7 years ago, I wrote a post questioning the Apple Fan Boys statements that the iPhone changed everything.
I got somethings very right. And I, obviously, got some things very wrong.
My assumption that unlike the iPod Apple would not rule the cellphone market turned out to be correct. My other assumption the iPhone would push the design of phones like the original Mac did turned out to be right.
My original assumption that MS and the cellphone vendors would create a viable alternative ecosystem that would own a much broader chunk than Apple turned out to be partially correct. Instead of MS, the real winner was Google who released the Android.
Let’s look at what I said and got right and wrong.
- The iPhone was crucial to Apple. And yes it was.
- The iPhone was going to push technology trends. Oh boy did it ever
- That it was going to be a marginal player. Oh boy was I wrong! WRONG. The share of profits is staggering.
- That integration with laptops was important. WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! Obviously I had no idea how much more important integration with cloud services was going to be.
- That Microsoft was going to be the bigger threat. OOOPS! Google wasn’t even mentioned! Of course, I wrote the post before Android shipped so that’s my defense. I could not imagine that it would take MS so frigging long to build a credible OS for the phone. And I suspect that Nadella will end that experiment soon.
- That the mobile phone providers were going to compete and push Apple into a niche. Right but I guessed wrong on who would do that. Samsung did. Nokia made the strategically boneheaded to go with Windows Mobile instead of Android. A bunch of other players did some good stuff.
- The laptop market that I thought was important turns out to be less important than I ever could have imagined for Apple.
- And of course, I completely misunderstood the app economy.
7 years later many it’s fun to point out how wrong everyone else got it – it’s even more fun to see how wrong YOU got it 😉
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