Horace Dediu, writing on his blog asymco, offers a very interesting article describing the effects of disruptive technology advances. He argues that seemingly minor interface changes (say the move from the keyboard to the mouse) can affect the incumbent players in a market powerfully, moving profits from such incumbents to entirely new entrants. And he uses the deployments of touch interfaces on mobile devices as a beginning point in the analysis. Fascinating.
Read the whole article, but here is one chart from the piece showing volume, revenue and profit rankings in the mobile phone industry before and after the launch of the iPhone.
And if you find this type of analysis interesting (as I most certainly do) you should subscribe to a weekly podcast hosted by Horace Dediu called The Critical Path (iTunes link).


