> As customers start to realise that the competition offers better functionality at a lower price, by negotiating a better subsidy, sales will stagnate. After a year a new version will be launched, but it will lack the innovation of the first and quickly vanish.
There was a good few years there where everyone was looking for the "iPod-killer". There's even a chance the Zune would have got there, except by time they got close .. that's not where the puck was.
But I always found it interesting that after all that search for the "iPod-killer", none was ever crowned - instead the entire market just slipped silently into the night.
It wasn’t so much Apple bribing Cingular as it was Apple/Jobs selling Cingular on the strategy of using iPhone exclusivity as an accelerant for their plans to become a top tier mobile provider.
It worked.
And I really don't think this is a bad comparison, given that in 2006, iTunes is still very much fresh in the mind.
Handspring built a modern smartphone and got roasted by the telcos. All jobs had to do was ask "do you want access to our millions of ipod and imusic subscribers?" and he got his way.