it as a true UNIX) kernel under the hood. This means that while the devices might be slimmed down, the advantages brought to the Mac are also brought around to be advantages for the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, iPod Nano, Apple Watch, Apple TV, CarPlay, and whatever iDevice they have lying around in their prototyping labs. This kind of cross-device kernel allows for Apple to have a bunch of devices without too much internal fragmentation. Where as before they would have to possibly make a tiny piece of software that would fit on a printer or separate color and black and white Macs, now all of their devices are powerful enough to handle the kernel that they can build on.
The foray into Enterprise is also a bit different for Apple than it was before. They are trying to sell consumer devices to Enterprise consumers rather than selling Enterprise devices like the Xserve to Enterprise customers. The Xserve products were a hard sell, and the fact that the products could only be sold to an enterprise crowd meant that most of the research going into the Xserve products couldn't be salvaged to use on high-volume consumer sales. The consumer devices will sell in the Enterprise because people understand them and want them around. They are great consumer devices, and enterprise is full of consumers that want new toys.
This approach to enterprise also means that Apple can move fast. It's the office workers that create the demand, not the IT person that doesn't want to create extra change that would require the years of work associated with a mainframe switch. These smaller iterative consumer-side changes can force change in IT and open up more revenue streams.
Who knows. Cheapening of the hardware build quality, soldered RAM & sealed batteries in Macs, and constant disastrous, bug-ridden iOS releases certainly won't help keep Apple at the top forever. They must never forget their core principles in order to make a quick buck. No end in sight yet mind.
In terms of upgradeability, no phone has really been upgradeable other than some SD cards, so I can't say that they are going to be any better or worse off here, but what I can say is that more and more consumers of these devices as they become more mainstream will be of the type of person that is afraid of opening them up, and would rather buy a new computer than think of seeing the hardware inside. I wouldn't call this a good excuse, rather a reason why you'll continue to see Apple's Mac market share increase while this pattern continues.
You could also argue though that the more closely integrated systems of soldered parts allow for smaller, faster, and more power efficient devices, which is what more people would usually care about in 2015 where devices have become fast enough to get by without really needing to upgrade them. 16GB of ram was fine in 2012 when I got this Mac. It's still fine now in 2015, and I would still buy a new Mac with the same amount. 512GB was fine-ish, but I was able to upgrade my 2012 rMBP with an aftermarket OWC 1tb SSD, and I was also able to take out the Wi-Fi n card and replace it with a 2013 ac card to take advantage of my Airport Extreme's speeds.
TL;DR: I think Apple is doing pretty well with what they have. Cheers to some more great years from this great company.
