不得不說，現在蘋果的發布會已經遠遠沒有從前那么吸引人了，或許這都是各路撲面天蓋地的“泄露”和“網傳”給鬧的。曾幾何時，蘋果的新產品保密工作做得極為嚴密，等到發布會盛大召開的時候，喬布斯每一次都知道如何為我們帶來驚喜。他總是在發布會快結束的時候來一個“返場”，低調而狂拽地說一句：“還有一件事兒……”隨后才帶出用戶最望眼欲穿的設備或服務。現在就讓我們來回顧一下1998年以來，喬布斯每次在發布會上是怎樣為我們帶來驚喜的。

十年前的今天，史蒂夫·喬布斯發布了首款iPhone手機，自此，蘋果公司開啟了整整十年的騰飛期，成為有史以來最為成功的企業之一。蘋果現在也成為全世界最有價值的上市公司。

以當時的眼光看來，iPhone的設計以及喬布斯的后繼戰略似乎很難保證iPhone的持續火爆。畢竟當時諾基亞憑借極具質感的手機設計幾乎壟斷了整個市場。當時全球手機市場的年銷量剛剛達到10億部，喬布斯表示，蘋果的目標是攫取1%的市場份額，也就是大約每年1,000萬部手機。而iPhone推出的第二年便打破了這個目標。2015年，iPhone的銷量更是達到了2.31億部之高。去年iPhone的銷量增長勢頭終于有所減緩，但它仍然是市面上利潤最高的手機。

正因為如此，iPhone也成了當代商業史上被研究得最多的產品。

斯普林特公司的CEO馬塞洛·克勞雷對《財富》雜志表示：“很多時候，僅僅是一些微小的進步也會被夸張地宣傳成‘改變世界’或者‘革命性’的進步，但我認為，即便是這些形容詞也不足以形容iPhone所帶來的影響。喬布斯和蘋果不僅僅是發明了一種新產品并推廣了它的功能，而是掀起了一場真正的技術革命。因為他們專注于為數十億人提供一種更好的方式，以改善人們生活的方方面面。”

在哈佛商業學院教授大衛·約菲看來，蘋果之所以能夠繁榮增長這么長的時間，是因為它從來沒有將iPhone當作一個孤立的產品，而是把它當成一個可以提供大量軟件應用程序的通用計算平臺，并且迅速地將該平臺向外部開發者進行了開放。除了軟件應用程序以外，iPhone也是銷售媒體服務和線上服務的一個新載體，更不用說它還可以銷售很多高利潤的配件。

約菲指出：“iPhone的成功給我們上的最重要的一課，就是它從來不僅僅是一個產品。蘋果圍繞iPhone建立了一個平臺和一個完整的生態系統，因此在行業內的全球其他企業都在遭受商品化沖擊化的時候，蘋果卻能夠禁受住商品化的強大壓力。”

其他硬件廠商也想偷師蘋果的這套平臺戰略，但并非每款產品都可以支撐起一套自己的生態系統。Fitbit和GoPro最近的艱難處境就突顯出了這方面的挑戰。

蘋果的成功并不是在iPhone發布后就注定了的。蘋果早期也曾經犯過一些錯誤，喬布斯也只能靈活應對。比如在iPhone剛發布的時候，還沒有應用商店和第三方軟件，iPhone的定價也高達600美元，還忽略了當時非常普遍的補貼體系。而且初代iPhone也缺乏高速3G上網能力。初代iPhone的有些瑕疵是設計上的，還有一些是技術限制導致的。所以蘋果必須迅速做出后續動作。

約菲表示：“至少在早期階段，蘋果在iPhone戰略的調整上還是相當靈活和敏捷的。換句話說，不像很多公司在遇到問題時的表現，蘋果基本上沒有陷入過困境。”

麻省理工學院斯隆商學院教授邁克爾·庫蘇瑪諾認為，蘋果自始至終都把關注點放在用戶身上，這也是一條重要的經驗。企業必須關注用戶與產品的互動方式，它與產品的技術本身同樣重要。庫蘇瑪諾也十分推崇喬布斯“用戶體驗為王”的提法。

和微軟創始人比爾·蓋茨以及蘋果的另外一位創始人史蒂夫·沃茲尼亞克不同，喬布斯并不是一位純技術宅。他并不過分糾結于iPhone的技術規格，而是更重視打造易用性最佳的手機體驗。

“以Palm Pilot、黑莓和微軟手機為代表的所有早期的PDA和手持設備都很難上手。” 庫蘇瑪諾指出：“而iPhone非常簡潔，非常好用。它的易用性是之前的所有設備都無法比擬的。”

競爭對手一開始并不認為iPhone是個嚴重的威脅。時任微軟CEO的史蒂夫·鮑默甚至還無情嘲笑過iPhone，黑莓的高管也曾經嘲笑過iPhone沒有實體鍵盤，諾基亞的CEO康培凱還說iPhone只不過是個“小眾”產品。不過最終，蘋果一無反顧地專注于易用性的做法還是笑到了最后。

庫蘇瑪諾表示，喬布斯的優勢也相應地帶來了一個弱點——iPhone近年來的發展歷程證明了一個硬道理，那就是任何偉大的設計都會被山寨。雖然蘋果有數不清的專利和商業秘密，卻依舊無法阻止三星等廠商憑借幾乎與iPhone完全相同的產品，搶占了比iPhone大得多的市場份額。

庫蘇瑪諾表示：“一款出類拔萃的產品是無法長時間鶴立雞群的。它有可能變成一個平臺，但它還是會被剽竊。”

為了保持利潤水平，蘋果決定不提供廉價機型，也沒有將平臺軟件授權給其他廠商，因此在市場上留下了讓跟風者趁虛而入的空間。

即便如此，蘋果依舊保持了巨額的利潤。最近一個財年，蘋果的利潤達到了460億美元。而且很多分析師也認為，2017年蘋果即將推出的新一代iPhone也將是一款暢銷產品。

“iPhone并不像微軟Windows一樣擁有長達30年的增長周期，但它的增長周期也是相當搶眼的，而且它還尚未結束。” 庫蘇瑪諾說道。（財富中文網）

譯者：樸成奎

Blame those leaks and rumors, but Apple events aren't quite what they used to be. New products were once shrouded in secrecy. And when the time came for the big reveal, Steve Jobs knew how to impress time after time, delighting the audience with that now-famous one-liner, "one more thing..." and the latest lust-worthy device or service. Here's a look at every announcement Jobs surprised us with from 1998 on. Photo: Jerome Brunet/ZUMA Press/Corbis

Steve Jobs' famous iPhone introduction—10 years ago today—kicked off one of the most successful business runs in history, lifting Apple to its current position as the most valuable public company in the world.

Few aspects of the iPhone's design, or Jobs' subsequent strategies to ensure its continued popularity, followed the conventional wisdom of the day. At the time, Nokia dominated the mobile phone market with slick-looking handsets. As the market was just hitting 1 billion units in sales a year, Jobs said Apple was aiming to grab 1%, or just 10 million phones. The product beat that target in its second year and reached a peak of 231 million phones by 2015. Last year, the momentum finally crested, but the iPhone remains an incredible profit-generating machine.

And that's made it perhaps the most scrutinized product case study in recent business history.

"Too often, only modest advances are overhyped as 'world-changing' and 'revolutionary,' but I believe those phrases understate the impact of the iPhone," Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure told Fortune. "Steve Jobs and Apple didn't just create a product and then market its features. They sparked a true technological revolution because they've always had a laser focus on providing billions of people a better way to do the things they do every day."

To Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie, Apple has been able to flourish for so long because it never considered the iPhone in isolation as the thing it was selling. Instead, Apple saw the iPhone as a general computing system that could offer a bevy of software apps, quickly opening the system to outside developers as well. Beyond apps, the phone was also a new vehicle to sell media and online services, not to mention lucrative accessories.

"The most important lesson of the iPhone's success is that it was never just a product," Yoffie said. "Apple built a platform and entire ecosystem around the iPhone, which enabled it to withstand the powerful forces of commoditization which struck every other firm in the industry worldwide."

Other hardware vendors have tried to take the platform lesson to heart, but not every product can become the center of its own ecosystem. The recent struggles of Fitbit and GoPro demonstrate some of the challenges.

And Apple's success wasn't guaranteed from the moment Jobs revealed the iPhone, either, Yoffie points out. Apple made some early mistakes, and Jobs had to be flexible. Initially, there was no app store or third-party software, the phone was priced at $600 ignoring the subsidy system prevalent at the time and it lacked high-speed 3G connectivity, Yoffie noted. Some flaws were by design, others caused by technological limitations. Apple had to move quickly.

"Apple, at least in the early days, was flexible and nimble in adjusting the iPhone strategy, after a slow start," Yoffie said. "In other words, unlike many companies when things go wrong, it didn't get stuck."

Throughout, Apple kept its focus on the users, another key lesson according to Michael Cusumano, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of management. Companies need to focus on the way users will interact with their products as much as the technology inside, he said, crediting Steve Jobs for recognizing that "the user experience is king."

Unlike Microsoft founder Bill Gates or Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Jobs was not a hardcore geek. He cared less about the iPhone's technical specs and more about creating the easiest-to-use phone ever made.

"All the earlier PDAs and handhelds like the Palm Pilot or the BlackBerry or Microsoft's phones were hard to use," Cusumano said. "The iPhone was so elegant, so simple to use. The ease of use of the iPhone really made it stand out from everything else that had existed before that."

Competitors didn't take the iPhone seriously at first. Then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer laughed at Apple's first effort. BlackBerry executives derided its lack of a physical keyboard. And Nokia’s chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo took to calling it a "niche" product. Ultimately, though, the Apple's relentless focus on ease of use won out.

But Jobs' strength has also proven to be a weakness in one way, because the more recent lesson of the iPhone is that any great design will be copied, Cusumano said. Despite Apple's numerous patents and trade secrets, the company was unable to prevent to Samsung and others from collectively far surpassing the iPhone's market share with almost identical products.

"A stand-alone product cannot stand alone very long," Cusumano said. "It may become a platform, but it will still be copied."

Apple decided to maintain its profit margins and has not expanded by offering cheap models or licensing its software to others, leaving ample space in the market for the copycats to dominate.

Still, Apple continues to garner huge profits–$46 billion in its most recent fiscal year–and many analysts think the 2017 iPhone upgrade will be the best seller yet.

"It’s not a 30-year run like Microsoft Windows has had but it’s a pretty good run," Cusumano said. "And it’s not over yet."