Steve Job's End Game, the Iphone is a Trojan Horse (Predicted in 2007)

Wow, thanks Justin. Nice to see my old analysis getting new play. In hindsight, I think this illustrates perfectly how there are dimensions other than "performance" (which is pretty hard to define anyway) on which you can come in below the competition, and "low cost" as levers to disrupt markets. The iPod and iPhone are both illustrative of how if other other important problems are solved for the customer, you can still disrupt a market with a high price. Christensen has described this as a non-conforming exception to disruption theory, but I think it conforms perfectly, as the article you posted describes. Thanks for giving it extra visibility.

I appreciate that. I got called an "Apple fanboy" and worse at the time. Ironically, I didn't own any Apple products when I wrote this, and still don't have an iPhone (even though Blackberry is getting killed by the iPhone and now Android), I needed a cell plan that included Canada, which AT&T didn't have, and that one thing saved me several hundred dollars per month by going with another carrier and a Blackberry.

The important thing to remember is it comes down to customer needs. If most people needed what I did, the iPhone would have flopped solely because of the exclusive arrangement with AT&T. But, it clearly was a game changer. That's hard to dispute today.