Apple v Nintendo, iPhone v Wii: Who Wins?
When Time magazine declared the iPhone to be the “Invention of the Year” for 2007, my immediate thought was “who won the glittering prize last year?” I Googled it, and discovered that YouTube did.
“Foul”, say I, “YouTube was launched in 2005.”
The Nintendo Wii was surely deserving of the prize, but it only scraped up an honorable mention. Maybe that’s fair and maybe it’s a little US-centric. The way I see it, the Wii is every bit as revolutionary as the iPhone. But, it just isn’t an award-magnet.
Let’s take a reality check and compare these two awesome innovations to determine which of the two is clearly superior.
| Apple: iPhone | Nintendo: Wii | |
| 1 | Revolutionary interface. | Revolutionary interface. |
| 2 | Spectacular media launch drives consumer demand prior to product availability. | Relatively quiet media launch leads to very little pent up demand prior to availability. |
| 3 | Expensive and comprehensive advertising campaign used to stimulate demand prior to actual launch. | No advertising campaign prior to actual launch, at least not in the US. |
| 4 | Sells out on launch. Hugely popular in the USA and, er, nowhere else. | Sells out on launch. Hugely popular all over the world. |
| 5 | Sells at a premium on eBay for about one week after launch. | Sells at a premium on eBay even 12 months after launch. |
| 6 | Initial demand satisfied after a month or so. Easy to get your hands on one (in the US). | Initial demand is likely to be satisfied by the end of next March (possibly). Still impossible to get hold of in stores. |
| 7 | Persistent on-going advertising campaign runs to keep demand bubbling. | Was there an advertising campaign? Maybe. You know, I’m not sure. If there was, I missed it. |
| 8 | Software developers may develop some applications for the device, if Apple lets them. | The whole of the games software industry is scrambling to produce games for the device. |
| 9 | Price cut introduced after 2 months of sales. | Don’t hold your breath for a price cut. |
Having carefully considered all these points, it’s quite clear to me that the winner is:
The Apple iPhone!
No contest really. Those Japanese guys can’t do technology – no way.
when did consumer demand and product marketing have anything to do with determining whether its a great invention or not?
i mean look at the segway…. a breakthrough product, but because of its price, demand will always be non-existent. its practicality would also affect demand, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be recognised for what it is…. a piece of equipment that was thought well outside of the box.
don’t get me wrong, i totally think the wii is well within the spectrum of being deemed an invention of the year…. but your arguments above for it against the iphone are all wrong.
Indeed the arguments are invalid, but that would be because this is intended as satire. It compares and contrasts the wildly over-hyped success of the iPhone with the far greater success of the Wii. The irony is that the greatest consumer electronics success of this decade (the Wii) went unrecognized by Time magazine.