4 ms·

If the market was just waiting for capacitive touchscreens to become available, why did it take all the others years to come up with anything competitive after

by gnaffle 14y ago

If the market was just waiting for capacitive touchscreens to become available, why did it take all the others years to come up with anything competitive after the iPhone launched? Why didn't they all have capacitive iPhone look-alikes ready in the lab then? Isn't it more reasonable to assume that the mobile market would have stayed roughly as it had the previous 10 years, with incremental improvements in screens, displays etc? Apple isn't credited with the first capacitive touchscreen phone, but I think they should be credited with making the first usable, mass market touchscreen smartphone.

bornhuetter 14y ago
> Why didn't they all have capacitive iPhone look-alikes ready in the lab then? The Samsung evidence showed that they did. Not as good as the iPhone, certainly, but they were obviously all thinking about it. > Apple ... should be credited with making the first usable, mass market touchscreen smartphone. I completely agree with this. But they don't deserve a monopoly on it. > Isn't it more reasonable to assume that the mobile market would have stayed roughly as it had the previous 10 years, with incremental improvements in screens, displays etc? No. Not at all. The technology had been rapidly improving, and we would have seen phones with large capacitive touch screens, and features such as "pinch to zoom on a phone" anyway. Sure the implementation may have been different, but the idea that the market would not have moved on in 10 years is absurd.
- gnaffle 14y ago
  What evidence was presented that Samsung had a similar phone in the works in 2007? One with a capacitive touchscreen and a user interface optimized for finger touch? For all I know they might have been "thinking" about it, but why didn't they do more than think about it if it was that obvious at the time that capacitive touchscreen phones would dominate the future? I didn't say the market wouldn't move. Of course it would, but probably with incremental improvements. Why? Because mobile user interfaces changed very little before the iPhone arrived. All the biggest competitors in the mobile space had their own operating systems that were optimized for navigation buttons/softkeys moving a cursor around, and optionally a stylus. Even new contenders like Maemo and Android were initially designed this way. Something like the iPhone would probably have evolved eventually, but I think it's odd to think that the transition to all-display touchscreen phones would have happened at the exact same pace if the iPhone had not been introduced, and that Apple only was "lucky" to have a shipping product available at exactly the right time.
  - bornhuetter 14y ago
    > Why didn't they do more than think about it if it was that obvious at the time that capacitive touchscreen phones would dominate the future? Because, as I said, the market wasn't ready for large capacitive touch screens. > All the biggest competitors in the mobile space had their own operating systems that were optimized for navigation buttons/softkeys moving a cursor around, and optionally a stylus. Because, as I said, the market wasn't ready for large capacitive touch screens. > Something like the iPhone would probably have evolved eventually So we basically agree. When I first saw the iPhone I thought it was the way of the future. But I thought the current form was awful. When the G1 came out it was even worse than the iPhone. The market simply wasn't ready yet; but Apple got in there with something barely usable for a price that a few early movers could afford. Over time, both Apple and Google refined their systems into amazing, world changing devices. There were two obvious ways of building these phones - 1. with menus 2. with icons. That is the way all feature phones that I know of worked. Google added widgets to this, and eventually Microsoft came up with the completely new idea of tiles. > I think it's odd to think that ... Apple only was "lucky" to have a shipping product available at exactly the right time. I never said anything remotely like that. It was entirely intentional that they put together the iPhone and brought it to market at the exact point in time that it became viable. That's why they are the most valuable company in the world. They deserve the huge success they have had, but, again, they don't deserve a monopoly.
    - catch23 14y ago
      > Because, as I said, the market wasn't ready for large capacitive touch screens. Hm, I don't think the reason competitors had their own operating system and stylus-based touch screens had anything to do with the market being ready for touch screens or not -- nobody created something that was usable, so of course the market didn't adapt to it. Bear with me on my small straw-man argument here: It's kind of like couchsurfing.com existed before airbnb.com, but few people let random strangers stay at their home before airbnb existed. You could say that "the market wasn't ready" or you could say that airbnb executed in a way that transformed the market. If Apple did not create the intuitive interfaces for the iPhone, we might still say "the market isn't ready for large touch screens".
seabee 14y ago
Revisionist, much? The G1 came out a few months after the iPhone 3G, the first iPhone to support third-party apps.
- gnaffle 14y ago
  So? The G1 launched in October 2008, over 1,5 years after the first iPhone, and it didn't even have multi-touch enabled. So my question is still, why weren't competitors further along in utilizing capacitive touchscreens if these advancements were so obvious in 2006?
  - regularfry 14y ago
    Because while it may have been obvious that it would happen eventually, nobody wanted to bet on when. It was safer to build the next iteration on known tech rather than gamble on being able to force the market.
tjoff 14y ago
If the market was just waiting for capacitive touchscreens to become available, why did it take all the others years to come up with anything competitive after the iPhone launched? Because apple was the only one that hadn't invested in anything else. Simple as that.
- gnaffle 14y ago
  My point exactly. :)
  - tjoff 14y ago
    Your point seem to imply that innovation was required, mine that it was trivial.
    - gnaffle 14y ago
      If it was that trivial, I would at least expect Google or Nokias Maemo to have come up with such an interface before 2007. I don't think the work put in by FingerWorks, and then the work put in by Apple to create the iOS user interface was trivial at all. It may not have been groundbreaking compared to what came before (ie most had been demonstrated by researchers), but I think it's obvious that a lot of work and design decisions went into creating it.
      - tjoff 14y ago
        Of course at lot of work and design decisions went into creating it (just as any UI), but it was a logical next step.

by gnaffle 14y ago

bornhuetter 14y ago

> Why didn't they all have capacitive iPhone look-alikes ready in the lab then? The Samsung evidence showed that they did. Not as good as the iPhone, certainly, but they were obviously all thinking about it. > Apple ... should be credited with making the first usable, mass market touchscreen smartphone. I completely agree with this. But they don't deserve a monopoly on it. > Isn't it more reasonable to assume that the mobile market would have stayed roughly as it had the previous 10 years, with incremental improvements in screens, displays etc? No. Not at all. The technology had been rapidly improving, and we would have seen phones with large capacitive touch screens, and features such as "pinch to zoom on a phone" anyway. Sure the implementation may have been different, but the idea that the market would not have moved on in 10 years is absurd.

gnaffle 14y ago
What evidence was presented that Samsung had a similar phone in the works in 2007? One with a capacitive touchscreen and a user interface optimized for finger touch? For all I know they might have been "thinking" about it, but why didn't they do more than think about it if it was that obvious at the time that capacitive touchscreen phones would dominate the future? I didn't say the market wouldn't move. Of course it would, but probably with incremental improvements. Why? Because mobile user interfaces changed very little before the iPhone arrived. All the biggest competitors in the mobile space had their own operating systems that were optimized for navigation buttons/softkeys moving a cursor around, and optionally a stylus. Even new contenders like Maemo and Android were initially designed this way. Something like the iPhone would probably have evolved eventually, but I think it's odd to think that the transition to all-display touchscreen phones would have happened at the exact same pace if the iPhone had not been introduced, and that Apple only was "lucky" to have a shipping product available at exactly the right time.
- bornhuetter 14y ago
  > Why didn't they do more than think about it if it was that obvious at the time that capacitive touchscreen phones would dominate the future? Because, as I said, the market wasn't ready for large capacitive touch screens. > All the biggest competitors in the mobile space had their own operating systems that were optimized for navigation buttons/softkeys moving a cursor around, and optionally a stylus. Because, as I said, the market wasn't ready for large capacitive touch screens. > Something like the iPhone would probably have evolved eventually So we basically agree. When I first saw the iPhone I thought it was the way of the future. But I thought the current form was awful. When the G1 came out it was even worse than the iPhone. The market simply wasn't ready yet; but Apple got in there with something barely usable for a price that a few early movers could afford. Over time, both Apple and Google refined their systems into amazing, world changing devices. There were two obvious ways of building these phones - 1. with menus 2. with icons. That is the way all feature phones that I know of worked. Google added widgets to this, and eventually Microsoft came up with the completely new idea of tiles. > I think it's odd to think that ... Apple only was "lucky" to have a shipping product available at exactly the right time. I never said anything remotely like that. It was entirely intentional that they put together the iPhone and brought it to market at the exact point in time that it became viable. That's why they are the most valuable company in the world. They deserve the huge success they have had, but, again, they don't deserve a monopoly.
  - catch23 14y ago
    > Because, as I said, the market wasn't ready for large capacitive touch screens. Hm, I don't think the reason competitors had their own operating system and stylus-based touch screens had anything to do with the market being ready for touch screens or not -- nobody created something that was usable, so of course the market didn't adapt to it. Bear with me on my small straw-man argument here: It's kind of like couchsurfing.com existed before airbnb.com, but few people let random strangers stay at their home before airbnb existed. You could say that "the market wasn't ready" or you could say that airbnb executed in a way that transformed the market. If Apple did not create the intuitive interfaces for the iPhone, we might still say "the market isn't ready for large touch screens".

seabee 14y ago

Revisionist, much? The G1 came out a few months after the iPhone 3G, the first iPhone to support third-party apps.

gnaffle 14y ago
So? The G1 launched in October 2008, over 1,5 years after the first iPhone, and it didn't even have multi-touch enabled. So my question is still, why weren't competitors further along in utilizing capacitive touchscreens if these advancements were so obvious in 2006?
- regularfry 14y ago
  Because while it may have been obvious that it would happen eventually, nobody wanted to bet on when. It was safer to build the next iteration on known tech rather than gamble on being able to force the market.

tjoff 14y ago

gnaffle 14y ago
My point exactly. :)
- tjoff 14y ago
  Your point seem to imply that innovation was required, mine that it was trivial.
  - gnaffle 14y ago
    If it was that trivial, I would at least expect Google or Nokias Maemo to have come up with such an interface before 2007. I don't think the work put in by FingerWorks, and then the work put in by Apple to create the iOS user interface was trivial at all. It may not have been groundbreaking compared to what came before (ie most had been demonstrated by researchers), but I think it's obvious that a lot of work and design decisions went into creating it.
    - tjoff 14y ago
      Of course at lot of work and design decisions went into creating it (just as any UI), but it was a logical next step.