The iPhone and iPod Touch both have demonstrated enthusiasm in the market that tends to be reserved for disruptive products. The question about a disruptor, especially as technologies become more fused together, is what exactly is it disrupting?
Clayton Christensen early on said that the iPhone is not disrupting mobile phones. As he put it, it is a ‘better’ telephone than other smartphones. There is nothing really different with the service plan. iPhone will not disrupt the phone business (and Christensen has written extensively on the history of phones going back to Alexander Graham Bell, so it makes sense this was his first reaction).
With games out on the iPhone, many thought that it would give the DS a run for its money. Apple fans were so excited. But, alas, it became clear that the iPhone wasn’t disrupting gaming. The DS, with its two screens and all, is still differentiated. Interestingly, as touch screen helped differentiate its games from the PSP, the DS buttons differentiate its games from the iPhone.
Christensen has come out and said that the iPhone, along with the new wave of smartphones, are disrupting mobile computers. Who is the incumbent here? The laptop. This isn’t saying the laptop is dead or is going away. It is saying that that the handheld PC (like an iPhone) is significantly downmarket from the laptop. It can only do a few things well. It cannot do all the things of the laptop. But what will happen is that the smartphones will vigorously compete against one another, sustaining innovations pile on one another, and the handheld PC will eventually move upmarket enough to begin goring the laptop. The laptop will predictably retreat upmarket and may cannibalize desktop PCs at a faster pace than it is currently doing.
Who is the big loser here? Intel. Intel is nowhere at the handheld PC scene. As the disruption theory shows, the handheld PC will grow and grow and, eventually, the laptops will become less and less relevant. This is how Intel is a potential candidate for becoming disrupted if it doesn’t jump on board the handheld PC wagon soon.
Will people take a small keyboard with them and just plug it into one of these handheld PCs instead of lugging a laptop around? As for screens, they are becoming cheaper with each new day. There are also new el cheapo laptops, using linux, that are also eating away at the traditional laptop. All in all, computing is becoming more mobile and cheaper. Just when I think the computer revolution is over, it starts all over again. So goes the Wheel of Disruption.
To show how fast things have changed, consider the PSP that was released in 2004. Remember the press saying that Apple’s video ipod, released after 2004, would challenge the PSP on the multimedia fronts? The iPhone/ iTouch absolutely destroys the PSP in terms of it being a multimedia machine. PSP can do video, music, can go on the Internet, but the iPhone does it all better. I’m not saying iTouch is disrupting PSP, I am saying it is beating it the traditional way. PSP, of course, has better games on it. But DS beats the PSP in the game department (in terms of a larger more varied library) so what is the PSP to do?
Sony must feel confident of PSP’s recent performance in Japan to have planned a PSP ‘re-launch’ (or something) in the USA. Unfortunately, the multimedia functionality of the PSP has really been cut off at the knees by the iPhone and iPod Touch. It makes me wonder how exactly Sony plans to follow up the PSP. I don’t hear PSP being on a ‘ten year plan’.
Sony’s problem is that the iPod Touch is the PSP 2. And Sony has never been able to make much headway against the iPod line. It will be interesting to see if iPhone or iPod Touch eats PSP sales in America (since it doesn’t appear those buying PSPs are doing it for the software).
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