7 Disruptive Innovations that Turned Markets Upside Down

Bangalore: Some innovations make a grand entry into the market but they are unable to gain much popularity. But there are few who bombard the market with its presence. These items are best in their category and don’t have much competition in the market. Being monopolist they are able to generate lot of revenue too. Here is the list of 7 disruptive innovations that turned their markets upside down.

Apple

Apple iPad when launched in the market had a great response from the customers. It is a line of tablet computers which acted as the platform for audio-visual media like books, periodicals, movies, music, games, apps and web content. It runs which the same operating system that is used by the iPod and iPhone.  But it only uses the programs that are approved by Apple and that are distributed by Apple App Stores. It is controlled by multitouch display that uses stylus as well as onscreen keyboard. In 2011, it was able to grab 73 percent tablet computing market share in the United States and during the fourth quarter it sold out 15.4 million iPads. Instead of being expensive it has still the leading tablet pack therefore it is a niche product for the tablet industry.

Google

Google Apps was launched by Google that provides customized versions of many Google products under a custom domain name and features Web Applications like Gmail, Google Groups, Google Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites. It is free for the first 30 days and then per month it charges $5 and for a year it charges $50. For education it is free, offers the same amount of storage space as Gmail accounts and combines features from the Standard and Premier editions. There is Google Apps Marketplace which is an App store for Google Apps users and contains various apps which are free and priced and also which can be installed to customize the apps used by the user. In its first 19 months it was able to get 10 million users and the user number is increasing day by day. Therefore it is making the industry move towards the cloud based information sharing world.

Skype

Skype was created by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis in 2003 and was later owned by Microsoft. It is basically an administered voice over Internet Protocol service and software application that allows the users to communicate with their friends by voice, video and instant messaging over internet. Calls to other users in Skype are free of charge, while landline and mobile phone calls are charged to the debit based user account system. It also includes features such as file transferring and video conferencing. By 2011 it was able to attract 663 million registered users. Instead of being banned at corporate, government, home and education networks it has still being able to seek attention of many users as it is consistently growing. Therefore Skype is changing people’s thinking about telecommunication and are pushing them towards internet sourced technology.

Zynga

Zynga is a social network game development company that develops browser based games which work both stand-alone on mobile phones and as application widgets on social networking sites. This year Zynga games on facebook have attracted over 250 million users per month. Zynga games like CityVille, Zynga Poker, Farm Ville, Castle Ville and Hidden Chronicles are the most widely used game applications on Facebook. The company’s first earning report suggested that the revenue from advertising and sale of virtual goods grew by 59 percent. The games Farm Ville, Frontier Ville and City Ville accounted for 57 percent of the game revenue and the total revenue of the company was $311.2 million towards the end of 2011. It also accounts to 39.1 percent of the social network gaming market share thus it is changing the gaming industry.

Tata Nano

Tata Nano manufactured by Tata motors is one of the smallest and the lowest powered cars in the world which was designed to be the cheapest car in Indian domestic market. It was launched in 2009 and was priced at 1 lakh which is almost $2100 but later Tata was forced to raise the price because of the new emission regulation that asked it to refine the engine. Nano comprised of features like a 624cc rear engine, manual transmission, four passenger seats etc and it lacked the power steering and safety features like air-bags and ABS. It holds 17 percent of the total market shares thus it has disrupted the market and yet gaining attention

Netflix

Netflix is a provider of on-demand internet streaming media in United States and some other countries. It was established in 1997 and started as a subscription based digital distribution service but later in 2009 it added a new feature of offering a collection of 100,000 titles on DVD and managed to gain 10 million users. By 2011 it had made 23.6 million subscribers in United States and 26 million worldwide and their total digital revenue was $1.5 billion. It introduced a new pricing strategy known as the ‘disenfranchised customers’ in 2011 and towards the end of the year there subscribers cut down to 24 million but still its subscriptions has been consistent. Thus it is changing the platform of entertainment retail and technology integration.

Pandora

Pandora Internet Radio is an automated music recommendation service and is the guardian of Music Genome Project in United States. It plays musical selections which are similar to song suggestions entered by the user and then the user provides a feedback for the songs chosen by the service which is further taken into account for future references. The users are allowed to buy the songs or the albums from various retailers while listening to the song. When the song is selected it is referred from the 400 musical attributes which are combined into larger groups known as focus traits. There are about 2000 focus traits. It has two subscriptions one which is free with ads and the other is charged subscription without ads. In 2011 it reported $138 million in revenue and therefore it is redefining the format of radio while pushing the industry towards personalization.