The weird thing about Apple is that they’ve set the expectations so high that now people aren’t satisfied at how rare and unusual Apple products are.
Most revolutionary companies (after you throw out the mundane companies) get one revolutionary product. For startups like Facebook, Google, Microsoft (when they were startups), they succeeded because they revolutionized the industry. They did it once and then they never did it again. Most companies are lucky to do it once.
Apple is unique in that they have done it multiple times. Not only have they put out minor products that shifted the industry, they have completely upended industries multiple times, with the Apple Computer, the Mac, the iPhone, the iPad, and the iPod.
However, for some reason everyone acts like Apple should be releasing a game-changing, industry shifting product every year and complains when they don’t. Multi-year gaps between product launches are common with Apple.
Additionally, the iPhone was the perfect product for the perfect time. Multiple things came together that allowed the iPhone to be what it was and be the dramatic success that it was.
- The market: the cell phone market is unique in that a) almost everyone has one and b) the carriers set up a system (in the United States anyway) where people were expected to replace their phones every two years while heavily subsidizing them. This created a market of an essential product with a high turnover rate that was very expensive where the true cost was hidden by subsidizes. This is extremely rare and will likely never exist again in any other market.
- The technology: the power to put a computer in your pocket that ran a 3.5″ display and ran apps like the full internet didn’t exist before then. The convergence of technologies that made the iPhone possible happened right around when the iPhone was launched and it is unlikely multiple revolutionary technologies will converge like that again.
- A complete shift in the wireless industry: before the iPhone the power was all in the hands of the carriers. People bought their phones from their carrier and they controlled data access. Innovation was hard because carriers could veto changes and refuse to carry your phone, so many manufacturers didn’t innovate (RIM/Blackberry was a notable exception that very cleverly got around the restrictions and got the carriers to pay for it). Apple shopped around until they were able to get a carrier, Cingular, to give them unprecedented freedom and control over their own product, including a full web browser. That opened the floodgates and shifted the power to the manufacturers and allowed for astounding innovations.
Because those three things will likely never happen again at the same time, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see another product from Apple or anyone else that is anywhere close to as revolutionary or successful as the iPhone. I think it’s very likely that Apple will launch another product category by 2020 that will be dramatically successful and even revolutionary, but we won’t see anything close to the products of the past like the Mac and the iPhone.
Read other answers by Michael Vogel on Quora:
- Why did Apple remove the square icon from the home button?
- How did they sell iPhones without video recording?
- Why doesn't Apple employ hackers to go through their updates and find any sort of hole that jailbreakers can use?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2lyaPto
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