Ask HN: Looking back in time, why did the iPod win? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Looking back in time, why did the iPod win?

1 pointiaskwhy2 comments

I am curious about this because of the recent comparison between the iPod market share and what can happen to the iPad.

For reference, here's an article by David Heinemeier Hansson about it: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1397-why-an-ipod-killer-will-never-kill-the-ipod

In short, DHH talks about the three things a competitor needed to do in order to beat the iPod: - superior industrial design - iTunes-beating catalogue of content - better desktop experience than iTunes.

This got me thinking. The iPod was overpriced when compared to the alternatives and did pretty much only one thing: play music. Even with only one task, the competitors took a lot of time to actually beat it experience-wise (and that's if we are optimist enough to consider the Zune a better experience).

Fast forward to the iPad, it does a lot of things so it's even harder for the other companies to beat it.

So why did the iPod win its battle? And does it make sense to compare the two markets?

Though the iPod experience was significantly better than competitors when it first launched, within a few years Panasonic, and iRiver had devices which neared the usability of iPods. I've got a ZuneHD, and it is much more usable than the iPod touch (I had one of those too).

Though usability had a significant affect on the initial strength of the iPod, I believe it was Apple's HUGE marketing effort the created exponential growth.

I see the same thing in the current market. As Apple is selling both hardware and software, and taking all the profits, they invest heavily in marketing and create a single consistent message. If we compare that to Android, who is responsible for marketing? The hardware manufacturers are doing most of the marketing, which creates a fragmented message re: Android, as each maker is trying to sell their hardware. People can only absorb so many messages, and I think it gets confusing for people.

I think comparing the two markets is a bit simplistic. Due to the app ecosystem, and a stronger demand in OS capabilities, I think this will be a different market. But Apple's strength in marketing and current 'darling' status should be considered in any market comparison. The market gives Apple a halo, and Apple has been exceptionally good at keeping it polished.

Positive (for Apple) reasons for success:

* They put the hard stuff in iTunes, and made the iPod a mostly dumb receptacle. Competitors either didn't have a software hub, and so put everything into the device (giving bad UI) or just skipped that part (like the metadata normalisation).

* Having done the above Apple could make the core elements of finding and playing music very smooth. The scroll wheel was killer here.

Not so positive, but still key reasons:

* Both Microsoft and Sony committed suicide by being in bed with big media. It was Sony's market to lose, but they'd already stuffed up Minidisc (which was great tech for it's time, I kept mine until the 3rd gen of iPod hade enough storage to justify its use) for the same reasons. At roughly the same time frame Microsoft was putting DRM on CDs you ripped yourself and got seduced by their own hype about DRM for music. They promised a Spotify-like experience, probably ahead of its time, but couldn't deliver it smoothly enough.

How does this translate to the new market? Google is putting the hard stuff on the web/cloud (maps, navigation, youtube, gmail, voice recognition, answer-phone transcription) which means the phone/tablet can do more while doing less and it seems Apple's trying to follow with iOS5, but I don't see them having the competency to do so. I guess we'll see.

Personally, I think Apple will win as long as tablets are status signals. Once everyone has one, they'll have Android ones.

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