Great article on Apple, competition, winning, and cannibalizing your own products:

If your goal is this solo win, if you have achieved everything that you want to achieve with this hit, here’s to you – the first round is on me. If your goal is growth, if you want to turn this win into more success, taking the time to catch your breath is the wrong strategy. Like, really wrong.

Your success is delicious. Others look at your success and think, “Well, duh, it’s so obvious what they did there – anyone can do that” and, frustratingly so, they’re right. Your success has given others a blueprint for what success looks like, and while, yes, the devil’s in the details, you have performed a lot of initial legwork for your competition in the process of becoming successful.

I’ve been working with a big publisher on a series of apps and one of the things I am most excited about with them is that they are so willing to test the future. Their book business, when we started this process a year and a half ago, was quite healthy. But they saw the writing on the wall. Now 2 of their big 5 resellers are gone and our first product together, DEWALT Mobile Pro, is on its way to more downloads in one year than their best selling book ever.

We’ve basically worked on the same product for the last 15 years, although we have had to adjust pretty significantly to evolving market conditions. We are now working on a worthy successor to powerOne. I couldn’t be more excited.

(article via Daring Fireball and Marco.org)