Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Product design as a continuous process
Here's a quandary: imagine you're a successful computer company, competing in the big leagues for your share of the market. You do OK for a few years, selling high quality kit to a devoted minority. Then you release a product that really grabs the attention of consumers all over the world: a stylish portable music player that manages to grab a 50% market share due to its looks, functionality, and overall desirability. No-one else has anything out there that sells so well in this particular market.
The problem? Everyone else is jealous, so they start looking at ways to topple you from your perch at the top of the market. So what do you do now to maintain your market lead, and make sure people still want your music player, and not one of the new ones that the competition is thinking about bringing out?
In case you haven't guessed, I'm talking about Apple, and their hugely successful iPod and iTunes music download service. They have a 50% market share, and the sharks, vultures, and various other metaphors for their competitors are starting to circle. This piece in Reuters raises the issue of the design challenge now faced by Apple: how to keep the iPod at the top of the heap. Good design in this case needs to be a continuing process: it's easy for others to see what makes a product successful and copy it. It will be interesting to see what Apple with the iPod next. You might see some ideas on these pages...
Here's a quandary: imagine you're a successful computer company, competing in the big leagues for your share of the market. You do OK for a few years, selling high quality kit to a devoted minority. Then you release a product that really grabs the attention of consumers all over the world: a stylish portable music player that manages to grab a 50% market share due to its looks, functionality, and overall desirability. No-one else has anything out there that sells so well in this particular market.
The problem? Everyone else is jealous, so they start looking at ways to topple you from your perch at the top of the market. So what do you do now to maintain your market lead, and make sure people still want your music player, and not one of the new ones that the competition is thinking about bringing out?
In case you haven't guessed, I'm talking about Apple, and their hugely successful iPod and iTunes music download service. They have a 50% market share, and the sharks, vultures, and various other metaphors for their competitors are starting to circle. This piece in Reuters raises the issue of the design challenge now faced by Apple: how to keep the iPod at the top of the heap. Good design in this case needs to be a continuing process: it's easy for others to see what makes a product successful and copy it. It will be interesting to see what Apple with the iPod next. You might see some ideas on these pages...
(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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