If you have not been convinced of the hype that mobility is overtaking desktop computing, consider this. Sale of the iPhone alone has surpassed the revenue of Microsoft in its entirety. The software giant whose big earners are Windows and Office, who has dominated and still dominates the operating system market, was overtaken by a phone. This may seem like a nonstarter in 2012, when everyone knows how popular the iPhone is, but consider that the iPhone only began selling in June, 2007. In Q4 of last year the iPhone sold 37 million units worldwide for $24.42 billion in revenue in a market that Apple entered less than five years ago. With that in mind you probably think I’m crazy to posit that innovative software, not hardware, drives revenue, truly transforms businesses, and captures entire markets.
People love the iPhone for its software, not for its sleek design and hardware capabilities. Granted, the now ubiquitous clean look, ample storage space, touchscreen, and good basic phone functionality (some would argue this) are nice hardware features, but they haven’t driven sale of the iPhone. It’s the ease of use, intuitive UI, responsiveness, app capabilities, music and video hub, connectivity, and speed which make people love their iPhones and become Apple advocates. Smartphones were already a mature market in 2007, with Blackberry’s as a mainstay for business users, and Palm carving its own space in the touchscreen market (a niche many thought would never reach wider adoption). Just like how the search engine market was a mature market in 1998, with Yahoo!, Altavista, MSN Search, Ask Jeeves, and HotBot all sharing a profitable piece of the pie when Google began, who now own over 80% of all search in the US, Apple makes us forget smartphones existed before the iPhone.
To compete with the iPhone, the smartphone market has entered into an armsrace of expanding features. Nokia just releasing a 41 megapixel smartphone on Monday at MWC as the hottest new tech, which definitely got people talking. But I can guarantee people won’t be buying in iPhone volume when the phone hits the market. That’s because the software isn’t fundamentally different than on any existing smartphones. There is no added utility to a better camera on your phone. It won’t change how you use your phone, you’ll just have sharper pictures (some would argue megapixels have serious diminishing returns). The funny thing is that this great unveil of a new mobile product, the toast of MWC, doesn’t impact the two core smartphone functions, internet connectivity or phone use. Also, since the camera software to support this behemoth has been in development for five years, the phone runs on their old, slower, less efficient mobile OS.
Added business utility comes from changes in software and using mobile enterprise solutions to fundamentally alter the way you do business. Wouldn’t it be cool to post a picture of a drill bit that wore out unusually fast to a company-wide network? Without even knowing who to ask, you can get a team member from halfway around the world saying in real time, “Looks like you are using the wrong bit on the wrong type of rock, an esoteric problem that happened to us last month. We wasted 5 expensive bits, but this is how we eventually solved it at high costs.” This is exactly what our enterprise social networking platform, tibbr, does for Apache Corporation. Apache acquires successful independent drill sites all around the world who are incredibly siloed and had thought of each other as competitors. Now, with enterprise social media, they can share key knowledge, without having ever met, to solve similar problems in real time.
Connecting mobile devices across the globe through new wave software is where real innovation happens. Taking a picture on-site, uploading it to a connected network of your peers, and receiving instant feedback is truly revolutionary, not slapping a fancy camera to an old phone. While the phone manufacturers can promote their armsrace of new features, with easy-to-compare specs that don’t impact core functionality, the enterprise software industry is quietly reforming the essential way we think about and do business.
