Newton's Laws

Author: Thomas Newton

Here's a hypothetical situation: you're four years old, and for all of those years you've been a shining star in your parent's eyes. You could do no wrong. On one fateful spring night, however, your world is rocked: a new baby brother is brought home. You fall from the zenith of the heavens to simply being the older sibling. The only way to regain some attention is by doing something big. Maybe it's the Nobel Peace Prize, curing cancer, or not throwing a tantrum when you have to get on the school bus to kindergarten. Whatever it is, it has to be big.

Why discuss sibling rivalry? Because it acts as a perfect analogue to the relationship between Apple and Microsoft. Apple started out as the star child of the personal computing market with the introduction of the affordable Apple II in the summer of 1977. Several years later, Microsoft, the annoying younger brother, took Apple's technology and created its own personal computers and then, seemingly overnight, Microsoft had 98 percent of the PC market.

What has Apple done to get their act back together? Well, after they almost went bankrupt in the late nineties they introduced a little device that would earn them 90 percent of the market for hard-drive based music players and 70 percent of the market for all music players, the iPod. Apple's next step, the introduction of Apple retail stores as destinations to try out new technology. Top all this off with an insanely effective advertising campaign, and Apple's share of the personal computer market grew 30 percent in the past two years.

Clearly Apple has a winning formula for enacting revenge on Microsoft's personal computer market monopoly. But now that Apple has control of the digital music market and is gaining ground in the computing market, what's next? Quite obviously a device that will combine all of Apple's specialties, miniaturize it, and get it into the pockets of millions - the iPhone. The iPhone is jammed with a two megapixel camera, four or eight gigabytes of memory, a gigantic "multi-touch" display, iPod functionality, full screen video playback, quad-band GSM compatibility, WiFi and Bluetooth. There's not much this baby doesn't offer. But are consumers ready to lay down $499 to $599 for Apple's truly smart phone and get Apple's CEO Steve Jobs the one percent of the mobile phone market he's gunning for?

Apple is in the perfect position to launch the iPhone and claim the one percent of the market that they intend to in 2008 (and that one percent means one million devices). Apple's products are well-designed, well-built, well-thought out, and well-received. The iPhone is innovative, elegant, functional and, most importantly, original. In a world where every cell phone manufacturer has in some way, shape or form copied the Motorola Razr, it's refreshing to see Apple introduce a phone that's strikingly different. I wouldn't expect anything less from Apple; the older sibling that's successfully regaining the attention of the parents who were getting sick of Microsoft's lack of creativity.