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The critical window isn't when something is first possible (e.g. when the first product appears), but when the combination of technical abilities, component price points, and market characteristics intersect to permit success.
To use a physical example, the iPod and iPhone were great products, but they were hits because they launched with the features they did, at a specific point in time, at a specific price point.
We know that potential for success infection point existed then, because they did build a working device and achieved success.
Consequently, if they had not completed those devices when they did (say, +20% time), another device could have achieved their success.
Maybe nobody on the planet existed other than Apple who could do it... but the possibility was provably there.
Or in simpler form: Netflix was far from the first streaming video service. They were the one who launched with the right features at the right time.
Nobody cares if you catch a small wave perfectly. What matters is catching the best wave of the day, in the brief window you have.
The reason all those examples you cite became as successful as they did is because they spent that extra 20% to get it right. They didn't just ship some MVP out the door. They spent a huge amount of time and energy to get the product as close to perfect as they could before shipping. Steve Jobs, famously, became concerned about the aesthetics of the traces of the circuit board on the original Macintosh [1], spending $5000 (16,330 in 2023 dollars) and a couple of weeks, to have a circuit board created with better aesthetics. Then they threw that board away because, it turned out that aesthetic traces don't actually correspond to good signal propagation.
That's the reason that Apple, especially, has been so successful. It's not because they launched at some perfect time window. It's because they launched damn good products. If the iPhone had launched in 2008, or even 2009, it would have been just as successful. We just would have had another two years of mediocre Windows Mobile/Symbian OS/Blackberry devices.
I think that's an oversimplification. The original Mac was a terrible computer. It was slow, it had too little memory, it overheated, it wasn't expandable, the keyboard was deliberately crippled by removing the arrow keys, it had a single button mouse, and it required almost endless floppy swapping.
The graphic UI and the case design were distinctive. But what really sold it was an incredibly sophisticated ad campaign that carpet bombed key media outlets with super-expensive exposure.
The problem with Symbian/Blackberry/Palm wasn't just mediocre technology, but a lack of dazzle. The products were functional but mediocre. But they were also marketed in mediocre geeky/corporate ways that just weren't that interesting to most consumers.
The original iPhone was barely more functional. But again, exterior aesthetics and a huge marketing and PR campaign forced open a consumer market for a product that was - like the original Mac - barely finished.
The problem Google has is that its products and its branding are heading rapidly towards mediocrity. It reminds me of DEC - an engineering giant in the 70s and 80s, which forgot how to read the market and innovate in the 90s, and crashed far more quickly than anyone would have predicted.
The critical window isn't when something is first possible (e.g. when the first product appears), but when the combination of technical abilities, component price points, and market characteristics intersect to permit success.
To use a physical example, the iPod and iPhone were great products, but they were hits because they launched with the features they did, at a specific point in time, at a specific price point.
We know that potential for success infection point existed then, because they did build a working device and achieved success.
Consequently, if they had not completed those devices when they did (say, +20% time), another device could have achieved their success.
Maybe nobody on the planet existed other than Apple who could do it... but the possibility was provably there.
Or in simpler form: Netflix was far from the first streaming video service. They were the one who launched with the right features at the right time.
Nobody cares if you catch a small wave perfectly. What matters is catching the best wave of the day, in the brief window you have.