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Comment by drtillberg | Hacker News Reader

Raikes incidentally pointed out that tech business leadership is inherently unstable. Writing of Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect:

> They were the leaders and they could have chosen to cannibalize themselves. But they didn't act fast enough and were scared that investing in the new paradigm would open the door for us-- ironically it was their slow pace that opened the door.

No business voluntarily cannibalizes it's core revenue stream. That snippet explains succinctly how monoline dominance in technology is inherently unstable, and also tends to explain the "Amazon" (ha!) approach from major technology companies of massively diverse investment and M&A to overcome this effect and maintain their core dominance.

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Smart businesses do all the time. read "Innovator's Dilemma" If they don't, someone else would. Apple cannibalized the ipod with the iphone. Netflix cannibalized mail-in DVDs with streaming. Facebook did their desktop with mobile.

"improving a product" isn't "cannibalizing". Cannibalizing means destroying your profitable product to bet on something different that might not make money even if it succeeds, the how Linux or the growth of ther web cannibalizing Windows OS sales.

Netflix did not improve their mail order DVD business. Nothing about streaming improved their mail order dvd delivery.

What you have uncovered is that successful cannibalization in a product area in retrospect can seem like product continuation and improvement. But at the time - absolutely not.

To make the example clear think if Blockbuster had released a streaming service back then before Netflix. Obviously would've cannibalized their successful video store rental business. But assuming they won out, it would've just seemed like an evolution in video rental.

I could be wrong, but didn't apple cannibalize its ipod business with the release of iPhone?

Yes Apple does cannabalize its own products, iPod-> iPhone & notebooks -> iPads for instance. From what I remember this was also how Jobs et al. at Apple views it.

Basically if you want to be a innovator you can't worry about eating your own.

Incidentally Tesla has done the same with Model 3 / Y eating up S / X sales.

> with Model 3 / Y eating up S / X sales.

Eeehhhhh. Not really. They did discontinue the low-end S editions, yes - but the number of people who could have afforded to buy an S who opted for a 3 instead aren’t that many people.

Tesla opted to remarket the S/X as flagship cars instead of being their mainstream offering.

It would be cannibalism if Tesla launched an extended wheelbase/station-wagon/estate/shooting-brake version of the Model 3/Y while still getting the S/X around.

Actually - I will concede that the Model Y probably is eating into sales of the X.

iPhones are just fancier iPods that consumers are willing to buy again every other year, instead that once a decade. It seems to me that iPods cannibalized the phone market.

It’s not cannibalisation if you’re eating someone else’s products.

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