What is a car?

Some years ago, I was on a modern bus (an Airporter bus from San Francisco airport to Marin County). As the bus cruised at about 30 miles per hour on a San Francisco city boulevard, the engine suddenly cut out, the lights went out. The driver steered the suddenly powerless bus to the side of the road, and brought the bus to a halt. He pushed open the door and walked around, to the back of the bus. Returning to his seat, he restarted the bus, the lights came on. What had happened? The bus had crashed, he explained, not into another vehicle, but its operating system had failed. He’d gone to the back of the bus to, quite literally, reboot it. (Windows CE, I believe.)

A week ago, on literally the same road, I passed a Google driverless car. This is how far the merging of information and automotive technologies have come. How far, that is, to this point.

We have reached the point where the definition of a car is changed.

You will buy a(nother) iPhone

Another iPhone is on its way, or perhaps even two models[1]. And this much we already know: you will buy a(nother) iPhone. This matters, both because of the simple statements about this vast market, and because of what it says about innovation and growth in years to come.

Really, and the theme of this piece, there are four basic reasons why most people will end up buying a(nother) iPhone; its Star effect; the learning curve benefits of the iPhone’s position; the virtuous cycle of learning how users interact with their smart phones; and the business model strength. We’ll discuss each of these. Another post will deal with the opportunities to challenge Apple’s market dominance.