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Comment by thushan | Hacker News Reader

Though I think Apple is the only one that can pull it off. I'm a bit surprised that they'll be able to keep to a one year product cycle with things like the iPhone/iPad when the rest of the market is hitting a new product every couple weeks. Not that they've been one to match the rest of the market, but a lot happens in a year.

Then again, maybe the biggest lesson out of the touch screen revolution is that its not the hardware - it's the software, and Apple has been certainly setting the pace on that front.

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The phone market is doing a new product every couple of weeks, but how about the individual companies? Most buyers are on contract, and can't change phones more frequently than once a year with a reduced subsidy or once every two years with full subsidy.

If a phone company introduces a new phone, and then a few weeks later introduces a better phone, they've to some extent limited the market for the first one to the people who happened to hit the end of their contracts in that few weeks. Given the two year contract cycle, a phone a year makes a lot of sense (assuming your phones are good enough that it takes the competition several months to match or best them--as has been the case for Apple so far).

That's a damn good point.

It should work OK for them, as long as the new release leapfrogs whatever came out during that time. I think handsets makers had pretty aggressive schedule while Apple was making iPhone. It took Apple two and a half years to get the first gen iPhone ready—eternity in mobile phone makers timeframe–but look at the result. Apple somehow can predict the future (or are they just making it?) well in Advance and prepare accordingly.

The iPhone makes complete sense. The standard 2-year phone contract keeps the (non-fanatic) customers happier... their 2 year contract would only mean skipping one product release without paying the $200 premium.

The iPad... might see faster than 1-year cycles because there is no contract, per-se (of course the competitors keep screwing that part up, so maybe not).

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