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Why are Kuo's predictions still being taken seriously?

We are supposed to believe here that Apple is in such a rush to get out a phone design that has no use case beyond novelty, and no evidence of some sort of pent-up demand that they are going to punt an in-house "creaseless" design and use whatever crap Samsung has on hand, just so they can hit a release date? That is profoundly nuts. Never mind Ming Chi Kuo's dicey and disintegrating track record. What is there in Apple's track record that would suggest they would ever take this approach to releasing a "new" product?

Since the day he took the job, Tim Cook has weathered the peanut gallery chorus of Apple is doomed and Tim's not Steve, and built Apple into a hugely successful company while still holding tightly to its core ethos and business model. No one is going to push him out, and he's not likely to retire until he does what Steve Jobs did and identifies a successor who can take a hand-off with the confidence that he or she will continue to hold on to that core ethos and business model. 

My advice is to get rid of any and all wemo devices sooner rather than later. 

I wonder what would have happened if Steve Jobs had stuck to his guns and Apple never opened up the iPhone to third party applications at all. Presumably there would've been less innovation, and presumably a much smaller mobile app market. iPhone competitors likely would have allowed third party apps, but there would have been no Apple App Store model to mimic. The existing PC software market in the mid- to late naughts included expensive software that came on physical media and included thick user manuals, an emerging ability to download the same thing directly from the developers at similar prices, with PDFs of thick user manuals, and a wild west of online app stores with freeware of questionable origin and a crapshoot of software for purchase that may or may not authentic and/or riddled with malware. Android and others would have built on that, rather than Apple's model of software pre-screened for compatibility, stability and security, and that was either free or, in most cases, 99 cents.

By pre screening everything and requiring all developers to use a standardized iOS UI, Apple's App Store changed the app market by making it possible to make money on apps. Developers could sell in volume without a big markup, because Apple removed almost all of the risk for trying new apps. They were all intuitive to use, wouldn't crash your phone, and were cheap enough that it's worth giving something a try without thinking too much about it.

If Apple hadn't created that model, a mobile app market created by Apple's competitors would have grown organically from the PC software market. The higher risk and higher costs built into that system would likely have resulted in a much smaller mobile app marketplace than currently exists. The smartphone market itself might be smaller, with even "dumb" phones remaining competitive against more expensive smartphones that have far less utility than what we have now.

But sure, let's kill the goose that laid the golden egg by enforcing competitors' demands that they be able to go directly up the goose's butt to dig for gold themselves. 

Whatever the actual degree of internal strife at Apple, it’s important to remember the broader context. The AI that the rest of the industry is churning out at breakneck speed is also hugely flawed and not at all what the hype makes it out to be. Pay package bidding wars are an indication that everyone is floundering, not just Apple.