How Do You Beat iPhone?

The answer is two phones — and one is not big, flat and shiny

Why is there not more innovation and invention happening in the smartphones space? Everybody seems content chasing the iPhone, which is resulting in a classic race to the bottom with price as the primary differentiator. Thinner. Bigger. Brighter. Thinner. Bigger. Brighter. Thinner. Bigger. Brighter. Cheaper.

I’ve got nothing against thin, big and bright. Don’t mind cheap, either. And while pressure-sensitive touch on the iPhone is cool and curved edge glass on the Galaxy is neat, surely there’s got to be more in our future than just chasing incrementalism — walking the incremental iPhone walk, two steps behind.

Granted, there are the occasional blips of creativity and boldness. The Turing Phone promises secure communication and some pretty funky designs with metals they claim are “stronger than steel.” The YotaPhone has a bistable, sunlight readable, always-on display on one side of the phone and a normal screen on the other. Phonebloks proposes a componetized phone, letting you assemble and, over time, upgrade only the parts you want or need in a leg0-like way. (Google’s Project Ara is the most ambitious effort to realize a component based phone to date.) But, as I say, these are blips.

Might it be that the lack of disruptive innovation is proof that the game is over and it’s no longer about hardware? Are phones only differentiated these days with apps? (The way I customize my phone is different than the way you customize yours because my apps, and my content, are different than yours.) All good, but surely this can’t be the end-game? Is the flat, ever thinner, look-down glass slabs all there is?

I think not. In fact, I believe there are lots of big opportunities to innovate in and around the smartphone space. Disruptive innovation is waiting to happen, and likely will soon. It just requires that we do some fundamental “think differenting.”

This post is about how to think about making new types of phones. Let’s begin with four simple rules for what NewPhone needs to do to be successful. The “rules” are based on a simple observation: David didn’t beat Goliath by playing by Goliath’s rules. He invented his own. Here are some David rules for entering the smartphone space with disruptive plays:

Rule #1: Don’t compete with iPhone (or Samsung for that matter.)

How can you get in the phone game if you’re not competing with iPhone or Samsung? It’s easy. Just forget about the idea that the customer needs to answer the question: should I get NewPhone OR an iPhone? This is the wrong question. We need to get customers to switch the OR to AND: I will get a NewPhone AND an iPhone.

By switching the brief from “compete” to “complement,” a whole new horizon appears. The interesting question then becomes what a new smart communications device would be if it were designed to complement our existing phone. And I’m not just talking about some bluetooth gizmo on your wrist that requires you to have your iPhone in your pocket. What if NewPhone was a full-on smartphone that rang when your Galaxy or iPhone rang? What if the cloud gave you access to all your communications and information regardless of what device you were using? Not far fetched at all.

Rule #2: Fill holes.

There is no way that one device can support all my needs. In fact, Apple was the first to acknowledge this with the iPad. If you want to sit back, read, browse or watch a movie, your iPhone is too small and your computer too clunky. If we follow this logic a bit further, we realize that there are many holes in our everyday life that iPhone or Galaxy is not addressing.

For instance, ask yourself the following questions:

When do I, or would I like to, leave my Galaxy behind? At the gym. In the pool. When running, biking, sailing, climbing, paddle boarding. Playing with children on the beach. Operating on a patient. Going out at night…

What are some of the things I need when I am doing the things I love? Me, I love mountains. I ski up and down them in the winter. I hike or bike them in the summer. And my iPhone is a terrible companion. Battery life is poor. Interface sub-optimal as I wear gloves, sweat, am in motion, etc. etc. What I want is an AdventurePhone. Replaceable battery. Sturdy. Waterproof. Dual SIM. Easily mountable. Great camera. Solid grip… I digress.

What is your thing? Security? Size? Physical keyboard? Aesthetics? In these and many other areas there are big gaping holes that are not filled, and chasing iPhone isn’t going to fill them.

Rule #3: Differentiate vertically.

Adventurers. Athletes. Construction workers. Emergency responders. Security personnel. Party goers. People with disabilities. Fishermen. Farmers. Health care workers… the list is long.

The opportunity is to focus on vertical markets, and to complement, not replace, the one-size-fits-all horizontal iPhones and Galaxys. Let them be horizontal. The opportunity is to make a second device that works for us when we are “in the field,” “on the job” or simply “out at night,” a device that takes over and hands off seamlessly with your main squeeze smartphone when it’s around.

Rule #4: Charge for value.

Don’t compete with price. This is not a volume game. There are lots of people who will pay for unique functionality and capabilities when those capabilities address real pain points and needs. Build premium experiences and charge for them. Recognize as a part of designing the business model that this is not initially about horizontal scale, but about addressing vertical needs with unique capabilities.

Choose verticals that can sustain hundreds of thousands of devices, not millions. Take a business model lesson from Xiaomi and study their marketing, distribution and manufacturing strategy. Theirs is much closer to a winning formula for a disruptive play than the incumbents’ incrementalism.

If someone loves outdoor adventures what would it take to get her to pay a premium for the AdventurePhone I describe above. It would naturally have to be an Android device since creating an full-on operating system and app ecosystem from scratch would be incredibly complex, expensive and plain old foolish. Still, Android could be made to do some uniquely smart stuff. For example, the first time a customer starts up her new AdventurePhone, it could profile her iPhone, download and pre-configure (most of) her apps and “attach” to her current phone number. Imagine if she just took it out of the box, went through a simple registration process and magically it becomes her smart, second (adventure) phone that lasts as long as she does, likes her even when she’s all sweaty, takes beautiful pictures using one hand, mounts to her bike handlebar, doesn’t mind the rain and can take a beating. What do you think? Might a weekend warrior near you be willing to pay a little extra for that phone?

The Interface Challenge

Perhaps the biggest challenge and opportunity with NewPhone is to rethink industrial design and user interfaces. Both hardware form factors and software interactions should be wide open to re-imagining. I mention the easy profiling and set-up requirement above. Configuring a cloud service that makes the phone ring simultaneously with a main phone and ensures that text messages don’t get lost would be critical. But that’s just the beginning.

NewPhone is for people with gloves, working one-handed, hands free, or with a heads up screen. So many opportunities for innovation.

Last year a Nokia research team introduced Z Launcher. It is a simple “scribble based” Android launcher that learns from your behavior. Designed for quick, simple access to the people and functions you frequently access. It could work well for tiny screens. Voice interfaces is another area with huge untapped potential. Heads up displays are cool, but I believe the technology is a ways off.

It’s time to take some cool software innovations and marry them with entirely new hardware form factors. The right mix of creativity and radical questioning of how things operate today has the opportunity to jolt us out of our current 1984-ish state of blindly following and obeying the rule of iPhone. Surely somebody must be up for the challenge to think a little differently? Let me know if you’re one of them.

Photograph from The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images

Hans Peter Brondmo is a serial entrepreneur whose previous job was co-leader of the new product innovation team at Nokia’s HERE business.