I'd imagine it's a matter of leveraging existing resources (or resources they could recoup by moving back to their core upon failure) for a chance at a massive, global business.
That’s a good point. It’s going to be a long time before someone finds the next “iPhone“ that really changes everything and becomes a new multi hundred billion dollar business.
Driverless cars are the only possibility I can think of right now.
But that's often the case. The thing is that 'smart cars' are not so different from where Apple is already comfortable, and where they want to move. Let's say they invest massive funds into ML, hardware, etc just to fail in the car market. They can recoup a lot of that by just taking the tech they've built and reinvesting it into their comfort zone.
Driverless cars are the only possibility I can think of right now.