Yes, but Apple wasn't first in either the music player or smart phone
markets. Both markets were considered to be fairly stable and
buttoned down until Apple came along and churned them up again.
Remember this review of the first iPod: "No wireless. Less space than
a nomad. Lame."? Of course it wasn't particularly obvious then
what made the iPod so successful, so we could be missing what
is so great about the new competition for iPod/iPhones.
But consider the case Mike made for the Zune, a few posts back.
If it was cited in an advertisement, it would read something like:
"Mike says: 'superior processor' … 'interface is at worst just fine'…
'what is there to complain about except lateness issue?' " (Exact
quotes, and I tried to not to change his meaning.) Would that
endorsement make you or anyone else want to go out and buy
one?
The Pre? Looks very nice, but Palm hasn't released its sales
figures (a good indication that the Pre isn't catching fire), and
analysts mostly estimate that the Pre is doing OK but not
spectacularly. I haven't read that much about WebOS recently,
but my impression was that developers thought it was easy to
develop for, but limited. Enlighten me if I am wrong on this.
Android is more open in theory, but much of that openness is
restricted by the carriers at present, and I haven't heard a whole lot
about Android phone sales figures either.
The problem these competitors have is that Apple already has a
huge, well-developed iPod/iPhone/iTunes ecosystem, while they mostly
don't and have to work hard trying to create one.
In my own view, we haven't even begun to discuss a big group of
potential competitors for the iPhone, and that is Japanese
manufacturers.
Japanese phones seem to have fantastic hardware capabilities, but
are hampered globally by somewhat bulky designs and lousy user
interfaces, and their manufacturers seem to be waking up to this.
They at least would have a substantial Japanese user base to
expand from.
From: Jeff Wright <jswri...@gmail.com>
With 65,000 apps available for the iPhone and less than a dozen for
the competitors it is going to be very hard to catch up. The
competitors are still making some of the mistakes Apple made in its
early days and they will need to fix those first. Right now Apple
appears to be its own worst enemy with a nutty approval process at
its
App Store. If they don't fix that soon there will be developer
leakage
to the other platforms. I bet Apple will fix it soon.
Recent history is littered with those who were there "first" in their
particular field.
Palm, Sony, IBM, Apple, Xerox, etc. Being first isn't first is no
guarantee
of being the last man standing. All of these companies were
innovative, all
had a dominant lock on their market and all were soon surpassed by
competitors with better products. In fact, if recent history is our
guide,
being first with a successful, standard setting product is a high
order of
probability that you will be the first to drop as the market matures.
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