Really? Then why are so few companies doing what Apple does, coming up with new products that completely transform the marketplace? Why are most of the phone manufacturers playing follow-the-leader?
"Completely transformed the marketplace." Oh give me a break with the exaggeration. Yes, they made the smartphone more popular through ease-of-use and marketing. They did not, however, completely transform the marketplace any more than someone who comes out with product which becomes the leading product in its category. Smartphones existed before the iPhone, which allowed applications to be installed via a store. Apple made it more user-friendly, thus revisionist history makes it seem like they revolutionized things. They simply made a great product. In technology, everyone tries to follow the current latest-and-greatest while they research what will become the next latest-and-greatest. It happens in cycles.
It seems like we need more incentives to originality, not less.
The biggest hang-up for originality is the consumer. Consumers don't like huge changes. Which is something else that proves Apple didn't revolutionize the industry, they just found the right balance of marketing to get Consumers to accept the things they changed, while touting the things that they made better. Not even that, but most phone manufacturers aren't just playing "follow-the-leader" they are actively trying to differentiate themselves and improve upon the iPhone's design. Look at the variety in the hardware and phone design in Android phones. The originality in their sizes, shapes, and hardware, is driven by consumer requests, usability, and competition. Every single one is copying some aspects while changing others to try to appeal to the consumers. If anything, I'd say that Google and Android had a larger impact on the industry simply because so many phone manufacturers are competing solely on hardware specs and design rather than locked down software features. Of course, one could argue that the only reason why the phone manufacturers are doing that is because they have to compete with the iPhone but...well you get the point.
But it is not as if anybody knew that before Apple took the risk of introducing the iPhone or the iPad. There were no market surveys showing a great demand for flat, featureless phones with hardly any physical controls.
Sure there were, the problem was that the software at the time that accompanied them wasn't sufficient to support that form factor. A flat, featureless tablet, with nearly no physical controls, has literally been the dream of huge swaths of consumers. It's been the dream of every geek and person who enjoys sci-fi. Every single depiction of "future technology" involves a pad that looks quite like an iPad. Where do you think the idea came from anyways? The hardware and technology has existed for a long time, the only hold-up was the software to support it. That's what Apple brought to the game and why it worked.
Indeed, the conventional wisdom was the consumers wanted phones and netbooks with hard keyboards.
In fact, that is still conventional wisdom and a selling point for a lot of Android phones. Many people purposefully get an Android phone with a hard keyboard rather than an iPhone. They get the features and functionality they want, with the keyboard they wanted.
as long as nearly everybody is lined up behind Apple playing follow the leader, and nobody has the courage to risk trying something genuinely novel. Once more, the evidence seems to indicate that we need to make imitation harder, not easier.
Researching and coming up with something genuinely novel takes time. Saying that no one else but Apple is allowed to make a bezelled, minimalistic, rectangular, tablet...in other words, what consumers in that category want, just hands Apple a monopoly for the time being. All it does is reduce competition which is bad for consumers. And then when something novel does come along, which will take longer than it otherwise would (incremental improvement works much faster, history shows) it will just be another monopoly until someone else creates something. As Steve Jobs himself once said, "Good artists copy, Great artists steal." Saying that everyone needs to stop "imitating" Apple and come up with a "novel" approach to the tablet that's not flat, featureless, etc, is like saying that everyone needs to stop making vacuum cleaners that have a handle, a flat portion on the bottom where it makes contact with the floor, and uses suction to clean. They are aspects that are intrinsic to the form factor and what are necessary for it to be useful. Notice that companies like Samsung, Motorola, and Amazon, aren't just ripping Apple off, but changing the design with different shapes and sizes.
So you don't suppose that it would hurt Apple's profits if owners of earlier model iPhones just decided that the model they have is good enough, and that there is no reason to upgrade to the new one?
Quite the contrary, if they just kept putting out the same thing and didn't create a new one, and had no competition to the iPhone, their profits margins would increase because they wouldn't have to spend the money to develop and create something new. Competition drives development.
The second generation iPad was a major upgrade, at least as major as the annual iPhone upgrades. Yet Apple had no appreciable competition in the pad arena in that area.
Sure they had competition, the motorola Xoom, the Nook Color, etc. They were lower cost alternatives to the iPad. So they reduced the price of the first iPad to compete with the lower cost alternatives, and upgraded the iPad to keep themselves on top. If they didn't do the upggrade, then when the Android tablets further improved, they would lose their advantage.
Moreover, surveys show that large numbers of iPhone 4 owners are breaking their contracts to buy the new model. This is not competition with other manufacturers, but competition with Apple's own previous models.
Surveys also show that more people own Android phones than iPhones. In addition, buying a new model doesn't break their contract, they just don't get the subsidy. All that means, however, is that people are willing to spend lots of money on technology. Plenty of people also paid full price for off-contract unsubsidized Android phones. None of this has anything to do with what the landscape would look like if they didn't have to compete with anyone. Historically, if a product has no competition, then it stagnates. There's no reason to make large developments and improvements if you know for a fact that people will continue to buy your product because it's the only product that exists.
Sorry for the giant rant. It just baffles me how people seem to not understand that monopolistic behavior is bad and competition is good.