Case Study Of Apple's Smartphone Industry

Since 2007, Apple Inc has sold more than 500 millions units of its mainstream

Smartphone around the World 1, from New York to Shanghai, from London, to

Cameroon, to South Africa. For more than 7 years (since 2007), Apple Inc has been the World’s most innovative electronics company. Many companies, like

Samsung and Google, have tried to emulate the success of Apple, by proposing cheaper versions of Apple’s products to the market, however with little success.

Samsung has grappled part of Apple’s market share in the Smartphone industry, but Apple still keeps more than half of the industry profit margins2. Avatar, the movie directed by James Cameron, and released in 2009, generated more than

$1 billion in revenue, to become the best selling movie

The fact is that the

21st century biggest discovery can be stated in this simple statement: the product is the experience and vice versa.7 Although it is not clear who found it first, all Scientific researches in Marketing since the beginning of the 21st century have converged to this simple evidence. The statement we presented above is mathematical predicate, which could be noted by specialist as this equation:

Product == Experience, where the == sign means, “is equivalent to”. ‡ Then you might wonder: why is it such a great discovery? The answer is simple, before this discovery most, if not all, entrepreneurs and marketing experts believed that customers only purchased products because of their functional features: men bought a Gillette razor because it helps them shave; people acquired computers

(P.C.’s) because they help them write their documents, solve complex analytic problems, etc. The equation ‡ swims contrary to the current of human logic

Most of the time, the product of the inventor does not match the context in which he or she is living, thus leading to an unavoidable failure of the inventor; whereas, if the innovator is tenacious in producing his or her solution, the product is usually a winner. The fact was that Nikola Tesla’s inventions were far in advance of his time; therefore his peers misunderstood him. The same happened to Einstein; the mind-blowing theory he invented, concerning the interaction of bodies in the universe, is still today mostly unexplored. No wonder, Einstein ended his days in a secluded home, abandoned by the scientific community of his time.18 From a business perspective, the question now arises: should a company be an inventor or an innovator? From the examples, we’ve presented above, the answer is clearly to be an innovator.

Companies that are innovators usually invent products that would later be turned into innovation by another company. Xerox invented the computer mouse, yet it was Apple that turned it into a successful business innovation; Phillips invented the CD, yet it is the Japanese Sony that made money out it. The