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Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

> will instead play out like smartphones (giants entrench and balloon).

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't smartphones go the "upstarts unseat giants" way? Apple wasn't a phone-maker, and became huge in the phone-market after their launch. Google also wasn't a phone-maker, yet took over the market slowly but surely with their Android purchase.

I barely see any Motorola, Blackberry, Nokia or Sony Ericsson phones anymore, yet those were the giants at one time. Now it's all iOS/Android, two "upstarts" initially.

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> Now it's all iOS/Android, two "upstarts" initially.

They weren't upstarts, they were giants who moved into a new (but tightly related) space and pushed out other companies that were in spaces that at first seemed closely related but actually were more different than first appeared.

Android and iOS won because smartphones were actually mobile computers with a cellular chip, not phones with fancy software. Seen that way Apple was obviously not an upstart, they were a giant that grew even further.

Google is perhaps somewhat more surprising since they didn't do hardware at all before, but they did have Chrome, giving them a major in on the web platform side, and were also able to leverage their enormous search revenue. Neither resource is available to an upstart/startup.

Neither Apple nor Google were giants in 2007.

"Not as giant as they are today" is not the same thing as "not giants". Let's compare revenue and net income for Google, Apple, and the other manufacturers that OP mentioned:

* Google: $16.5B revenue, $4.2B net income [0]

* Apple: $24B revenue, $3.5B net income [1]

* Motorola: $36B, -$49M net income [2]

* BlackBerry (RIM): $2B, $382M net income [3]

* Nokia: €51B, €7.9B net income [4]

* Sony: $48B, $799M net income (converted from yen at 158 yen/$) [5]

These numbers are absolutely in the same ballpark as the supposedly-larger players which they beat out, and in terms of profit substantially higher than all but Nokia.

[0] https://abc.xyz/assets/investor/static/pdf/2007_google_annua...

[1] https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320193/4913a18...

[2] https://www.motorolasolutions.com/content/dam/msi/docs/en-xw...

[3] https://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReportArchive...

[4] https://www.nokia.com/system/files/files/request-nokia-in-20...

[5] https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/ar/SonyAR07-E.pd...

Both were giants in 2007. Google was at peak post-IPO fame and Apple was full steam ahead with Jobs at the helm. They were huge players, far from startups or upstarts.

Seconded. For context, Google was about to launch Chrome and Apple was about to launch the Windows version of Safari. Both companies were clearly on the offense at the time.

(and the parent poster was competing with both :) )

> Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't smartphones go the "upstarts unseat giants" way?

I think "upstarts" is being used uphthread to mean "startups" and "giants" is being used in a general, not market-specific, sense; that is, it isn't referring to entities that are mere new entrants in a particular market but still potentially quite large and established firms displacing incumbents in the particular market, but new, small-starting firms taking over a newly-opened market segment, beating out the large, established firms (from other markets) that are also trying to compete in it.

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