5.4 Purifying Innovation in Smartphones
Marcos Antonio de Lima Filho, PhD.
Evolutionary biology inspired the concept of purifying innovation. As noted in the literature review, it is well-known that various species have lost certain traits during their evolutionary development. This mode of natural selection is referred to as purifying selection by evolutionary theorists.
Similar patterns of purification can be verified in the design evolution of consumer electronics and commercial aircraft. As technologies evolve, manufacturers have removed numerous design features across product iterations. This section presents instances that ground the concept of purifying innovation in the context of these industries.
Purifying Innovation Driven by Replacement
Purifying innovations can be categorised into three types: those resulting from technological replacement (Figure 5.4.1), feature discontinuation (Figure 5.4.2), and technological rejection (Figure 5.4.3). Technological replacements share an interesting link with disruptive innovations and creative destructions. Frequently, the emergence of a new technology makes an older one obsolete. Consider, for instance, the following technological replacements in smartphone evolution:
The emergence of capacitive touchscreen displays led to the elimination of tactile QWERTY keyboards from smartphones;
Capacitive touch led to the extinction of resistive touch. Historically, resistive touchscreen has always been the most popular technology, but capacitive touch surpassed resistive in both revenue and units (Walker, 2012);
Modern display technologies (such as OLED) often emerge and take space from older standards, like TFT LCD.
Technological replacements can also be observed in the evolution of aircraft. As mentioned in the previous chapter (Section 4.4), the Jet Era commenced with the substitution of piston engines by jet engines, ushering in a period of architectural innovations. The magnitude of this transformation and the enduring nature of its core design concepts parallels the disruption brought by the touchscreen slate (Figure 5.4.1). Just as the Jet Age democratised air travel, smartphones have made the internet accessible to billions of people worldwide. When they emerge, such dominant designs often persist and continue to influence the industry's future for a very long time (Abernathy & Clark, 1985).
Purifying Innovation Driven by Discontinuation
Disruptive innovations can initially gain momentum and then experience a period of incremental changes, known as directional innovations. As a product evolves, these innovations may stabilise, becoming established features. However, the results suggest that stabilisation is not the final stage. Adoption of these features may still decline, whether due to technological replacement or discontinuation (Figure 5.4.2).
Even features that have achieved de facto standard status can still face the risk of obsolescence, as demonstrated in Figure 5.4.2. De facto standards emerge when users prefer one design over other standards (Anderson & Tushman, 1990). However, it is important to note that this preferred status may not be permanent, as technological evolution is a dynamic process.
In the past, most mobile handsets featured a removable battery, a memory card slot, capacitive buttons, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and FM radio support. But despite a level of adoption as high as 99%, these features were not safeguarded against discontinuation.
These results also demonstrate how technologies can cycle through many innovation selection patterns, indicating that disruption is just one step of the evolutionary process. During the early 2000s, for instance, only a tiny proportion of mobile phones featured a 3.5mm headphone connector. This began to change in 2007, with its adoption increasing from 8% in 2007 to 98% in 2015. During this period, smartphones have become the primary device for digital media consumption, and audio output and wired headphones have become essential for that use. The headphone jack eventually became a de facto standard, meaning that its market dominance was not mandated or prompted by government regulation, but rather by customer preference.
However, starting in 2015, smartphone manufacturers began to abandon headphone connectors in favour of wireless headphones, signalling a shift in the industry. The diffusion of memory card slots and FM radio also decreased during this period. While their adoption rate remained above 50% in 2020, it was significantly lower than before. Therefore, purification does not always lead to the total elimination of a feature. Instead, purifying innovation represents a transition from a higher to a lower level of innovation diffusion within an industry.
Purifying Innovation Driven by Rejection.
Users may sometimes reject a new technology immediately, hindering its adoption and further development. The graph below (Figure 5.4.3) highlights the smartphone features that manufacturers attempted to introduce but ultimately failed to gain traction in the market. By the year 2020, each of the following features had either reached a point of insignificant diffusion (1% or less) or had been totally abandoned. The aim of this study is not to predict the future evolution of smartphones, and the adoption of these features may still gain momentum in the future. However, at least during the data collection period, their diffusion has gravitated towards zero. It is also probable that some of the emerging technologies shown in Figure 5.1.6 will not achieve market adoption, succumbing to the market’s purifying selection forces.
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