
The iPhone and Disruption: Five Years In - tambourine_man
http://daringfireball.net/2012/07/iphone_disruption_five_years_in
======
IsaacL
By the way, I highly recommend Clayton Christensen's book The Innovator's
Dilemma, which was mentioned in the article. If I ruled the world I'd decree
that no-one was allowed to allowed to apply the word "disrupt" to technology
or business without reading the guy who actually defined the term in the first
place.

It seems lots of commentors here could use a primer: a disruptive innovation
is usually cheap, considered as "worse" by existing customers, and enters the
market at the low-end. But it serves a new market who have different needs to
the existing customers. Over time the disruptive innovation gets better until
eventually it replaces the original. Classic example: PCs and mainframes.

(Note: technically the disruptive innovation doesn't have to be cheaper. It's
just _better on metrics the new market cares about but the existing market
doesn't_. Often that's price, but not always.)

[http://i.saac.me/post/startup-related-words-youre-
probably-u...](http://i.saac.me/post/startup-related-words-youre-probably-
using-incorrectly-disrupt/)

------
look_lookatme
This last week I was re-reading what, for me as a 19 year kid, was a seminal
article in understanding the power of the web and personal devices:

<http://www.cs.umd.edu/~golbeck/LBSC690/SemanticWeb.html>

Discounting the structured data bits (a lot to discount) it's amazing how
close we are with tablets and Android/iPhones and Siri and Google Now. I fear
the siloing of valuable data in apps, but I have to acknowledge that without
the iPhone I don't think we'd be as far along as we are.

------
olalonde
> What’s happened over the last five years shows not that Apple disrupted the
> phone handset industry, but rather that Apple destroyed the handset industry
> — _by disrupting the computer industry_.

That's a bit of a stretch. There is still a large difference between an iPhone
and a desktop/laptop computer from a user point of view. I'd be very surprised
if smartphone sales had any noticeable influence on computer sales (in the
developed world). The traditional computer industry doesn't seem to have been
much impacted by the iPhone and I can't see by what definition of disruption
it was _disrupted_... Sensationalism is probably good for pageviews.

~~~
blubbix
Microsoft is betting their future on a redesigned Windows with an
unprecedented upgrade price of $39, and just pissed off their hardware vendors
by launching their own PC devices.

And you don't think the PC industry is being disrupted?

~~~
olalonde
Microsoft has redesigned Windows and lowered prices multiple times in the
past, before the advent of the iPhone. I wouldn't call this a disruption.
Furthermore, I would guess only extremely few people are choosing an iPhone
_rather than_ a laptop/desktop computer.

~~~
flatline3
Microsoft redesigned Windows around tablet interfaces and _launched their own
ARM hardware_ to run it.

How much does it take before you'll call it a disruption?

~~~
olalonde
I was specifically talking about the iPhone. Tablets definitely stand a better
chance at "disrupting" the industry although this is also debatable.

I will call it a disruption when people start using iPhones/iPad _instead of_
laptops/desktops. This doesn't seem to be the case for a large majority of
people.

~~~
bryne
It's not necessary for it to be a majority to be a market disruption.

------
programminggeek
The biggest disruption being that the phone, mp3 player, email, etc. were just
"apps" and none was any more important than the others. So, instead of making
a phone that is great for just one segment (see the ill fated ESPN phone), the
phone is now a platform with personalized features for each user via apps and
it's always on, always connected, always up to date.

Funny enough, the web is being disrupted by smartphone apps and yet web devs
are crying "fad" just like the hardware guys were yelling "fad" when the
iPhone came out, but web apps on desktops aren't growing like mobile is
([http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/07/mobile-is-where-the-
growth-i...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/07/mobile-is-where-the-growth-
is.html))... and so what happens to all the web app companies who are just
hoping mobile doesn't kill their web apps or web sites?

In many industries it's as simple as making a product that does 80% or 20% of
what the leading product does, but has a iPhone, iPad, Android app and you're
likely to make sales on that fact alone. It's like going from desktop to web
all over again.

~~~
tadfisher
I'd place less emphasis on "apps". Remember, the original iPhone was released
with a total of zero third-party apps; all third-party content and
functionality was delivered via the Web.

The disruptive event was the sudden confluence of always-available data, a
decent web browser, and an interface friendly enough to make use of it. "Apps"
had been around for years on the "smartphones" of yesteryear, be it J2ME,
Windows Mobile, Blackberry, etc. They were a clunky mess, however, and you had
to pull out a stylus or fuddle around with a tiny joystick to use them. Their
browsers just plain sucked.

Webkit on a device that could render full-screen Web pages like candy is what
Apple contributed to the cellular arena, and that is what changed the game.
Coincidentally, the browser is the main point of what reviewers of the era
missed; most of them were lamenting the lack of apps.

~~~
alttab
I'd agree. Connectivity was the game changer. Functional Internet everywhere?
Sign me the fuck up.

Native mobile apps in my mind simply bridge the user experience gap that HTML5
is having a hard time filling. It does some crunching too, but most apps that
are worth their salt are either games or apps that do some processing before
or after connecting to the Internet.

------
matthew-wegner
Regarding the original quote:

 _They’ve launched an innovation that the existing players in the industry are
heavily motivated to beat: It’s not [truly] disruptive. History speaks pretty
loudly on that, that the probability of success is going to be limited._

This could still very well be true. One possible 20-year-out future is that
wearable computing has completely replaced handheld devices (or indeed most
devices of any kind). The era of touchscreen smartphones will be looked back
on fondly as a strange transitional blip.

Now, the likeliness of this scenario is a totally different discussion. But
calling the game 5 years in feels a bit premature.

(Perhaps the massive wealth Apple has accumulated in the iPhone/iPad era will
cement their ability to dominate all future tech. But maybe not, in a post-
Jobs environment...)

~~~
falling
If you pick a long enough time span everything is eventually transitional.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
The iPhone itself did not bring anything new except a slick interface coupled
with multi-touch. We already had powerful smartphones, for example ones
running Microsoft's Windows Mobile.

But the iPhone brought smartphones to the public's attention, and the iPhone
later brought the App Store.

~~~
icarus_drowning
The "slick interface" is, I think, the entire genius of the iPhone (especially
when compared to its competition). Sure the functions of the iPhone were all
(mostly) present in competing devices when it launched, but it was hard(er) to
leverage them on Windows Mobile or Blackberry because the interface wasn't
nearly as polished and easy to use. (If you doubt that statement, try using a
web browser on a 2007-era Blackberry. Even today, with much more of the
internet being "mobile aware", the experience is so awful it is almost
disingenuous to say that those devices can browse the internet at all).

Simply put, it was very much the "slick interface" that "brought smartphones
to the public's attention", and ultimately, illustrated how powerful having a
pocket computer really is.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
True. But the iPhone was far from the first in its category.

You might say, however, it was the first _good_ device in its category.

~~~
tjogin
It's more important to be good than to be first. Otherwise Microsoft would be
the king of tablets right now.

------
niels_olson
must be a slow day at DF. "Hly crap, a general computer in my pocket?!" has to
have crossed everyone's mind the instant Jobs showed it.

------
mindstab
Yes. It's the iPhone disruption... That over half the market there that's
android? Doesn't count cus they entered later (well they were working on it
before but launched later) and therefore nothing they contributed counts. Yes
clearly

"All of this, because of the iPhone."

~~~
rprasad
Apple's disruption is not the hardware, the software, or the integration of
the two.

Apple's disruption is spending several hundreds of billions of dollars on
marketing to tell people what they could do with the hardware and software.

Androids, Windows _Mobile_ , Blackberry could do everything the iPhone could
do, and usually faster, cheaper, and better. But they never told anyone _how_
to do all the cool stuff, or even that the cool stuff was possible. Which is a
shame, because most people actually credit Apple with inventing the
smartphone, more than a decade after smartphones hit the market.

~~~
blubbix
If so, why didn't Microsoft spend their money on marketing instead of
replacing WM6?

~~~
rprasad
Microsoft targets enterprise customers. Their customers are swayed by personal
relationships, _not_ television ads.

~~~
greedo
Ha. Yes Microsoft targets enterprise customers. By purchasing tons of print
ads in PC Magazine etc. Take a look at the SG&A for both companies and you'll
see that for a company that doesn't manufacture many tangible goods (the xbox
is a blip on the radar compared to Apple's manufacturing) sure spends a lot of
money, much of it on advertising:

[http://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/sga_expense#series=type:co...](http://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/sga_expense#series=type:company,id:MSFT,calc:sga_expense,,id:AAPL,type:company,calc:sga_expense&zoom=10&startDate=&endDate=&format=real&recessions=false)

