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After 10 years, I still find it hard to say what exactly Apple did back then. It was not about the app store for example, because that came one year later. * T
by qznc 10y ago
After 10 years, I still find it hard to say what exactly Apple did back then. It was not about the app store for example, because that came one year later.
* They saw the premium niche. Ballmer ridiculed them for the price of the iPhone, but now we know, people are fine with paying 800$ for a smartphone. It is still a niche if you compare the sheer number of Android phones, but a very profitable one.
* They removed the pen from the PDAs and had an innovative touch interface. More intuitive user interfaces is something Apple was known for before and they went further with it.
* They got the carriers to cooperate and give up some control. While the story is not as strong, we could compare that to IBMs decision to licence an operating system for the PC.
* At that point in time, it was (finally?) very useful to have Internet access on the go.
- rwc 10y agoBallmer mocked iPhone as a luxury item at unrealistically high prices because he looked at it as just another smartphone. If you look at iPhone as a low-price disruptor to computers (and I think that's fair when you consider how many people use iPhone as their primary or only computing device), its pricing makes perfect sense.
- petra 10y agoI think the iPhone started taking off only after the app store, so it should be counted as a factor. Also - a lot of the story is about marketing, creating a huge status symbol and convincing people to pay so much for it, and that money fueled to reach faster and further than it might have reached otherwise.