Focusing on the high cost of providing a complex product can be dangerous. The theory of disruptive innovation is that many products are overly complex and pri

Focusing on the high cost of providing a complex product can be dangerous. The theory of disruptive innovation is that many products are overly complex and priced too high. As Clayton Christensen put it, "[D]isruptive innovations ... offered less of what customers in established markets wanted and so could rarely be initially employed there. They offered a different package of attributes valued only in emerging markets remote from, and unimportant to, the mainstream." [1] In this case, a serious Unicode font with full TT hinting, all styles/weights, multiple glyph sets is seriously over-serving the needs of the mobile app market. I am currently building a mobile app that uses beautiful typography, and open fonts are working wonderfully for me. I don't need any of the extra font features you mentioned; I don't even need bold and italics versions of my fonts for my apps. This form of disruption is called "low-end disruption" and "targets customers who do not need the full performance valued by customers at the high end of the market." [2] Open fonts very much fit that description, and their growth trajectory suggests that they will serve that role well. Over time, the high-end market players tend to get eaten alive by an innovative low-end disruptor who upgrade their offerings and price points. For examples, see Nucor in steel and Toyota in cars. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation#The_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation#The_theor... [2] Christensen, Clayton M. (2003). The Innovator's Solution : Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth