How Apple accidentally changed the world
Alex Blake looks into five ways in which Apple has transformed the tech industry
There’s no doubt that Apple is a game changer. Most times, the innovative tech giant has set out with a vision of what it wants to change and how, but sometimes things can take an unexpected turn – and Apple ends up changing an entire industry without even meaning to.
Touchscreens, app stores, music downloads – even the modern concept of a smartphone – in all of these cases, Apple has innovated, and nearly every one of its competitors has scrambled to play catch up.
Where Apple goes, others follow. In this article, we look at five occasions the Cupertino giant has accidentally changed the world.
1. Smartphones
Apple knew it had something special when it launched the original iPhone 10 years ago. On stage at Macworld 2007, Steve Jobs recounted the times Apple had revolutionised the tech industry with the Macintosh and the iPod, and announced that Apple was about to do it again. Similarly, the company’s press release for the iPhone was titled ‘Apple Reinvents the Phone with iPhone’, and went on to quote Jobs as saying: “iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone.” Big talk, indeed.
But aside from its revolutionary physical features, it changed the world in a different way – it reconfigured the relationship between mobile networks, phone manufacturers and customers. In the US, the situation before the iPhone was skewed in favour of the network companies, who would use access to their networks as a means to exert influence on how phones were to be designed and how much they’d cost.
As Wired magazine put it not long after the launch of the iPhone, “Handsets were viewed largely as cheap, disposable lures, massively subsidised to snare subscribers and lock them into using the carriers’ proprietary services.”
High-end handsets
What the iPhone did was prove that phones needn’t be cheap, disposable afterthoughts. It proved that expensive phones – even those costing $599 as the top-end iPhone did at launch – could sell well. Indeed, market analysts UBS Research predicted the iPhone would sell over 3 million units by the end of 2007, making it the world’s fastest-selling smartphone at the time.
This flipped the status quo on its head. Smartphone manufacturers strove to create something consumers wanted, rather than something the networks wanted. This was apparent almost immediately – “The iPhone is already changing the way carriers and manufacturers behave,” remarked Michael Olson, a securities analyst at Piper Jaffray, less than a year after the iPhone came out.
Similarly, Apple shook up the relationship between manufacturers and networks in Japan. There, networks also had undue influence on what made it into finished phones, tinkering and adding features until they were bloated and complicated. They added TV receivers and e-wallets – features that the networks thought were indispensable.
Then, in July 2008, came the iPhone. As in the
After 2007, manufacturers strove to create something consumers wanted
US, Steve Jobs had managed to get the iPhone on sale in Japan with no modifications from the networks. This was highly unusual – even in 2013, Japanese mobile phone expert Nobuyuki Hayashi commented that “iPhone still is about the only phone in Japan which is sold unmodified” – but it was a successful approach.
Without the bloatware and resulting confusion and battery drain, the iPhone was able to soar to success – so much so that less than two years later it had captured 72% of the Japanese smartphone market. Runner-up HTC secured a paltry 11%.
The end result is that the iPhone changed perceptions of what a smartphone could be. It needn’t be a cheap, throwaway item; it could be premium and luxurious. It needn’t be bloated with unnecessary features; it could be simple and refined. The whole smartphone paradigm shifted when Steve Jobs walked onto the Macworld stage in January 2007.