Loading ...If you look into newspapers and websites of any journal from United States you won’t miss the word I-phone. Believe me, there are more than 100 articles that was written by technology experts, Apple lovers and others in this business.
Would it become a hit? Million dollar question. But it’s easy to answer. It’s going to be flop of this century. I knew that technology lovers and apple fans would hit at me. I love to get hit by the folks who’re fans of technology, convergence, and Ofcourse Apple.
History says that convergence won’t work in the market. Make no mistake, technologist love it, press love it but public think other way. Is it possible for anyone to think of having a system that could do printing, scanning, taking photocopies so on and so forth from single device? But intelligent people from different companies did that and eventually got failed.
When we think about printing, it’s only HP that’s coming to our mind. XEROX is better in photocopiers. This clearly states that divergence is here to stay and Ofcourse it’s only going to be winning bet. After so many millions and billions in advertising, still few companies love for another battle in convergence.
Apple with its I-phone is doing another mistake, which they did almost a decade before with Newton. For those ladies and gentlemen, who doesn’t know, Newton has been launched as hand held computer. It portrayed its handwritten recognition as key technology in its product. Today there is still palmtop, but there is no Newton. Newton got destroyed because of convergence. Its hand written recognition did lot of mistakes in recognizing and hell lot of funny stories has been written on it. Finally Apple winds up its plan and ended in wasting its precious time and money in the process creating successful convergence product.
I-Pod - Why it’s hit?
I-pod is definitely not a first hard drive for music. But its first hard drive in the mind of people. Why it become instant success. Because it does only one thing in a perfect way- Digital Music. It had the capability of holding more music than any other MP3 players that could store music of just 2 CDs. Its classical example of divergence. It got enormous success because it is a specialist.
I-Phone – Why it could be flop?
With I-phone I’d be able to watch movies, send email, listen to music and Ofcourse make calls. Which battery in this world could last longer by accepting all these functions combined in a single device? I think this is going to be huge task for the folks at apple to come up with realistic answer. Already BusinessWeek has come up with an article that I-Phone is not supporting few email clients. Make no mistakes there are much more to come.
There is another danger for Apple, where they might be getting into competition with focused competitors of Smart phone makers viz., Research in Motion (RIMM) and Palm. Apple is increasing its competitors which mean it is directly or indirectly creating enemies which are not good for its business. Well, you’d argue, if I’m in market, I’d be having enemies, but creating unnecessary enemies are not good for business.
Whatz the lesson for startups from Apple?
Ofcourse we always learn lessons from others or learn from our mistakes. From Apple launch of I-phone, start ups must know that they must be focused and must work as a specialist than a generalist.
If you’re in everything, it means you’re in nothing. Not only that, your business could unnecessarily attract more competition and it could add enemies in the industry. This is definitely not good for start ups.
Start ups must try to focus on a particular technology that should be new and unique rather than converging everything and does one-stop solution which had the history of failure than success in this market. Rational thinking should hold high than emotional thinking. This is one of the most important lessons from this launch.
Convergence stays in newspaper columns, Divergence stays in the market.
I-Pod - Greatest hit of 21st century. I-Phone – Greatest flop of 21st century.
The marketing team’s expectations about i phones success in India (read penetration) can be gauged from the launch pricing - a USD 199 phone retailing for INR 31,000 !!
Anyway, coming to the post, success is a relative term. For Apple selling 700,000 phones (where ?) may be great !
The point is, success of such devices is totally dependant on its suitability for the individual’s requirement.
There are enough devices available to suit every requirement.
So let the i phone not be run down due to prejudice. There may be enough people to buy it AND like it. If one doesnt think its worth, just dont buy.
Well a few more things to add…
The Apple iPhone doesn’t seem to have failed, but even if it did, attributing the failure of the first of its kind in a concept, to the failure of the concept as a whole, is a generalist statement, which in theory itself is an incorrect thing to do.
On the idea of generalists and specialists, as a software developer, I believe that if a specialist is a person who can solve every problem in his area of expertise but hardly any outside of it, then one may think twice before hiring such a person. This is especially true in a startup where there are hardly any people which means that every individual is expected to contribute in ways that go beyond his or her job profile. May I have the audacity to say that a specialist person can actually be a handicap at times.
I believe one must hire an individual who is an expert in a set of technologies but is also well aware of the world and technologies around him. Given a problem outside his scope, he knows what to look for and where, and given some time he would be able to solve it. Most practical problems in software (or the world as such) are solved by knowing a little more about the subject and little bit of common sense.
On the same lines sir, if one considers a company, one can say that a company must attempt to solve a definite set of problems, and yet it must be versatile enough to adapt to the ever changing business requirements. Haven’t we all heard of startups which start of with a particular idea and end up doing something completely different. (Flickr)
People, their skill sets and their abilities take on challenges of any kind are extremely critical to the success of a startup, as a startup is nothing more than an idea and the few people who stand by it. A startup is just as agile as its people.
Coming back to the iPhone, I believe consumers today are increasing looking out for devices which are extremely intelligent and have equally simpler interfaces. If a product does what the user wants it do, neatly abstracting the complexities beneath it, then we may just have a winner. With this regard, I believe Apple has usually got it spot on.
Lets go a few years ahead, free our minds and come up a single portable handheld device that does, well, all this:
It should take care of my bills, keep track of my health, compute the best insurance policy for me, do my financial transactions, keep me entertained, connect me to people, connect me to events around the globe, filter everything I see, store all my data, capture memories, give me directions, identify me, get me to places, recommend things to eat, schedule my meetings, maintain my car, program my lawn mower, switch channels, recommend things to buy, tell me where to invest, keep track of my blogs, direct and supervise other intelligent devices etc etc.
The list is endless but it all boils down to pretty much everything that we can delegate to an artificial intelligence. It acts a survival tool in this modern era and is your interface to the world, your point of contact with everything all around you. It is no longer just a phone. It is your personal assistant.
Convergence, well seems to have just begun.
I think this is crazy. Already sold 700,000 units! Guru, you should have waited a week to make the prediction
You wrote “…we always learn lessons from others or learn from our mistakes. From Apple launch of I-phone, start ups must know that they must be focused and must work as a specialist than a generalist.”
While your predictions may or may not be correct - what I can’t digest is the premature advice that you are espousing based on the ‘anticipated failure’ of the iPhone!! C’mon now!
Another related stuff iphone launch shows why there is no tech product based companies in India. How many indians will be paying equivalent of 800$ ( say 10000Rs) to buy a a tech product in the first few days? I mean the number of early adopters who are ready to pay whatever it takes is so low for any tech products based companies to succeed in india
estimated 700,000 iPhones gone over the first two days… check this.. http://cultofmac.com/?p=945
Predictors did the same for the iMac when it came out - the mantra those days WAS divergence. Samsung made drives better, someone made motherboards better, someone else made monitors better. Why would someone (read Jobs) ever try selling an all in 1 package? Is he plain dumb?
Apparently he wasnt dumb.
I think most of these problems are multivariate problems. Intelligent people (usually wrongly) try to reduce it to variables they can understand. That does not take away the fact that the problem is essentially multivariate.
The point is that convergence and divergence are just one part of the equation. There are several other factors that would affect the iPhone’s success and its naive writing an article without considering them.
I also found the statement regarding - “increasing competitors” kinda funny. Why wouldnt someone want that?
While I do agree with the overall opinion of Guru (in that convergence, as a route to success, has never worked in the market), I might want to measure my tone of response as the number of Apple fans seems to be getting larger by the day and I wouldnt fancy being hit by all of them at once.
Get your hands on this book - ‘The Origin of Brands’ by Al Ries and Laura Ries. It traces the history of various products/services to make the point that convergence has never done to the success of the product what the innovators believed it would.
And I dont completely agree with the comments of Devang simply because I find it hard to give weightage to an opinion that is arising out of natural predilections and not product usage. We havent even gotten our hands onto an iPhone (atleast people in India) are we are talking about the fone offering the functionalities perfectly. Why don’t we wait for the product to enter the mainstream market in a majority and watch what happens to it.
/peace.
I disagree with you. If you dig deep into why convergence always failed it is not because people don’t want it, it’s because the people who made it did not think of how people use it. I agree with shailender chohan on this.
Also i suggest you get some things right.
i) Newton failed because it was way ahead of its time. Did u say it’s the first hand held and then go on to say palm is a hit. Is it not contradictory that Newton being the first device failed because of convergence, while palm did the same basic things and succeeds and it does not come under your eye as convergence.
Pretty strange.. It might help if you can read the post again!
ii) As many pointed out in earlier comments, iPhone is not new device trying to converge new technologies, its presenting the old technologies in a new more user friendly way. Though I won’t predict the future of iPhone(it’s not just Apple which will make it success), the technologies it has brought in (accelerometers, multithouch screen, and as usual user friendly design) are here to stay.
The whole thing why iPhone has created a buzz is not just old wine in new bottle, its old wine made differently in a new bottle.
I second Kulshekar.. i had exactly the same thoughts while reading through this post. So i am saved from typing in all that
Only one additional comment.. where does “Startup” figure in the discussion on iphone? Of course i agree that startups need to find a beachhead (Crossing the chasm) and be a specialist (Innovater’s Dilemma) but how is this tied to learning from apple and iphone?
I also watched the product launch by Steve jobs and he does make a compelling statement about the product. (Can call it hype, but if its sells, who cares?)
Having said that, I admire your guts to stick your neck out. My reasons why it may fail:
1. requires changing carrier to ATT. Not many people want to change carriers in US even with LNP.
2. Individual products (email/phone/ipod) may not provide the same level of service as people are used to today with separate devices. Yes, convergence. But not just because its converged, but because its jack of all trades and master of none. So it doesnt satisfy the power users. But having recently read, “The long tail”, I believe the Ipod may be “good enough” for most users and will see a market, so even this point may not hold true.