Compare their total market value to the post-iPhone smartphone market and try saying that again with a straight face.
And that's exactly the point I'm trying to make, perhaps badly! Before the iPhone or the iPad people knew there was a market there. But they claimed it was tiny and not worth entering or putting serious R&D into. So you ended up with hobbyist/yuppie toys.
Say tomorrow someone unveils a 3D printer that does some essential household task and every house has one in 5 years time because you'd be crazy to not have an Initech Megamaker 3000! Were Initech the the first into the market? No! But they were the ones that turned it from a hobbyist thing into a real powerhouse multi-billion $$$ market. They single handedly grew the market by orders of magnitude, they saw the actual potential market.
Whatever comparatively miniscule market there was before the iPhone is a reminder of how easy it is to think too small. Just look at the Android preview before the iPhone came out! It was utterly rubbish. Google were thinking small.
And that's exactly the point I'm trying to make, perhaps badly! Before the iPhone or the iPad people knew there was a market there. But they claimed it was tiny and not worth entering or putting serious R&D into. So you ended up with hobbyist/yuppie toys.
Say tomorrow someone unveils a 3D printer that does some essential household task and every house has one in 5 years time because you'd be crazy to not have an Initech Megamaker 3000! Were Initech the the first into the market? No! But they were the ones that turned it from a hobbyist thing into a real powerhouse multi-billion $$$ market. They single handedly grew the market by orders of magnitude, they saw the actual potential market.
Whatever comparatively miniscule market there was before the iPhone is a reminder of how easy it is to think too small. Just look at the Android preview before the iPhone came out! It was utterly rubbish. Google were thinking small.