A big thought to go into the weekend. What would dethrone the iPhone? Insider has a great piece on that, and I wanted to highlight a section from the article. Quote.
To explain how Apple will fall, I offer a framework for how technology cycles occur, a cycle that has held true for a variety of technical innovations, from refrigeration to audio technologies.
Technology shifts over time and goes through five phases:
- Multiple companies produce differing technologies that serve the same user need.
- Market forces lead to one standard emerging as nonsubstitutable infrastructure. Often, it is not the best-of-breed technology that wins market adoption.
- That standard is attacked by pseudo-challengers who imitate it but do not effectively displace it, as the pseudo-challengers do not offer enough meaningful differentiation or have different flaws than the technology they attempt to displace. (But pseudo-challengers often have enough value to survive and coexist alongside the dominant technology.)
- The standard reemerges stronger than before and appears invincible to displacement.
- A new and better technology emerges and displaces the existing standard.
iOS is in stage 4. It has achieved dominance and mindshare despite being challenged by the Android operating system and a host of devices from the likes of Google and Samsung.
To supplant the Apple juggernaut, any new technology that comes to market must meet the following criteria:
- It must offer visible and demonstrable value and differentiation that can be directly exploited by end users. One reason the iPhone replaced flip phones was that it had a real browser and touchscreen with a pinch-to-zoom feature. It made using the internet feel more like you were on a PC than on a cellphone.
- It must offer economic benefits to a marketplace of vendors. The iPhone offered apps, an entirely new market for existing and new software developers.
- It must offer clear economic benefits to hardware vendors. If conditions one and two are met, hardware vendors have strong incentive to build systems to take advantage of the new technology and drive upgrades.
Why do we care?
This framework for tech disruption is one that is going to rattle around the brain for a bit and is something to apply to a lot of other technologies. I offer it for consideration. I’ll be pondering it myself.