The Economist on Apple, the iPhone, and Innovation

portscan writes "This week's Economist has a special report on Apple, Inc. and innovation. 'The fourth lesson from Apple is to "fail wisely". The Macintosh was born from the wreckage of the Lisa, an earlier product that flopped; the iPhone is a response to the failure of Apple's original music phone, produced in conjunction with Motorola. Both times, Apple learned from its mistakes and tried again. Its recent computers have been based on technology developed at NeXT, a company Mr Jobs set up in the 1980s that appeared to have failed and was then acquired by Apple. The wider lesson is not to stigmatize failure but to tolerate it and learn from it: Europe's inability to create a rival to Silicon Valley owes much to its tougher bankruptcy laws.' There is also an article on the business of the iPhone and the future of the company. "

Comments

Not mentioned in the article: Marketing

[powerpants]

Apple has cultivated its brand through sleek products and sexy advertising. The first major MP3 player (ignoring the obscure MPMan) was the Diamond Rio, which looked alright... until the iPod came out. Don't underestimate the importance of style when it comes to selling consumer electronics.

Fail wisely, OK

[Junior J. Junior III]

But let's not call iPhone a success yet. It had an exciting demo that got a lot of buzz. It hasn't sold a single unit yet. Expectations are sky high already, so if this one doesn't do as well for some reason -- or even if it just has a slow start for whatever reason -- the perception could be that it's a disappointment, under-performer, or outright failure. It's hard to imagine it being a complete failure, but at the price tag that they're commanding, it's not like you can guarantee its success.

Re:Fail wisely, OK

[timeOday]

Not only that, but I don't believe the iPhone is a response to the failure of the Rokkr (as claimed by the summary). I doubt Apple invested much in the Rokkr (since there was nothing special about it), rather Apple simply licenced some trademarks to Motorolla - i.e. Apple using Motorolla as an ATM.

On the other hand, the Newton was a pretty innovative failure, from which lessons were doubtless learned.

Buy Palm?

[bill_mcgonigle]

I wonder what their response will be to the failure that will be hitching their reigns to Cingular for 5 years.

Did anybody notice ex-Apple VP of iPod Jon Rubenstein is now Chief XYZ at Palm? Does the investment firm that took the Palm stake have any other Apple ties?

I mean, if Apple acquired Palm, and Palm already has deals in place with Verizon, Sprint, NexTel, et. al., well, Apple couldn't very well not honor those commitments. And Palm just happens to be re-tooling their XScale phone to run on a small Unix OS (Linux). So, it wouldn't very well make sense to develop two completely different yet entirely similar products, would it?

But, hey, I've been known to claim the 3GHz promise was just a strawman to excuse sacking IBM. Steve learned from his NeXTMachine failure that a software company is better off using cheap commodity hardware.

Re:Like we say in software development...

[Timesprout]

You never really know what will be successful until you've gotten something out and developed. If only business people understood that

Business people underatand this perfectly well. They also understand the costs associcated with getting to this stage and believe it or not they are clued up enough to understand that if they commit to this cost to just 'get something out there' and it fails then its probably game over for the business.

This is not something Apple are just chucking out into the market place, large amounts of reseach, market analysis and product developement will have been done before the iPhone got green lighted. There is still an element of risk the iPhone will tank but Apple will have done as much as they can to reduce it.

Re:elite

[onkelonkel]

What does a Rolex _do_.? It costs a lot of money. This will occasionally impress some people. If impressing people who are impressed by Rolexes is important enough to you to make the $3000 cost worthwile then by all means buy one. Being impressed by $3000 wristwatches is totally incomprehensible to me.

I wear a $29 timex ironman. It keeps almost perfect time (loses 4 seconds a year), it has a countdown timer and 2 alarms and runs about 5 years on a battery. Nobody is going to hold me up for my watch either.

Over hyped? No, genuine excitement.

[Gary W. Longsine]

Apple really hasn't done much hyping of the iPhone, if you think about it.

• January 10, 2007: MacWorld 2007 keynote, introduces iPhone
• Apple.com iPhone web site
• A couple interviews showing the phone, letting reporters hold it for a couple minutes
• A very few magazine articles with access to Steve Jobs and the iPhone
• Super Bowl "Hello" iPhone commercial
• June 3, 2007: Apple starts running four new commercials that demonstrate features of the phone

Really, this is far, far less promotion than you see for typical new products. Heck, hamburgers at Burger King get more hype than this, by far, in a six month period. Even though they probably eat a whole bunch of them, bloggers don't get excited and blog about it.

Apple's biggest contribution to the "hype" came from keeping the project secret until it was up to a point where it could be demonstrated, and then keeping their mouths shut after the MacWorld Keynote, and refusing to answer questions about anything that wasn't demonstrated by Steve Jobs on January 10.

What we're seeing in the media, blogs, and in meatspace is, I think, genuine excitement. People can look at the information that's available, which is I grant you incomplete, but they can also look at the phone in their hand. They can tell immediately that several things they don't like about their phone are fixed by the iPhone. Visual Voicemail is damned exciting. A phone that can access the internet simply and easily is exciting. The Google Maps commercial makes girls squeel and giggle with delight when they see the pins drop... (try it sometime.) I don't think it's hype. I think it's genuine interest.