tl;dr:
Ex. micro-softie laments all the ways ms failed in the mobile space, while completely overlooking the elephant in the room:
MS, in the mobile space, did not have an already entrenched monopoly upon which to leverage other market share.
Ex. micro-softie laments all the ways ms failed in the mobile space, while completely overlooking the elephant in the room:
MS, in the mobile space, did not have an already entrenched monopoly upon which to leverage other market share.
Unless this is a subtle commentary on Google's use of their search monopolistic power to drive adoption of Android (which drives further adoption of Google products) -- if so, then kudos to you.
It seems that the people that brought Microsoft to where it became the dominant force either left or were no longer listened to and Microsoft simply expected to succeed because they where already huge 'over there.'
May be these people have no more disruptive ideas.
The iPhone was a natural progression from the iPod, which dominated the music player market since the turn of the millenium.
The iPhone was a small battery powered box you can hold in your hand and it could play music, just like the iPod, but at the time the iPhone debuted, that's about where the similarities ended.
Also, because of its price ($500 plus a two-year contract) the iPhone targeted a different audience.
The iPhone was about combining your music player (that everybody already owned) and with your phone and then adding an incredibly smooth web experience. Without the iPod functionality, it would have still been a revolutionary phone, but the mass adoption and hype surrounding it would have been reduced.
iPods had just become colour when the iPhone came out, so the main differences were interaction (touchscreen vs "touch wheel"), screen size and connectivity. It wasn't long before the iPod touch came out, with a big touchscreen and apps; basically a non-phone iPhone, giving that different audience a clear transition path.
Why did Microsoft need monopoly leverage? Because for about 20 years, that had been the way they won in new markets: they entered the new market, found a way to leverage the Windows monopoly to give them an edge in that market, and went on to win a dominant position in the new market.
So when the time came to try to dominate a new market without that edge from leveraging Windows, Microsoft didn't know how to do it.
Not quite true. MS managed to beat out Palm to become the market leader in PDAs and mobile devices, just before the iPhone was released and torpedoed everyone.
At one time, there were as many different models of Windows CE devices as there are Android devices now, giving MS a severe fragmentation problem back then similar to the one that Android has now.