On the iPhone and Apple's Meteoric Rise To the Top

zacharye writes "Friday marks five years since the world first got its hands on a smartphone that would turn the industry on its head. In five short years, Apple went from the ground floor to being the most profitable company in the smartphone business by a staggering margin. Apple and Samsung — two companies that weren't even on the smartphone industry's map a few years ago — are now the only two major global vendors making money, and the split was estimated at 80/20 in Apple's favor last quarter. That's 80% of smartphone industry profits in less than five years with just five different smartphone models under its belt during that span."

Comments

Re:Your side is obvious

[obarthelemy]

I think you're selling him short. The guy had the courage to enforce his own very strong opinions, that luckily were very user-centric, but also knew to back down from time to time. I don't agree with most of his choices, but they did work and push the envelope. On the other side, MS seems a prime case of community design and political choices, probably knowing what the market wanted (Metro !), but failing to push courageous solutions in favor of preserving their markets and counting on their strength to force bad-ish solutions down our throats. Smartphones and tablets are a prime example: MS was there first by a wide margin, but marred the experience by trying to use their desktop interface, failing to spot the allure of a fully locked-in, proprietary ecosystem, and relying on OEMs for hardware, apps, cloud.