The iPhone is destructive to the innovations brought about by traditional mobile businesses

IPhoneThe announcement is called a watershed event in the history of mobile communication. This caused a sensation, but it was also greatly underestimated. Even today, experts' opinions on the significance of the iPhone are still divergent. Opponents think it is nothing more than a small ornament and an innovation that is easily copied. Its fans described it as having revolutionary and dazzling potential and the qualification to re-invent mobile phones.

So what is she?

I will none of the above. The iPhone is not redundant. It is not easily replicated. It is neither revolutionary nor upscale. However, it is destructive.

First, we must find its potential destructiveness accurately and quickly.

The destructiveness of a product is manifested in its increasing competitiveness based on the features of existing products. This kind of competitiveness is directly manifested in innovation. This means it may be "low-end" because it has cheaper, simpler, and more modular processing chips, or it can create a "New Market" that never existed before ". Both "low-end" and "New Market" reflect a completely different business model from the past.

The destructive result of products is that, over time, such a new business model has been accepted by people, and the existing product market is under large-scale exploitation and division. In essence, this process is very slow, and this threat is also subtle. When you discover it, it will be too late.

If we look at this definition, the iPhone does not seem suitable for being a "spoof ".

As a mobile phone, it is neither cheap nor modular, so it is not "low-end" and has not created a new market. Although it absorbs more common phone users as smartphone users, it is not the only one. For the iPhone, the only thing that seems to prove destructive is that it transfers a large amount of profits from the mobile phone industry to Apple, at least for the time being.

Therefore, the destructive power of the iPhone can be attributed to continuous innovation. Of course, we need to dig deeper.

When conducting market analysis, we can easily limit a product to only one market. In my opinion, from a strategic perspective of the past, we should look for a product to see its market intersection. For example, iPod may look like an MP3 player, but it causes profit to crash in various industries. It eliminated the CD business, which weakened the industry of the component audio system "High Fidelity". It flattened the music retail business and affected the entire music value chain. Until now, it still hits the door of video and TV programs. It also breaks down the Mythical Man created by Sony. Although it is a music player, it turns out that the MP3 market is only the smallest target of the iPod. For iPod, the bigger goal is a complete supporting industry, which is a comprehensive ecosystem. Is your music life everywhere, just rely on an iPod.

Therefore, we have reason to believe that the current iPhone is the iPod of the mobile phone industry. It cares more about the entire supporting industry than just the mobile phone industry.

Telephones have always been essential endpoints for value-added telecommunications networks that are commonly referred to as "terminals. Similar to computers, the iPhone enables information to move from a central source to a network edge. The rise of mobile computing (such as iPhone) is not due to smart technology, but to mobile broadband technology. Mobile broadband technology changes the focus of smart phones from voice to Data. This transformation is destructive to traditional mobile operators. They have lost their pricing power in their speech applications and are only used as a channel for data transmission. The development of iPhone-based mobile computing has led to a shift in services similar to those of ring tones, maps, emails, and on-demand video streaming.

RIM and Apple can easily gain a foothold and development. It is because they have opened a new concept of commercial email and the iconic user interface. When we notice the smart phone network business model, we can find that when you realize that the potential for consumption growth is far greater than the current share. The iPhone is not only part of the current mobile phone market, but also part of the new mobile computing product portfolio, which damages the traditional territory of mobile operators.

From this point of view, as a new mobile computing model, the iPhone is an important, not redundant Mobile terminal device. It is also a combination of powerful network effects and ecosystems, and is not easy to replicate.

In other words, traditional mobile services are destructive.