The iPhone started out the way a lot of cool things do: as something completely different. A few years ago, Steve Jobs noticed how many development dollars were being spent--particularly in the greater Seattle metropolitan area--on what are called tablet PCs: flat portable computers that work with a touch screen instead of a mouse and keyboard. Jobs, being Jobs, was curious. He had some Apple engineers noodle around with a touch screen. When they showed him what they came up with, he got excited.
So excited he forgot all about tablet computers. He had bigger game to hunt. [continue...]
Was reading this article, when it struck me that this is one major niche that Singapore can excel in, in the global media industry.
Frankly, I don't think that games are necessarily the best way to go, even though Singapore will be pumping billions into R&D for interactive media.
It smells suspiciously like the same old "cannon fodder" tactics that Singapore's been using for the life science industry - throw in a whole bunch of students, pick out those who make it to PhD-level, and the rest who can't? Hmm... it's much harder for them to find a life-science related job, and honestly, even those who can make it to PhD level need to go overseas.
I'm not arguing with the virtues of this tactic - but I think it's a sheer waste of trained and qualified manpower. People spend 4 years studying life science stuff - and after that, then what? Perhaps if it's in a highly developed life science industry, then it's fine, no problem. But the problem is, we're still at the beginning.
Perhaps now would be a good time to break out those business strategy books - prime case being Sun Tzu's Art of War. I think he explained a simple concept of asymmetric warfare - in which a smaller power finds a way to exploit the weaknesses of a bigger power. So Singapore can also do it that way. Find the weaknesses present currently in the life science/media industries and exploit the niche offered.
Which is what Steve Jobs is precisely doing now in the heavily entrenched mobile phone market. Because he and his team have a decisive advantage in design quality.
The game is a little different this time. With the iPod, Jobs essentially created a whole new product category. The cell-phone turf is already held by entrenched armies of phonemakers and service providers. They may not be as hip or innovative as Apple, but they will shred one another for nickels, and there are a lot of nickels on the ground. One point of market share in the handset business is worth $1.4 billion. Motorola, having sold more than 50 million Razrs with not enough to show for it, will probably be reverse engineering the iPhone before it hits the stores. "We already have cell phones and smart phones, so the marketplace is already very competitive," says industry analyst Jeff Kagan. "We have not seen Apple compete in the insanely intense, competitive wireless marketplace."
But it wasn't just the money. Cell phones interested Jobs because even though they do all kinds of stuff--calling, text messaging, Web browsing, contact management, music playback, photos and video--they do it very badly, by forcing you to press lots of tiny buttons and navigate diverse heterogeneous interfaces and squint at a tiny screen. "Everybody hates their phone," Jobs says, "and that's not a good thing. And there's an opportunity there." To Jobs' perfectionist eyes, phones are broken. Jobs likes things that are broken. It means he can make something that isn't and sell it to you at a premium price.
Which goes on to my next point. Frankly, from what I've studied about the marketing structure of the games and film industry - the key to winning in the media industry is NOT so much about quality of products, but rather, the distribution networks.
How do you think Hollywood manages to churn out so much junk, and yet still dominate the global movie industry? Through the controlling of the distribution networks that ensure its products are the most visible ones, thus eclipsing the games/films of the local countries' media industries.
I guess you can use a war example, since war and business are closely related to one another in terms of strategies and tactics. During the American Civil War, the Northern Union forces were constantly and soundly walloped by the Southern Confederates who had more superior generals and fiercer soldiers. But eventually, the North won the war. Some reasons were due to the superior logistics and transportation networks of railroads, which enabled the North to supply fresh new troops and weapons and food to the frontline, and also, the more heavily industrialised North enabled the constant production of weapons and technologies.
So, I think Singapore can also aim for design qualities, especially in user interface designs, which is potentially a very wide and diverse field not only in the media industries, but in the other fields e.g. hardware and software industries.
Why is Apple able to do things most other companies can't? Partly by charging for it: the iPhone will cost $499 for a 4-GB model, $599 for 8-GB. And partly because unlike most companies, Apple does its own hardware, its own software and its own industrial design. When it all takes place under one roof, you get a kind of collaborative synergy that makes unusual things happen. (Vertical integration in practice here.)
Apple also places an unusual emphasis on interface design. It sweats the cosmetic details that don't seem very important until you really sweat them. "I actually have a photographer's loupe that I use to make sure every pixel is right," says Scott Forstall, Apple's vice president of Platform Experience. "We will argue over literally a single pixel." As a result, when you swipe your finger across the screen to unlock the iPhone, you're not just accessing a system of nested menus, you're entering a tiny universe in which data exist as bouncy, gemlike objects. You can actually pinch an image with two fingers and make it smaller. Because there's no mouse or keyboard, just that touch screen, there's a powerful illusion that you're physically handling data.
So I think this is where Singapore can really shine in if it invests its funding in the next few decades.
