That's what they call "predicting the average". When a company that makes an entrenched product category (MP3 players) is under attack from competitors with a product that is displacing theirs (smartphones), and they respond by entering into the other product category, late, with only half the functionality of their competitors and ignoring much of the conventional wisdom, the typical case is that they will fail. That the iphone succeeded is a statistical anomaly. Basically they used fortune teller's tricks to predict technology.
Now, the interesting thing here for me is not how embarassingly wrong they were, it's how we misattribute being right to any kind of prescience or competence. The people who said the iphone was going to be a hit were making stuff up just as much as the people who said it would flop, but they were accidentally right. In reality nobody could possibly predict what the iphone was going to do in the market.
Fortune tellers use tricks because they have nothing else to go on. In the case of the iPhone, though, analysts had plenty to go on--heck they got a 2-hour demo of the product. This guy simply blew it.
He was even wrong in saying that the iPod was under attack by smartphones. The leading smartphones in 2007 all totally sucked at music.
What I find interesting is his wishlist for better phone:
>> How about phones with fewer gadgets but better at making calls? Or with never-ending batteries? Or chargers that don't weigh three times as much as the phone?
It's useful while making predictions (or wishlists for the future) to understand that the fundamental way in which people use a product is likely to change (making phone calls is not the most important way to communicate via a cellphone anymore)
Or that there are things beyond the immediate annoyances (battery life, charger size) that make people passionate about their devices (like, what you can do with it).
Battery life and size of the electronics should be expected to improve as part of the natural evolution of technology. What you should wish for is a revolutionary way of using the product.
I wonder if these people still got credibility as analysts? I mean if that's your day job, shouldn't something as bad as predicting iPad or iPhone to fail be a huge hit?
I still remember the first iPads in 2007. I was totally one of the nay-sayers. "Who'd want this giant iPhone? This is silly, nobody wants a mini-flat-screen as a computer"
---5 years later---
smtddr cannot imagine life without his Cyanogenmod KindleFire.... and thus stopped being a nay-sayer of tech. Except, I'll tell you right now smart-watches aren't gonna make it. ;)
> I still remember the first iPads in 2007. I was totally one of the nay-sayers. "Who'd want this giant iPhone? This is silly, nobody wants a mini-flat-screen as a computer"
It's hard to believe but the iPad is just over 3 years old, released in 2010. 2007 was the iPhone launch.
I was an iPad nay-sayer just like you. I still don't own a tablet but I clearly failed to appreciate the appeal that the iPad was going to have. I just couldn't believe people were going to find that "Big & Tall" iPhone appealing.
> It may come -- but probably from an entrepreneurial start-up somewhere. How about phones with fewer gadgets but better at making calls? Or with never-ending batteries? Or chargers that don't weigh three times as much as the phone?
The funny thing is that there's a huge market for all of these things, but the profit margins are much thinner than on smartphones. 6 years later this article seems completely off-base, it would be interesting to revisit it in 20.
That's the part that struck me, reminiscent of Henry Ford's possibly misattributed quote, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” How quaint it now seems, the thought of carrying a device that's not an always-networked computer, with the incidental ability to place voice calls.
In 20 years, it's likely the device will be implanted, perched on our shoulder or hovering around our head, and the thought of having to physically remove our communication tool from our pocket to use it will seem impossibly outdated.
Now, the interesting thing here for me is not how embarassingly wrong they were, it's how we misattribute being right to any kind of prescience or competence. The people who said the iphone was going to be a hit were making stuff up just as much as the people who said it would flop, but they were accidentally right. In reality nobody could possibly predict what the iphone was going to do in the market.