6.4 The Emergence of a Smartphone Dominant Design

Marcos Antonio de Lima Filho, PhD.

Whether viewed as a disruptive or sustaining innovation, the current paradigm of disruptive innovation struggles to account for Apple’s rise in the handset market. However, in Abernathy and Clark’s conceptualisation of disruptive innovation, it was clear from the beginning that Apple was positioned to become a disruptor. According to their model, the shift from disruptive to incremental innovation frequently coincides with the emergence of a dominant design within a product category.

Once a dominant design emerges, future technological progress consists of incremental improvements elaborating the standard, and the technological regime becomes more orderly as one design becomes its standard expression (Anderson & Tushman, 1990). A dominant design will, thus, represent a milestone or transition point in the life of an industry (Suárez & Utterback, 1995). With the iPhone, Apple established itself as a dominant producer, and, as its design concept gained momentum, it became a reference for the entire industry (Figures 6.4.1 and 6.4.2).

Long before the iPhone, traditional players in the mobile industry were already exploring this segment: e.g., Nokia, Motorola, HTC, Palm, HP, and Sony Ericsson. Despite not being the first smartphone, Apple brought to market a new form factor (the touchscreen slate) and software platform (the iOS) that greatly enhanced the product's usability and appeal. In doing so, it established the agenda for future iterations of smartphones, making previous architectures obsolete (Figure 6.4.1).

Dominant designs reduce variation and, in turn, uncertainty in the product class (Anderson & Tushman, 1990). As seen in Figure 6.4.1, smartphones used to be more diverse and experimental. Before the iPhone, the mobile handset market exhibited a wide range of form factors (Bars, PDAs, Flip phones, Sliders) and input interfaces (Numeric keypads, stylus, QWERTY keyboards). However, since 2007, this diversity has dwindled as a new form factor emerged and gained growing acceptance.

Following the iPhone, the touchscreen slate quickly became the dominant design. With the iPhone, Apple brought to the market more than a branded product. The iPhone represented an optimal solution for what a smartphone should be. Apple had designed a new way of putting those components together (Gans, 2016). Other manufacturers perceived the iPhone’s successful disruption, thus following in the same direction.

A dominant design usually takes the form of a new product or set of features (Utterback & Suárez, 1993). The slate represents this very well. The slate features a touchscreen display, with only a few or no physical buttons, relying on a virtualised keyboard for touch input. Most slate smartphones also incorporate the following features:

• Capacitive touchscreen technology.

• Multi-touch for enhanced keyboard responsiveness and overall usability.

• A virtual keyboard with support for direct touch input. Prior virtual keyboards relied on indirect stylus input.

• An accelerometer for sensing the device orientation and adapting the user interface to landscape or portrait mode.

• A proximity sensor that dims the screen and ignores touch inputs when the user is answering a call.

• An ambient light sensor for adjusting screen brightness to save battery.

A dominant design in a product class is, by definition, the one that wins the allegiance of the marketplace; the one that competitors and innovators must adhere to if they hope to command a significant market following (Utterback, 1994, p. 24). This allegiance becomes evident in Figure 6.4.2. Since 2014, at least 96% of all handsets have adopted the same form factor. The line graph also indicates the rising adoption of the slate’s main components and features.

Despite its unique architecture, Christensen considered the iPhone to be little more than a sustaining innovation. It was just “a better phone”, as he put it. Christensen’s theory of disruption not only missed the imminent iPhone disruption, but it also predicted that “Apple won't succeed with the iPhone”. In contrast, based on Abernathy’s concept of disruptive innovation and dominant design, one could predict that Apple would disrupt the smartphone industry by “exploiting the advantage inherent in a dominant design” (Abernathy & Clark, 1985).