23 Feb 10 New Product Release Cycles – what is wrong?

I have been troubled by a couple of things in the last few weeks – why is it that when a new product comes out from someone new in the game the incumbent is written-off very quickly. Take the example of Andriod – Google is shipping 60,000 phones a day. And the assertion thus that Microsoft should be afraid even though it sold 2o million phones in 2008. Why is it that Apple has quickly managed to threaten Nokia, Microsoft and RIM in short space of time. Besides a superior product I think the reason is more entrenched in product release cycles.

If Nokia and Microsoft have been in the business way longer than Apple, they should have been able to react at lightning speeds to counter Apple. It was known for a long time that Google will enter the mobile space but why didn’t Microsoft react fast and come out with something hard-hitting? Same goes for search, real-time platforms, social networking etc. So why do we see this?

I think the real reason is the time established companies take to bring in new product releases. This is in my opinion nothing to do with the usual adage of – big companies are slow or reactive and bureaucratic . But that there is no defined process to have a frequent defined new product releases even if it is only with a set of small feature additions/edits. By this I do not mean security patches. The only company that is good at regular and frequent new product releases is Apple. Apple tends to do a complete overhaul of it’s product line every 18-24 months and small regular releases and upgrades every 6-12 months. The unofficial buying guide for Apple products sums it beautifully. Which other company has such predictable new product release cycles and overhauls? Other than Apple, Facebook and in some areas (like search) Google nobody does this well.

A process to make this happen in a large corporate will make sure it remains competitive and any new innovative idea is put into the market soon rather than wait for a new player to proves it’s worth – when it might become too late. If Microsoft and Nokia had such processes in place would we see such threats to it’s existence in the mobile space?

I doubt even companies like Google have such processes in place – which is why we see reactive and panic stricken incomplete and incompetent product releases like Google Buzz to catch up with the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Orkut strategy was totally broken and even in regions where Orkut was big they are now loosing ground as they cannot keep up with product/feature releases from Facebook.

So what makes Apple so good at this? I think the reason is their involvement in selling hardware which needs frequent new releases and overhauls. Which means that they have managed to do this for every product – whether software or hardware. Same might be for Microsoft when it comes to Xbox, but in other areas they don’t think that way.

Hardware industries can teach these web companies a few good lessons on new product release cycles.

Tags: Android, Apple, entrepreneurship, Facebook, Google, hardware, Microsoft, new product, Nokia, Orkut, product, Product Development, release cycles, start-up, Twitter, web