Why copying is rarely competition

Dell announced (or rather posted) that they are discontinuing their MacBook Air rival the Adamo. It is pretty obvious that after Apple announced the Air a few years ago that many manufacturers tried to one up Apple in the thinnest and lightest laptop specs. They were copying and competing on those two metrics without really understanding the strategy behind Apple’s introduction of the MacBook Air.

In October, Apple said that the newest MacBook Air is the laptop of the future, and that the entire Apple laptop family would essentially be following suit. Bam! Apple’s strategy with the Air is finally revealed. They needed a product where they could experiment in the market on the dimensions of size, weight, and thinness. The used the MacBook Air to push the envelope of what could be done to reduce all of those factors. The unibody design, the lack of ports and drives, were all done to test the waters before moving the mainstream products in that direction.

Dell and other manufacturers were only creating one off products and copying the Air rather than using it as a strategic move for their mainstream products. So, today the Adamo project is done and Dell goes back to business as usual, while Apple goes forward revamping their entire product line using the lessons learned from the MacBook Air.