Product Design and Development - Essay Example

The iPad started the music revolution of downloading songs, while the iPhone was the first smartphone in the world. The iPhone was introduced in 2007. In 2013 there were one billion sales of smartphones worldwide (Plunkett Research). Companies that fall behind in their product and development efforts have a low chance of success in the business environment of today. A company that went bankrupt because it was not able to adapt to changes in the marketplace is the former movie rental giant Blockbuster.

Other companies in this industry such as Netflix and Red Box came up with innovative ways of giving the customers better options for movie rentals at much lower prices. In some industries, product innovation is extremely expensive. For instance, in the pharmaceutical industry, it takes $1.3 billion to develop a new drug. Pharmaceutical companies are able to recover their investment because the government gives them patent protection once the FDA approves the sale of the drug. A patent helps a company create a monopoly for a period of 20 years.

Product development will become more important than ever during the next decade.