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Sputnik: Rising Above the Air | /var/blog
Apple has achieved success in large part because it created expectations rather than satisfying them. This marketing strategy paid off for Apple; for example the iPhone wasn't compared to existing smartphones like the Blackberry, which would have highlighted its relative shortcomings (no copy-and-paste, inferior battery life, AT&T-lock-in, etc.). It was viewed as its own entity that targeted a different market altogether. And, to an extent, that market segmentation was initially true - the iPhone caught on quickly among demographics that weren't using Blackberries for enterprise and personal use. According to this narrative, RIM and Palm sold "personal organizers" with phone functionality, whereas Apple sold "touchscreen smartphones". If you'd tried to predict iPhone sales by demographic based on Blackberry and Palm devices, you'd have been way off, because the devices targeted very different markets. Criticisms of the iPhone based on