Fast Followers aren't only in Pharma.

I'm back from my UK parenthesis, and almost ready for my french one.

In the meanwhile I've realised that I haven't posted for roughly 10 days.

And lots of things have happened. For the moment, though, I will only link you to this piece from the NY Times.

Asian phone makers are planning their answer to the iPhone, and the most common one seems to be: let's copy it!

tjhis is quite a common phenomenon in the pharma industry, known as fast follower - as soon as a company (say Pfizer) comes up with an innovative product (often known as first-in-class), a competitor (say Eli Lilly) change the molecule just enough to get around the patent, and markets it. Now things are getting more difficult, since these 'me too' drugs, as they're commonly known in the industry, have to demonstrate definite advantages over the first-in-class, to receive marketing authorisation.

Not so in consumer electronics, though, where a very similar implementation can still get you a viable product - however, even here the key is do more than the first-in-class, iPhone, without getting too complex. After all, the success of iPod was largely due to the human-friendly interface it presented to users, other than the appeal of being able to purchase music online and synchronise your mp3 collection between iPod and PC. And after all, iPhone is being marketed by Apple as a full screen, GSM capable iPod, not the other way around.

Good luck to Samsung and Nokia and whomever else may want to join the battle field. The more they fight, the more and better features we'll get, and the lower the prices we'll have to pay for them.