During the Keynote on September 12, 2017, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook presented the iPhone X as ‘The future of the smartphone’. This suggests that the iPhone X has futures that would disrupt the smartphone industry just like it did when the first iPhone was launched (Rogowsky, 2017). In this blogpost the new features will be compared to already existing phones.
In past week’s lecture, we discussed the topic of industry disruption. Although the smartphone is not a newly-vulnerable-market (read Granados, N., Kauffman, R.J., and King, B. 2008 for more info) anymore at this point, Apple tries to disrupt the industry again with the introduction of the iPhone X. Sulleyman (2017) disputes this statement by claiming that the iPhone X ‘isn’t quite as revolutionary as the company would have you believe’.
Sulleyman (2017 compares the iPhone X with is competitors on different points. First, the new “all-screen” feature for the iPhone X has already been featured by Samsung in the Galaxy S8, S8 Plus and Note 8. Second, the new OLED display that has been introduced is something that has been adopted by Samsung for a couple of years. Third, the new resolution and pixel density is way behind in comparison to Android phones. Fourth, the facial recognition technology is also used in the Samsung Note 8, S8 and S8 Plus and is thus not as revolutionary as Apple claims it to be. Fifth, Apple has proudly introduced the wireless charging feature, a feature that has been around for a couple of years for Android phones.
The whole point of this blog is to be critical towards claims that companies make about being disruptive. If we look at Uber and Airbnb, there will be more people supporting the statement that they are disrupting the industries right now. Alton (2017) explains that there is a difference between disruption and innovation. Disruption causes the industry to change because of something that did not exist before, but innovation only improves an already existing product.
Looking at the introduction of the iPhone X, shouldn’t we agree that it is merely an innovation and not a disruption?
Alton, L. (2017). How Purple, Uber and Airbnb Are Disrupting and Redefining Old Industries. Consulted on September 24, 2017 via https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/273650
Granados, N., Kauffman, R.J., and King, B. 2008. How Has Electronic Travel Distribution Been Transformed? A Test of the Theory of Newly Vulnerable Markets. Consulted on September 24, 2017 via http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2753/MIS0742-1222250204
Rogowsky, M. (2017). A Decade Of iPhone: The Smartphone Disrupted Everything But Still Has Work To Do. Consulted at September 24, 2017 via https://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2017/01/09/iphone-at-10-the-smartphone-disrupted-everything-but-still-some-has-jobs-to-be-done/#1457174a3ed5
Hi Tim,
Thanks for the interesting blog post! It’s nice to have a short comparison to other existing products. However, I have to disagree with two aspects of your critique: the screen part and the Face ID part.
While it is true that, for example, the Galaxy Note 8 has a pixel density of 570 ppi and the iPhone X “only” has a pixel density of 458 ppi, I’d like to compare this to driving super fast and fancy cars. While you won’t notice the difference in day-to-day (regular highway) use, it’s of course nice to be able to drive 250 km/h in your Tesla instead of the 180 km/h max speed of more ‘ordinary’ cars. The same goes for pixel density: only people with 20/20 vision, looking closely at the screen, will be able to see the difference between 458 ppi and 570 ppi. In everyday use, the difference probably won’t be noticeable.
Now, for something without a bunch of digits. Although Samsung already offers Facial Recognition security in it’s latest product, this technology is not comparable in any way with Face ID. Since it’s not using anything but the camera, it’s even possible to bypass / fool the “scanner” with a flat photo! [1] Apple’s implementation is far more secure than the current available options. As you might’ve read, Apple uses fancy IR scanners, neural networks and lots of neural network training in its Face ID technology. We haven’t seen this technology before in smartphones, so I believe that this is something that’s actually new that might prove to be disruptive in the near future. Our classmate Roelof has posted a more in-depth blog post about this [2].
However, I do agree with your last statement: I think the only real disruptions we’ve encountered in the smartphone world are touchscreens, 4G connectivity and the ever-increasing capabilities of smartphone cameras: as a matter of fact, the iPhone 8’s camera is the best smartphone camera ever tested! [3]
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References:
[1] https://www.tomsguide.com/us/photos-biometrics-csw,news-20684.html
[2] https://digitalstrategy.rsm.nl//2017/09/13/iphone-x-the-introduction-of-face-id/
[3] https://www.dxomark.com/apple-iphone-8-plus-reviewed-the-best-smartphone-camera-ever-tested/