Quote:
Originally Posted by theinfamousj
But Apple didn't create the smart phone market nor the tablet market. Both existed for many - and in the tablet market 's case, for at least ten years. Bro had a Toshiba Satellite tablet - years prior to Apple' s entry into those markets.
Before the iPhone came out, I had already imported a Nokia smart phone from the Ukraine. It even had (Symbian) apps and an integrated GPS.
So this comparison to Mercedes is faulty. Best to compare it to Jaguar. Makes high end in an already pre-established market, at times copying features - though just enough not so as to avoid IP issues - from the early pioneers in that market 's successful models.
Google, on the other hand is a car upholstery company. It lets someone else determine the actual engineering while contributing something key for the consumer-product interface. Lots of "cars" can sport Google-fabric seats, and they'll even allow the car manufacturers to tweak the color (something purely cosmetic).
In the end, Google loses if the hardware folks decide to go with a different interface. Apple loses if they cannot convince enough consumers to buy their hardware model with its exclusive interface. But the consumer? The consumer has already moved on to the personal hovercraft market being established by SpaceX (to keep the metaphor going) that Apple will try to use their marketing team to convince you that they started.
(My whole family are early adopters. Oh the stories I can tell of original netbooks, nettops, tablets, PDAs, and portable music players.)
|
Apple didn't create the smart phone, tablet or digital listening device (i.e. iPod), but what they did is take a very small niche market and make it main stream. I had mp3 players before the iPod, tablets before the iPad and a smartphone before the iPhone. However, they were novelty items for geeks, not something your average person would buy.