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by imperialWicket 3560 days ago
Monetizing was Apple's success, but in the early iPhones, I'd argue it was a lot of carry over from iTunes. Apple forced you to have an Apple ID, and associated with the Apple ID meant they could seamlessly sell you things and charge you for it. At the time, no one else had this position and it made a huge impact for the iPhone as a successful device in a rapidly changing landscape (phone as phone -> phone as device to buy from carrier/provider -> phone as device to buy from marketplace).

Also: "none of the original competitors even survived"? Are you talking about tech like Sidekick here? Samsung/LG were big players in early Android, and they're obviously still around. There's a huge amount of discussion around BlackBerry, Nokia (Symbian), and Windows - but to say that none of the original competitors even survived feels hyperbolic.
1 comments
dpark 3560 days ago
> Monetizing was Apple's success, but in the early iPhones, I'd argue it was a lot of carry over from iTunes. Apple forced you to have an Apple ID, and associated with the Apple ID meant they could seamlessly sell you things and charge you for it.

I'm not clear what you mean with this. Apple made you create an Apple ID in order to use an iPhone. Whether you had an existing one because of iTunes didn't matter, because you absolutely had one if you were using an iPhone.

> Also: "none of the original competitors even survived"? Are you talking about tech like Sidekick here? Samsung/LG were big players in early Android, and they're obviously still around. There's a huge amount of discussion around BlackBerry, Nokia (Symbian), and Windows - but to say that none of the original competitors even survived feels hyperbolic.

Android didn't exist when the iPhone launched. Nokia is dead. Blackberry is basically dead. Windows Mobile died and was replaced with Windows Phone which is also nearly dead. There's no hyperbole here.

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imperialWicket 3560 days ago
If you did have an iTunes account, you were prime for an iPhone purchase. That demographic had a clean experience of buying a mobile device that was super-capable (someone could pretty much out-of-the-box sell you things, without having ask for information - like a cc #). None of the existing devices had this, and it would be a long time until anyone was even close. I don't think this is a point of disconnect, I was highlighting one of the sometimes overlooked (imo) aspects of Apple's longer-term execution that I think made an impact.

Fair point on the competitors. It's hard to ignore Android as a competitor, and I might disagree with saying that Android wasn't an "original" competitor. But if you mean original as "existing at launch time", I'll happily agree (But by that definition, iPhone isn't a [original] competitor to Nokia/Blackberry/Windows, it just happened to destroy them - EDIT - it's a fair distinction).

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dpark 3560 days ago
> If you did have an iTunes account, you were prime for an iPhone purchase. That demographic had a clean experience of buying a mobile device that was super-capable (someone could pretty much out-of-the-box sell you things, without having ask for information - like a cc #). None of the existing devices had this, and it would be a long time until anyone was even close. I don't think this is a point of disconnect, I was highlighting one of the sometimes overlooked (imo) aspects of Apple's longer-term execution that I think made an impact.

I'm not sure I see this as a significant factor. When the iPhone launched, there was no app store. There was no iCloud, no iBooks. The only thing you could buy with the CC# Apple had for you was music, which you were already buying with iTunes.

Maybe having a CC# associated with your account helped Apple later when they launched an app store, but by that time their competitors were doing the same.

> Fair point on the competitors. It's hard to ignore Android as a competitor, and I might disagree with saying that Android wasn't an "original" competitor. But if you mean original as "existing at launch time", I'll happily agree.

Well, the first Android device to ship was the HTC Dream, and that was over a year after the iPhone shipped, so by definition it was not an original competitor. Also, if you had tried a Dream, you'd likely not have thought it was very competitive with the iPhone 3G that was out by that time. (I tried one and was utterly unimpressed.)

> But by that definition, iPhone isn't a competitor to Nokia/Blackberry/Windows, it just happened to destroy them

In the same way that Google wasn't a competitor with Excite and Infoseek and Yahoo Search but just happened to utterly destroy them? I think if your product destroys the market for another product, that other product is the (obviously losing) competition.

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Natanael_L 3560 days ago
Android existed but wasn't released yet when iPhone launched.
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