When Steve Jobs appeared in his signature black turtleneck sweater at the Moscone Center in San Francisco in January 2007, he received a timid reception by sliding the idea of an advanced internet communication device he called the iPhone .
Not only the public, but also many experts raised a skeptical eyebrow. It was the case of the former CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer , who considered it impossible for people to buy such an expensive product that combined a touch screen, a music player, a telephone and internet access: “There is no way that the iPhone it is going to take an important market share, “he said.
Shortly before the iPhone went on sale, a report was published by the media and advertising agency Universal McCann that predicted the resounding failure of that device. Thousands of people responded to surveys in which they declared that they were not going to exchange their music players, their cameras or their mobile phones for a single device that bundled everything together with a lower quality than their individual counterparts. Not to mention that, in case of breakage or theft, not a device was lost, but all at the same time.
Approximately, only 30% of Germans, Japanese or Americans found something positive in having a mobile phone of these particular characteristics, although the percentage rose to 70% in the case of Indians, Malaysians or Mexicans.
Despite the fact that, in the past, we all seem to understand the causes that produce the success of certain technologies, the truth is that it is quite difficult to predict which device will end up being massively adopted, as Derek Thompson explains in his book Creators of Hits .
For that reason, that mobile that did not inspire any confidence when it was presented by Jobs, only a decade later had become “the most profitable invention of the last fifty years”. Despite Steve Ballmer’s ominous prediction, “Apple’s iPhone business was worth more than all of Microsoft in less than a decade.”
So the most interesting thing that had happened with the iPhone on a sociological level was that, in effect, when it appeared on the market, people did not need it. Or more specifically: people were still not aware that they needed it .
This phenomenon, in fact, is very common in disruptive technologies. Thus, for example, the British physicist and mathematician Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) would categorically affirm: “Radio has no future.” The cinema was even crucified by its own inventor, Louis Lumière (1864-1948): “My invention may be enjoyed as a scientific curiosity […] but commercially it is not of the slightest interest”. And in 1943, IBM president Thomas John Watson warned, “I think there is a market for about five computers around the world.”
Even as close as 1977, Digital Equipment Corporation co-founder Ken Olsen went so far as to determine, “There is no reason anyone would want to have a computer at home.”
It is simply very difficult to know what new needs a disruptive technology will awaken. What a new scenario it will bring about. What new social dynamics will be set in motion. We lack data and imagination to project ourselves into the future, so we can only try the waters until, almost by chance, something works, especially if no one saw it coming.
And precisely for that reason, the iPhone was a resounding success economically, as Thompson concludes: “It is always nice to be on the right side of history, but it is an economic fact that predicting the future is more valuable when everyone thinks you are. wrong”. Especially if there are people like the commissioner of the United States Patent Office Charles H. Duell (1850-1920), who came to sentence: “Everything that can be invented has already been invented.”
