Consider the smartphone revolution. Apple came out with a revolutionary design in the iphone. The Android team was already up and working in that area and were able to pivot quickly to mimic the iphone. Both Apple and Android became huge businesses.
Being prepared as a second mover once a trailblazer demonstrates a good path can be good business. It even has some advantages over trying to lead and possibly wasting lots of R&D money on dead ends.
Sorry, but not quite, your own example demonstrates that.
So who built the first smartphone?
It was probably Nokia. And what happened to them?
BlackBerry? They were the one's that made Google and Apple pay attention, because they built the first real baseline use cases for data networks. But was that even a smartphone?
Of course, the iPhone was not the first smartphone, but it was a breakthrough of sorts, but if we leave that product - that aside, how many companies can you think of that generally create this level of 'breakthrough' product?
Almost none.
'Disruption' almost always comes from smaller, newer companies, where there is a fundamentally new strategy that is at the core of the companies existence, i.e. it's inherent in the nature of the company itself.
The reason you might misunderstand this is likely due to the fact that popular understanding of the business world is completely skewed towards interesting and novel companies and technology.
'Business' is not what we see on TechCrunch or even the more classical business press really. The Economy is mostly made up of classical companies of varying sizes wherein my comments apply even more appropriately.
So now we have two companies (Nokia and RIM) in similar circumstances (the Innovators Dilemma). They each saw two paths forward. Each chose their own path. Neither are succeeding.
So were they already doomed by the time they chose to act or did they misunderstand the dilemma they faced?
It was both. After years of tech homogeneity, people were looking for a change. Apple came along and it was young and fresh, fun and had awesome technology to boot.
The incumbents were slow to act. When they did act they failed to recognize that it was a branding problem as well as a technology shortfall. They are toast.
Microsoft, BlackBerry, Symbian, Nokia, Palm. They all 'moved' before Android and iOS and at various points in time where the leading players in their market segments. Yet they all rested on their laurels and fell to Android and iOS.
People talk about HTC,Nokia,RIM,Motorola who all have failed in the mobile business. And then people forget Samsung too was in that list and almost looking down a loss making path- but for some smart copying of iOS that helped them take off on the back of the Galaxy devices. This is possibly one of the great escapes in business history.
People talk about HTC,Nokia,RIM,Motorola who all have failed in the mobile business. And then people forget Samsung too was in that list and almost looking down a loss making path- but for some smart copying of iOS that helped them take off on the back of the Galaxy devices. This is possibly one of the great escapes in business history.
Never say never. Apple was not in position to succeed in mobile (they were even not on the market at all, when there were Nokia and others). But now they have pretty big share. Despite the iPhone, Samsung was able to become the top smartphone maker. Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi are the rock stars of today. There are always opportunities if you are ready to innovate.
We spent like 12 years trying to create a medium sized business in electronics and we were at that time in an era when mobile phones were still getting popular. It was a nascent stage of refurb smartphone industry but even then it was a steep climb for us!
But there are companies operating in the same segment that started later, with VC and investor backing who rose quite fast.
They basically outsourced everything right? Apple's iPhone was the result of scaling down what was supposed to be the original iPad (not to mention the Newton). Amazon's commitment to books and server technology carried over nicely into the Kindle. I think a large part of the first mover advantage myth comes from the unquantifiable drive and passion that goes into thinking hard about a product before a first prototype launches. These companies have a complete vision that they whittle down and polish to get that first product out. They have a clear path for the future and the flexibility to adjust because they've got a head start overcoming obstacles.
I just wonder what their main "vision" was. Seems like they suffered the same paralysis as Motorola and Nokia. "We make mobile phones" mentality. Did they just assume that the future was ever thinner profit margins compensated by sales volume? That people would gladly sacrifice added functionality for added battery life and the convenience of hardware buttons?
Being first is often not a sustainable competitive advantage and we have a good case study in looking at the recent past with 3G and 4G. Apple makes all the profit in smartphones and all the incumbents like Nokia, RIM, Ericsson are gone.
Nokia was well entrenched in the Mobile Phone business, and already had a highly optimized and battle tested OS for smartphones.
Microsoft was also in the business (WinCE, PocketPC, Windows Mobile)
And yet, the iPhone and later Android completely changed the market.
Same with Kodak, they basically invented digital photography, but they could not turn it into a business because they could not compete with their core business.
The suits would not allow it.
Search is ripe for disruption, and has been for years. Google search is a waay inferior product now than what it was a decade ago. Big business yes, but I would not bet on much loyalty.
A competing product does not have to instantly make billion dollars, they simply have to provide a better value for their users.
As a startup, the market is often not mature yet and a lot of work needs to be put into growing the market. Two competitors in the same field often grow the market faster than two people doing two different things. Android and iOS are great competitors, but would the touchscreen market be as big without both of these? Or would people have stuck with Symbian and BlackBerry?
Just let your competitors grow, focus on improving your product. Let your competitors spend big money on marketing and branding. Then steal their users with a superior product.
Apple still led the way: Because Apple did it, Android vendors followed suit.
Cryptophone and the other products were a niche market and no one really knows if they are good enough to withstand a nation state attack or if they are just good enough to provide better opsec for companies than regular phones did.
It depends what you call viable. Who's your market? How many do you need to sell to break even? If you're Microsoft or Amazon, you need your mobile product to take market share from Google and Apple, but if you can make a profit making a couple thousand phones for some people who want to buy them, that may be a perfectly successful business model.
In my case, I want my phone to make calls, send texts, and browse the web. It'd be nice if it had some apps, but I probably don't need more than a dozen or two. If you don't need a giant rival ecosystem as your definition of success, it's much easier to succeed on a smaller scale.
One thing is for certain - existing manufacturers will have to compete in a different way.
So the iphone came out in 2007 and pretty much wiped out the competition in phones. blackberry and nokia and even palm were pretty much forgotten in short order. But now there are alternatives. But then apple lost its founder. I wonder what things would be like if steve jobs were around.
The shotgun approach that both FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Phone took saddens me - I think they could have done very well had they focused on acquiring power/niche users instead of trying to be a mass-market consumer product from the get-go.
When the iPhone first launched, it wasn't adopted by everyone. I remember when, in ~2009, I and a few friends were the only ones I knew who had an iPhone. It wasn't until around 2011 that pretty much everyone I knew had a smartphone.
The basic business lesson is that you have to "cross the chasm" from early adopters to mainstream users - you can't just start selling a new product to everyone and expect to succeed without massive resources, and even then your product can still struggle (see: Apple Watch). Really, the only way to pull it off is to establish a niche market before targeting the general market. This book [1] does a great job of explaining the process - Mozilla and Canonical execs would do well to read it!
Sadly, many startups don't seem to have very good business sense and long-term thinking. "If we're not the iPhone yesterday, then we can't compete and we might as well 'pivot' and 'focus' on our 'core offerings'" - not true! There is a market for a user-respecting, fully (or even mostly!) FLOSS smartphone, but my parents certainly aren't going to buy one - they just got their first iPhone last year after all - so sell to me and people like me, not them. Then, maybe in 6-8 years, once the platform has matured and the FLOSS benefits become obvious, you'll start to break into the general market and start to challenge iOS and Android. But I don't think most companies are down for that; sadly, most are just focused on next quarter's profits instead of building something lasting.
> Android was a 6-person startup when it was acquired by Google.
So a big fish ate a small fish?
Also, Android wasn't successful because it was small. Android was successful because it was bought by a big company that could use its size and capital to build the brands and partnerships necessary to succeed in the space.
Finally, msartphone provides didn't initially follow the advice at the end of the article. Smartphones were definitely serving the high end of the market for a long time.
- Blackberry - who could have seriously overtaken the touchscreen market if they had pivoted to be pro-consumer, not just pro-enterprise
- Nokia - who could have spearheaded the smartphone market
Being prepared as a second mover once a trailblazer demonstrates a good path can be good business. It even has some advantages over trying to lead and possibly wasting lots of R&D money on dead ends.
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