4 ms·
Past performance is not indicative of future results etc, but you’re right, this is basically exactly what Palm CEO Ed Colligan said about the rumored iPhone a
by tobr 6y ago
Past performance is not indicative of future results etc, but you’re right, this is basically exactly what Palm CEO Ed Colligan said about the rumored iPhone a few months before it was revealed[1]:
> “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
1: https://daringfireball.net/2006/11/colligan_head_stuck https://daringfireball.net/2006/11/colligan_head_stuck
- baybal2 6y agoAnd they didn't. Iphone 1 was far from a commercial success. 3GS was the first one that approached the cult status. It tool them 4 generations to get there, and a lot of money.
- jbullock35 6y ago> Iphone 1 was far from a commercial success. I don't think that's true. For example, less than a year after its release, the iPhone accounted for 28% of smartphones sold in the U.S. (and presumably for a greater percentage of smartphone-sale revenue): see https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/02/iphone-owns-28-percent-of-us-smartphone-market/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/02/iphone-owns-28-perce.... And half a year after that, the news was better still: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/10/apple-officially-surpasses-10-million-iphones-sold-in-2008/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/10/apple-officially-sur...
- peddling-brink 6y agoThere weren't that many smartphones then. Most people were using feature phones.
- kllrnohj 6y agoTo put that 10 million sales in 2008 into context, the Motorola Razr sold 140 million devices over a 4 year period ending in 2007. So... by & large nobody had an iPhone or smartphone. They all had Razrs (or other feature-phones) instead.
- ska 6y ago> Iphone 1 was far from a commercial success. That's a difficult statement to support. It set the stage for everything that came after, and it knocked the industry back on its heels. I'm not sure of the margin or unit numbers but for lots of values of "commercial success", that alone is hard to ignore.
- rangoon626 6y agoPeople were waiting in lines for DAYS to get the first iPhone.
- onethought 6y ago4 years you mean, generating profit the entire time. You have a very high bar for commercial success.
- jandrese 6y agoThe first couple of generations of the iPod kinda sucked too. It's really hard to get everything perfect in the first generation, probably impossible. Having the agility to iterate on the design quickly so you can capitalize on the initial hype is what Apple does so well.
- brianwawok 6y agoIPod came out before cheap flash storage. I am surprised it worked as well as it did for shoving a laptop hard drive in a music player. Would a car be like that now? Batteries are close to too expensive, but 38k model 3 says we are close...
- rangoon626 6y agoDid they? Not that much about the iPod changed between 2001 and 2005. A simple to use interface, large storage made it great from the start, but windows support it what made it successful.
- saagarjha 6y agoIt got smaller. The original iPod was…kind of big.
- jandrese 6y agoThey physical wheel was fragile and the internal HDDs weren't quite big enough for a good music library. They were also a little too big and heavy, and they used Firewire as the interface which wasn't well supported at the time (or ever) on PCs.