So while I will be the first to admit that I certainly didn't predict the iPhone, some of the iPhone's success was based on Apple leveraging their success with the iPod. The existence of iTunes and an ecosystem of third-party accessories based on the Apple 30-pin connector certainly helped the iPhone, not to mention Apple's brand cachet which was on an upswing at the time.
it's an interesting thought experiment to consider if the iPhone would have succeeded if instead of Apple it had been put out by, say, Danger.
1) The ecosystem did not spring into life with the iPhone; a lot of vendors were unsure initially but there was obviously tremendous benefit to Apple due to the iPod industry.
2) Danger would not have been able to launch the iPhone for a multitude of reasons. Even as a part of Microsoft, they couldn't have done it. I could go really in-depth here, but Microsoft is really bad at Art and Politics, which I would argue were the keys to the iPhones success.
3) The iPhone is a triumph for a number of reasons, but I tend to think the social conventions the iPhone destroyed were the most interesting part. I mean, I was working at AT&T when the iPhone dropped.
Before the iPhone:
* Everything was free phone at the low end and $199 at the top end
* Apps were pre-loaded onto phones
* Carriers drove handset manufacturers choice of OS
* No one ever waited for a phone
* Manufacturers did not care about UI/UX
* Phones sold on spec sheets
After the iPhone:
* Most people forget that the iPhone launched at a price point of $499 with no subsidy. They failed but this was Apple's attempt to kill free phones, and they (sort of) did.
* App store (year 2)
* Manufacturers drove handset sales to Operators (and outside of operators)
* People line up for phones all the time
* Everyone cares about UI/UX
* Phones sell by Operating System (And UI/UX)
I could go on and on. There are so many things that changed because of design decisions by Cupertino.
No, Danger could not have done the iPhone. Not because of technical limitations, but because of politics. Wresting that much power out of such a reinforced fiefdom was a herculean effort with commensurate results.
How much was the palm? $199 on contract? It certainly wasn't $499...
Those companies had their own OS but their content, schema and layouts were dictated by carriers. Only phones that were sold outside of carrier shops enjoyed true independence and those were few and far between.
People praised the Nokia UI, but where could you buy a high end Nokia phone when they were locked out of US carriers?
Spec sheets sold. Things like battery life were more important than OS. I think we're in agreement here.
I just think we had a different viewpoint on the industry. I sold thousands - tens of thousands of phones in the mid 2000's so I'm really familiar with the market at that time, but the view from my position is not a consumer viewpoint.
This does not seem in line with the understanding of the word used in The Innovator's Dilemma, the book that popularized the word in a business sense. Guyzero's response above matches much more closely to it.
Normally, I'd agree, but in the case of the iPhone, the disruption was more profound than simple off-the-shelf components.
I can go into detail, but the standard ideas for Disruption tend to be technical in nature whereas the iPhone was a profound multi-faceted assault on the world. There are so many elements of this attack, it's hard to know where to begin, but it was certainly more than just a newfound set of components (a lot of the iPhones physical technology was not new).
But, I hear and agree with your point. Guyzero makes a great post above and it's certainly worth reading :).
I had to laugh when I read this. How can I not upvote something so good-natured, especially when it's a response to blunt HN criticism like I delivered?
Re-defining what is a well-defined english word using hipster-startup-hack-bias is contrived and self-fulfilling. The phone caused disruption in the world, done, done, and done. Now quit trying to fit the word disrupt into every conversation. Products create a rift, or they don't. Products are worth their value, or they're not. There's no magical "disrupt" criteria to satisfy the startup hivemind rubric.
Personally I'd consider a fairly major book written by a harvard professor to be a bit more than a "hipster-startup-hack-bias re-definition." In the study of technology management, the term "disruptive innovation" has become a term of art that encapsulates a complex set of concepts into a single term. It's no more a "re-definition" that using the term "material impact" in regards to corporate finance.
Harvard professor or not, he simply coined a term to refer to a new technology deprecating an old one, so much that it becomes the new market that companies compete in. Yes, the iPhone did that. Where's the debate -- it's a fact that everything became 'touch' since then. The term 'disruptive' just cheapens the discussion and brings it to a baseline level of 'startup culture' drudgery. The term is used so often around here that it's become something of a pseudo-intellectual discussion starter.
While I agree that the term is overused, in its genesis of popularity, it referred to a real (and previously unnamed) phenomenon: wben an un-(or less-)profitable market eats a more-profitable one, such that players in the grown-up market are misled by listening to their customers.
If you built a hovercraft, it would destroy the car market, and everyone would expect that. But Blackberry did not expect the iPhone to kill them---there were all sorts of business-y feautures it lacked. "Blackberries are fine!" said RIM's customers.
And that is worth naming, I think. We have a whole jargon around the startup ideal of constant, low-level iteration, when that is precisely what screwed Blackberry.
A disruptive product is one that the public cannot conceive of, such that its introduction alters the standards in an industry.
A better product is the HTC8525[0] over the HTC8500. A disruptive product is the HTC8525 versus the iPhone.
[0]http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/at-t-8525/4505-6452_7-32... - The leading WinMo smartphone in Q4 2006, pre-iPhone.