“Apple’s products are the envy of the world. They have been spectacularly successful and are widely imitated, if not copied,” Horace Dediu writes for Asymco. “The expectation that precedes a new Apple product launch is only matched by the expectation of the replication of those products by competitors.”
Dediu writes, “This cycle of product mimicry was succinctly summarized by Marc Andreessen regarding a rumored Apple TV product: ‘And once the television launches, everyone will scramble to copy it. ”There’s a pattern in our industry, Apple crystallizes the product, and the minute Apple crystallizes it, then everyone knows how to compete.'”
Dediu writes, “This idea that the basis of competition is set by Apple and then the race is on to climb the trajectory of improvement is so well understood that it’s axiomatic: “It’s just the way things are.” Apple releases a product that defines a category or disrupts an industry and it becomes obvious what needs to be built. But what I wonder is why there isn’t a desire to copy Apple’s product creation process. Why isn’t the catalyst for a new category or disruption put forward by another company? More precisely, why isn’t there another company which consistently re-defines categories and repeatedly, predictably even, re-defines how technology is used. Put another way: Why is it that everyone wants to copy Apple’s products but nobody wants to copy being Apple?”
Much more – highly recommended – in the full article here.
Being as innovative as Apple involves a great deal of hard work. Copying Apple’s products is a much easier option.
Replicating Apple requires having a vision. Since the Apple II no one has had a computing vision equal to Apple’s. That’s just sad, very, very sad.
Having a vision, a strategy, a talent for innovation, and skill for execution, and stop thinking that the most important things are profits and market share.
What company understands and has got those treats? Not many.
Those who copy Apple products illustrate THE OPPOSITE spirit of what it takes to copy Apple.
Which is the more difficult task?
Where is there more “sure” money to be made?
I agree with alanaudio. It is much easier to copy that innovate. I also think it has to do with the software and hardware being made by the same company. Apple has very elegant software to go with very elegant hardware. Google has a second rate software platform being whored out to second rate hardware. You have the same thing on the PC side. How elegant can Dell hardware be when it is running Windows. Apple’s notebook trackpads and Magic Trackpad are unparalleled in the industry because OS X is built around their use. It is very hard for me to use a mouse now that I have a Magic Trackpad. If Dell would take a Linux distribution and build something on top of it, they could be more innovative and maybe they wouldn’t be in the shape they are in now. Same thing goes for HP. I have said on here before, that they should have treasured WebOS as the gem it was and done something meaningful with it. Google now has a golden opportunity to take the Motorola hardware and turn Android into something beautiful. Time will tell if they do that.
Finally! Someone says what I’ve been saying to people for years.
=:~)
I think it’s because Apple is run by people who design, use, and enjoy tech products, whereas, other companies are run by accountants. And this problem extends well beyond tech companies.
Apples focus – simplicity, quality and ease of use.
Most other companies focus – cheap and money!
it’s nice to see our world moving toward quality and ease of use… bye bye microshaft!
Except for they do try.
They just fail.
Also, Apple is not just a startup. They have a massive foundation and reputation on which to launch disruptive products.
To: Samsung, Google, Microsoft,
Copying isn’t innovating. Figuring sneaky ways to copy is also not the same as innovating. You are big companies, be like the big company and make something that is equally as big. Apple is relatively a small company that is kicking your asses because you are too dumb or arrogant to think for yourself. Also, know that Apple isn’t competing directly against you. They are creating their own market with their own inventions. They aren’t the company that looks to compete with similar looking products. You create the copies and then compete against Apple. It is good to have diversity instead of everything looking like an Apple copy. That’s why Ferraris don’t look like Porches and why Jaguars don’t look like Chryslers. If they did, it would be one messed up auto industry.
How much would it cost to be another Apple inc.?
Does any company out there have the money to spend to be an Apple inc.?
If they have, and do spend their money to be another Apple inc., who will buy their products?
Will they sell enough products to justify the title of being another Apple inc.?
Will they be able to price their products competitively to compete with Apple inc.?
The point I hazard to make, is that the thought of how much money it would take to take on Apple’s monopsony is very appalling to any sane business proprietor.
Yet, Apple did it. Replace ‘sane’ with ‘lazy’ and I agree with you. The Achilles heel of Capitalism is a failing patent system; it allows the cheat to steal the reward of research and development by copying without compensation to the inventor (company or person).
Competition has withered to a ‘race to the bottom’; the cheapest price at the minimum level of quality — or in Microsoft’s case, a shabby but high price product (Office) protected by predatory business practice.
The strength and intention of the patent system has to be restored so that the small innovator can be assured that that they are rewarded in revenue by the (usually bigger) adopters of their ideas. That would benefit everyone.
I dreamt last night that Ballmer was fired: the horror!
“Why doesn’t anybody copy Apple” versus just copying Apple products…
‘Cuz that would entail hard work!
A lot of people are trying to copy Apple. They’re called startups. Check back in ten years.
Established companies can be very like old people: set in their ways, and no longer nimble, no longer sharp, no longer svelte.
Too calcified or lumbering to move swiftly, too slow to decide. Too entrenched or blinkered to get out of harm’s way. Too invested in yesterday’s successes to move beyond them.
Too much mental ossification, too much self-deception, too much laurel-resting.
They no longer know a good idea when they hear it. They haven’t had one themselves since they were 25.
I can’t wait until you pass the half century mark. Knowledge and ideas don’t leak out of your ears faster and faster as the decades mount up.
I’d use the ‘B’ word but I have too much respect for most of your posts.
Please forgive me! I regret my phrasing, which should have been:
companies can be very like old people who are set in their ways, and no longer nimble…
meaning certain companies and certain old people.
I must remember to better proofread myself. 🙁 I have a roommate now, but it’s one who can’t spell roommate, so…
To be an ‘Apple Inc.’ you need to adopt a business model which is totally foreign to your own. You need to see your potential customer as being ‘Important’ and not just focusing on your ‘Bottom Line’. You need to ‘Think and Act Different’, but you won’t.
It’s cause they’d have to Turn on, Tune in, and drop out first. Too much for some folks!
It is so much cheaper to wait for a product then reverse engineer it or copy the design. Why spend money trying to make break through product(s)? for example Samsung, just a copy with cheap parts, plastics with an OS the some else put the money into. Then reap the profit. Too much money and risk for the rest.
The fact that so many companies copy Apple’s core design of mobile products always underscores to me just how innovative Apple really is.
While it seems obvious now that smartphones and tablets should look and work like this, when the iPhone was introduced it had plenty of detractors around some design choices (and I mean design not just to mean how it looks or the form factor, but how it is made to be used). No physical keyboard?!?! WTF?!?! Only three buttons?!?! What was it that one troll wrote…something like, phones are trending to have more buttons?
Did Apple create new technology out of thin air? No, the pieces all existed. Was putting them all together a novel idea? No. However, Apple created the model for how they should be put together that everyone now uses.
For tablets, the actual form factor was obvious and Apple had already introduced the multi-touch interface. With tablets, it was as much as they things they prioritized: thickness, weight, and battery life. Choosing those are the critical factors rather than the processor speed, RAM, buttons, and multiple inputs was not a choice that nearly any other tech company would have made. However, Apple realized that those are critical to mobility. Early tablets thought they could use more inputs as a selling point. Didn’t help. MS still thinks battery life, weight, and thickness should be sacrificed for processor power.
Once upon a time, there was such a company. It’s called Sony. Then they let the accountants and bean-counters get involved, and playing safe took over.
Sony can still make beautiful stuff, their cameras are superb, and Apple use their camera tech in their iOS devices, and the new Experia Z phone is a jewel, but they’re hamstrung by using someone else’s OS; they need a really good OS that’s not Android.
I’d seriously consider an Experia as an iPhone alternative, if I had to, but for it using Android.
A correction of terms:
“The expectation that precedes a new Apple product launch is only matched by the expectation of the replication of those products by competitors.”
Replace the word ‘competitors’ with PARASITES.
Being a destroyer, a parasite, is far easier than being a creator, an Apple.
∑ = Parasites on Apple are LAZY and incapable of being creative.
But that’s not all. As I frequently rant, we’re living in what I call The Age of Marketing. The means Marketing-As-Management disease is rampant. Marketing people create nothing. They are in fact antithetical to R&D productive people. They go out of their way to destroy productive people because they find them to be so obnoxiously unrelational. Therefore:
∑ = Lazy, productivity hating Marketing-As-Management, self-destructive world of biznizz bozos. These dummies would rather KILL Apple than become Apple. And good golly gosh, look what they did to the price of AAPL in their zeal to stick it to Apple. And there’s more inanity still to come before the self-destructive Age of Marketing implodes on itself and burns to ashes.
I’d italicize that.
It looks like in did! Inadvertently. Every now and then I leak why I despise CLI coding and was never very good at it. Sorry. 🙁
Because Apple was fortunate to have a tour de force in Steve Jobs. Hard to replicate that. Even Apple may find it difficult to remain Applesque post Jobs.