People Buy Products, Not Any Technology

Shipping a great new product, not necessarily based on a new technology is adequate for the growth of business.

Steve Jobs made NeXT once he was forced to leave Apple behind. WorldWideWeb was invented on a NeXT computer. Still the business was not that good for NeXT.

On the other hand Tim Berners-Lee refrained from releasing world-wide-web under GNU-GPL only on the basis that corporates might not get involved due to the leftist reputation of GNU and Richard Stallman. Thereafter came Linux, GNU’s much awaited kernel code from Finland. That struggled for desktop space although got server side business. Then came Andy Rubin. He simply made android by using Linux as its kernel and a great new product is born to get purchased by Google. That made its own space acquiring the highest growth rate ever seen in business.

Apple got in trouble and Amelio started looking for a new operating system. Fortunately Apple bought NeXT shelling out much larger amount for less valued stocks but for what? Steve Jobs was hired again and what he did? He stopped Apple, looking for a new operating system. Instead he prepared Apple to ship the great new product iPod. iPod by Apple was greater than Walkman by Sony. Considering that the concept was not new as music listening on the go has already been a popular behaviour. iPod simply added great value to that popularity and became successful within no time establishing a great new user experience. Business became good around that.

People do not buy a technology. People buy a product. Shipping a great new product, not necessarily based on a new technology is adequate for the growth of business.

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