The classical description of disruption in business, and especially technology, is that a new product (method, business model, etc.) appears that’s not as good as the existing way of doing things, but that’s much cheaper… The future always comes looking like a toy. You can see this basic story over and over again in the history of the technology industry.

Right now, the tech industry is being reset by the mobile. And in mobile, disruption tends to work the other way around: That is, in tech the cheap weak product generally gets better quicker than the good expensive product gets cheaper. But in mobile, the good expensive product has generally got cheaper faster than the cheap, weak product got good. Moore’s Law is operating in both cases, but the effects are different. MORE