The iPhone killer and other stories

The subject of this post has been mulling around in my mind for days now, if not weeks. And it took the form of random thoughts flitting in and out of the mind, discussions with colleagues and friends, and finally, I got to penning them down. Now, I must say much has been written about this topic, so my thoughts are but a drop in the ocean. But nonetheless, here goes!
A top exec in the mobile phones division of a consumer electronics giant was apparently given six months by his boss 'to come up with a phone that equals the iPhone'. Now, these are not the exact words, but the meaning was pretty much the same. The immediate thought that came to mind when I heard about this was that if you're going to target something that just equals the iPhone, then you've already lost the battle even before it's begun! You've lost it even before you've gotten your device to the market! Because, if it only equals the iPhone, that doesn't give the consumer any reason to switch. (Well, unless you're in the US, you might want to switch if this device is introduced on something other than AT&T. See this and this.) That, of course, was a knee-jerk reaction, if you will. Because, if that's the first thought to cross my mind, obviously it would've crossed the mind of the exec (and his boss) who are in charge of actually doing it (unlike yours' truly, who's indulging in armchair thoughtfulness).
So we'll just leave it at that (for now). But later while I thought about it, I found that the question to be asked is really, 'What makes the iPhone the device it is right now?' Apple was never in the mobile phone market. But with a single iPhone (well, the revisions of iPhone, the iPhone 3G and now the iPhone 3GS over the years, to be precise) it not only entered the market, but captured the imagination of the public in such a way that would definitely have led to Nokia put their thinking caps on. The iPhone is a combination of great hardware (the huge screen, the capacitive touch interface), fine software (the iPhone OS), and great user interface (the multi-touch gestures). But is that the reason it's a winner? The recently launched Palm Pre, while definitely not even in the same ballpark with regard to popularity, does have a great OS (Palm's Web OS), which may even be better than the iPhone OS. The Android as a platform, while not a serious competition (yet), is definitely interesting enough for some major handset makers to be a part of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA). In fact, it is technically better, not in the least because it allows apps to run in the background, unleashing the potential of (especially) location-based services. Nokia is renowned for great hardware - rugged, reliable and very user-friendly. Blackberry is the go-to phone for business users. So you see, the iPhone, while a nice device, is not extra-ordinary compared to it's peers. So what sets it apart? Well, most of you have the answer by now - the Apple app store. By opening up the iPhone 3G SDK to the developer community, Apple hit the jackpot early on in the game. And now, it's an uphill game for any new player in the market. I don't know if it was Jobs' idea to do it, but whoever it was, has to be a genius. Release the iPhone SDK to the thousands - if not tens of thousands - of developers out there, and it's like having a thousand brilliant minds working for you, and your product. No one, not even Apple - or Microsoft, or Google, or Intel for that matter - can compete with the power of the bright and crazy minds lurking out there! The app store is, in fact, the propeller of the iPhone sales! So it's a win-win situation for Apple - not only does it push the iPhone sales, it also fills in its cash registers via the 30 percent cut that it takes from the app sales. One only has to see the apps available for other mobile phones to see the wide chasm that separates the iPhone and all other smart-phones/feature-phones - Windows Mobile, Nokia, Android, you name it. While Android does have the Android Marketplace, it's nowhere close to the App store - both in terms of the variety of apps and the volume of downloads. After the success of the app store, the others are rushing in to create their own app store, but again, that is playing catch-up. And then they're not doing a good job of it!
Coming back to the point of the consumer phone giant exec who's been given the brief of launching an iPhone-equaling phone (they're not even calling it the iPhone-killer), I wondered if the guys have got it right? Does a better hardware and/or software mean a better phone (in terms of sales numbers)? And will this consumer giant be open to the idea of an 'open' development environment? Will it open it's SDK to the developer community? And what will be the ingredients for this iPhone-killer? Apple revolutionized the smart-phone market by thinking differently, not by playing catch-up to Nokia (which is still, and will be for years to come, the undisputed leader in the mobile-phone space). And having come up with a device that gives a great new user-experience, it went one up and came out with the app store. In a different context, some one at Twitter apparently asked, "Can we do to Google what Google did to others?" I think that that's one hell of a question to ask. Can some one do to Apple what Apple did to the (rest of) the mobile phone market? I don't know if some one can, but I sure do wish that some one does. Finally, a competitive market is the surest hotbed of innovation. Apple has rushed ahead of the pack, and it is surely difficult to revolutionize the market with a 'iPhone-killer'.
What I'll try and do next is relate some of my own experiences as a researcher. I cannot of course disclose what our team is working on, but I'll try and make the point. Our team is working on coming up with cutting edge algorithms to build a product in the mobile phone/multi-media space. In the early stages, when we were doing a literature survey of the state-of-the-art in the field, we found ourselves looking for lacunae in the existing technology. Well, sure enough that is one way to go about it. But I later realized, that that approach would only result in incremental benefits. Instead, why not look at the problem and think of a completely different approach? By a 'completely different approach' I mean look at it from the point of view of - What would I want in this if I were using this technology/product? Of course, as a researcher, you have to answer two questions - first, what do you want to do, and second, how do you go about doing it? The first deals with ideas, and the second with execution. (Here is another excellent post about ideas vs. execution. And another one.) To paraphrase the words in the first post - the most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000. So well, both are, of course, important. But I think that the first step in the process is the idea. What would I want in this technology, as a user? What would make me choose technology X over Y? And I found myself asking the same question in my own quest to come up with a solution for the problem we're working on. As long as you're looking at your competitor and asking, "What can I give my user that s/he can't?", you'll always (unwittingly, may be) be playing catch-up. Instead, the question that begs asking is, "What would my user like in this product/technology?" Of course, having answered that question, the real-challenge is to actually give it to the user! But I guess that the engineers/researchers/technologists are capable enough of doing that. The problem is not about answering the question, it is about the right question to be asked. Apple did that by revolutionizing the way people think about mobile phones. It did that by coming up with the idea of giving the user a computing device that accesses the Web on the go, and which, as a bonus, is able to receive/make calls, and send text messages! It figured out the execution of that plan (it has patents in resizing web pages for a mobile device), and bingo! A great idea and great execution, and you have a (literally) $20 million business. It did that by thinking about giving the user the power to select what sort of features s/he would want on their device. And it did that by launching the app store as a marketplace for applications that the user can download to their iPhones. Most recently (with the launch of the iPhone 3GS), it did that by giving the user the power to share multimedia content (video) directly from their mobile phone. Heck, the idea and the execution. Sounds utterly simple when you get it right, doesn't it?