Apple’s rapid success has threatened the long-term survival of many other competitors in the industry, like Research In Motion (RIM) and Nokia. Since the launch of the first iPhone in 2007, Apple’s five-year gain has increased to 400 percent while RIM and Nokia have lost almost half of their stock market value. However, the iPhone itself was not the main cause of RIM and Nokia’s downfall since both companies were already creating smartphones. The main cause was that Apple leveraged their products with a vast community of inventions around their company brand, like an ecosystem. Apple’s community brand includes inventions like iTunes and a variety of apps that work well other Apple brand products, like the iPhone. With a large community brand, Apple has sustained a large portion of the electronic device market, which makes survival difficult for competing companies.
Apple's Vast Product Community Brand
Many have speculated whether if Apple has started to lose it’s magic, like RIM and Nokia, especially with the passing of Steve Jobs. As Ernest Fung mentioned in his blog, Apple’s lack of innovation of releasing an extended version of the 4th generation iPhone, instead of the highly anticipated iPhone 5, will benefit other competitors in the mobile device industry. This will be an opportunity for companies to regain market shares that they once lost to Apple and to reinforce their survival in the industry. However, this window of opportunity is quite narrow because Apple has announced that they will release the iPhone 5 on October 14th, 2011, which will add to their large community brand.
iPhone 4S