Why the iPhone needs the Pre to succeed (sort of)
June 27, 2009 by Eric
Filed under CELL & MOBILE ACCESSORIES, CELL & MOBILE Information, CELL & MOBILE PHONES
Image from ABC News
It must be tough trying to be number one. You have to find your spot in the sun, something that is not all that easy to do. Then you have to maintain that spot in the sun never allowing that young (or not so young) whippersnapper to take it away from you.
That can’t be an easy thing to do because you have to keep topping yourself. Each subsequent product or product version must not only maintain the previous version’s leadership, you have to exceed it. So the iPhone 3G, for example, had to top the original iPhone. It did. The iPhone 3G S now has to top the iPhone 3G. From the early sales figures, it appears that it well might.
Apple has fared well so far, but the saga doesn’t end there. Now Apple’s iPhone designers, the ones who are secreted away deep inside of Infinite Loop, are busily designing a device that will be even better than the iPhone 3G S. With such a high water mark, that can’t be an easy task.
Although having no competition may be attractive to the one who wants to clear the dance floor of all others, that isn’t necessarily advantageous to product development. If there were no Palm Pre, no Android G1, no Blackberry Storm, then there would be nothing for the iPhone to compete against. Keeping those whippersnappers hanging around isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Because how can you compete with yourself?
In an ironic sort of way, competitors are actually good for Apple’s iPhone development team. Competing devices like the Palm Pre were engineered to do things that are missing from the repertoire of the current iPhone series. Things like multitasking, for example. All of this helps Apple’s designers. How? By seeing what Palm has done they can emulate and probably surpass it in the iPhone 4G (or whatever the next version of the iPhone is destined to be called.) As you can guess, the iPhone’s competitors such as the Palm folks and others are busy doing the same thing. It’s not really a matter of copycat. Their designers are trying to out-iPhone the iPhone. And, if Palm is smart, they are also trying to out-Pre the Pre.
Competition is a good thing because out of all of this one-upmanship we business users get a better next generation product
