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New iPhones, new Galaxies: Who's the Bigger Copycat? (yahoo.com)
David Pogue: Apparently, a lot of people hang their identities on what phones they carry. An iPhone person might feel personally affronted when a Samsung Galaxy gets a great review, and vice versa. Apple and Samsung just introduced their new fall 2018 smartphones, and it's clearer than ever: all smartphones have pretty much the same features. Therefore, it strikes many people as searingly important to remember which brand had those features first.
OS Features: Apple invented the touchscreen phone as we know it. The original 2007 iPhone brought us multitouch (pinch to zoom), an on-screen keyboard, auto-rotate, lists that scroll as though with momentum, and the apps-on-a-Home-page design that we all use to this day. Not surprisingly, then, Apple wins this category, having introduced 13 ideas, compared to Android's 10 (and Samsung's 1). The screen is the first thing you notice when you turn on a phone --how big, bright, and gorgeous it is. You can read the full review here. The final verdict: Apple leads the invention category, with 44 innovations, according to our calculations. Google's Android comes in second, with 31. And Samsung brings up the rear with 12 innovations. Now, if you count the number of times each company is listed as a Follower in the spreadsheet, you discover that Apple also seems to have stolen the most ideas. In part, that's because I'm pitting Apple against Google/Samsung (its phones use Google's software). As a result, no feature ever lists Google and Samsung as innovator+follower, or vice versa; they're always a single team.
OS Features: Apple invented the touchscreen phone as we know it. The original 2007 iPhone brought us multitouch (pinch to zoom), an on-screen keyboard, auto-rotate, lists that scroll as though with momentum, and the apps-on-a-Home-page design that we all use to this day. Not surprisingly, then, Apple wins this category, having introduced 13 ideas, compared to Android's 10 (and Samsung's 1). The screen is the first thing you notice when you turn on a phone --how big, bright, and gorgeous it is. You can read the full review here. The final verdict: Apple leads the invention category, with 44 innovations, according to our calculations. Google's Android comes in second, with 31. And Samsung brings up the rear with 12 innovations. Now, if you count the number of times each company is listed as a Follower in the spreadsheet, you discover that Apple also seems to have stolen the most ideas. In part, that's because I'm pitting Apple against Google/Samsung (its phones use Google's software). As a result, no feature ever lists Google and Samsung as innovator+follower, or vice versa; they're always a single team.
They both are still "innovating" things that were present in Nokia phones 10 years ago.
Brilliant.
Being the first to innovate can be great, being the first to get it right is often better (of course 'better' is a matter of opinion). Examples:
- Yahoo and Altavista were before Google with search engines, but Google got the better implementation and the rest are history
- Creative was before Apple with an MP3 player, but the iPod got the better formula
- Palm and Microsoft were before Apple with smart phones, but Apple changed the market when it brought out the first iPhone
- Microsoft was before Apple with the tablet, but the iPad also changed the market and made them appealing
Being first mover is great if you can keep enough of a lead, but sometimes second mover has the advantage of learning the lessons of the first mover without having to invest the same initial amount to get market validation.
As a a buyer of technology, seeing your favourite company bring out something new is cool, but seeing them making it feel natural and not a fight is even better.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
As long as a phone as the features you want, what difference does it make which phone had them first, or how they ended up on your phone?
People who care about this kind of stuff...I mean...honestly. It's just the technonerd version of "My dad can beat up your dad."
List of impressive smartphone innovations:
- Skyrocketing prices for marginal incremental improvement
- Devices costing $500-$1000 dollars lacking user replaceable batteries
- Removal of widely used physical interfaces for self-enrichment / courage
- Artificially low amounts of internal persistent storage completely out of whack with current technology coupled with refusal to provide SD expansion
- Crummy battery life
- Phones so thin they snap like graham crackers in your pockets
- Lack of usability / physical buttons
- eSIMs
- Locked bootloaders, operating systems and carriers
- Preloaded to the hilt with malware
Keep up the good work.
Pretty sure Nokia would be in business had they not been bought, and then shuttered, by Microsoft.
Unlikely. Nokia was already suffering from a bunch of self inflicted wounds before they got in bed with Microsoft. There is no compelling evidence to suggest that Symbian or MeeGo would have gained meaningful traction in the market. They lost a march to Apple and Google in operating systems and never really caught up. Partnering with Microsoft wasn't in principle a terrible idea but it was horribly executed. If I had been a shareholder in either company I would have been incredibly angry. I've seen very few companies crap the bed quite as hard as Nokia did around 2008-2012.
Pretty sure they were doing fine until they became a victim of Microsoft trying to get into the phone industry.
No they were not. The moment the iPhone dropped Nokia's market share in smartphones started to fall and as Android picked up it just got worse. It's not clear whether they could have fended off iOS and Android but it was very clear that they were no longer "doing fine" even at the time.
They might have still managed somehow but once the Burning Platform memo was issued they basically announced publicly that their current products had no future while they had no replacement based on Microsoft's system ready to ship for a long time after that. It was one of the most insanely stupid blunders I've ever seen.