With the intro of the Apple Vision Pro this week, it makes me wonder what does it take these days for a company to introduce a mind blowing, wildly successful new product or platform in tech? It seems everyone’s expectations are already set so high - super advanced, compact, fast, energy efficient hardware and a full software stack, with several first party applications and elegant, intuitive interfaces combined with excellent developer support, SDK frameworks and a ready ecosystem. It makes me wonder if it’s basically impossible for a startup to ever do this, or if the market is patient enough for slow incremental evolution. The barriers seem so high these days that it only makes sense big tech companies are the only ones to have the means to do this. Magic Leap tried to do this, but they had to compromise on hardware design and could not get enough developers willing to take a chance on a brand new product with an unproven ecosystem. I feel any new company introducing a new hardware product will have a tough time gaining traction in a world full of big tech behemoths. What do you all think?
For hardware, you have to have a workable technology with clear applications during the correct time window for market entry, and lots of capital. Apple and their ilk typically acquire smaller companies for new IPs and provide the capital to scale themselves, as they famously did with Fingerworks and the iPhone.
Good point. So it looks like the best strategy for a startup is to focus on creating a good component technology and avoid trying to do everything on their own.
Startups also run a risk if their product cannot be demonstrated in some useful scenarios. Fingerworks multitouch IP was productized in standalone HIDs before the acquisition. It lacked integration with a high resolution display, however - an obvious trade-off, in retrospect.