In the most interesting week for mobile since the iPhone arrived,Samsung is disrupting Apple once again. Its principal advantage is to be better at Apple at sustained improvement. But this is going to prove extraordinarily disruptive nonetheless.

　　That will be reflected in Apple’s share price, Friday morning, if the Galaxy S4 launch goes well.Samsung continues to be extraordinarily bullish about it.

　　Disruptive innovation has a very specific meaning. A company coasting on its innovations while smaller competitors come in andclimb the value chain with an an alternative. The idea of disruptive innovation also suggests that the newbie will reset the value system.

　　I said a couple of days ago we are seeing a different type of innovation in smartphones ? Apple, not some start up, wiped out Nokia. Adjacency plays like that are where high risk innovation is played out by the likes of Apple and Amazon.

　　But the S4 is not even an adjacency play. It is an iPhone-like phone, just done a whole lot better than the iPhone itself. But critically it is also being done faster. That is the new nature of innovation, at least one important feature of it.

　　Rene Ritchie had a great piece about Apple’s iPhone about this, especially the Apple release strategy, over on iMore yesterday.

　　He argues is that Apple likes to bring out a truly updated device once every two years. In the interim it will do an update (the S version).

　　Samsung and other smartphone makers have disrupted that pattern by launching new phones, major upgrades anyway, in the S year, taking the shine of Apple’s reputation as an innovator and reducing the impact of Apple’s software advantage.

　　But actually Samsung has done something much more substantial. They are unveiling the S4 less than a year after the S3 launch, which was May 2012. The S3 had an 18 month development cycle. The S3 to S4 product cycle is less than a year.

　　That means they are pressuring Apple not just in the S3 period but in full launch years too. And in addition they have also announced the Note 3. This is pretty dramatic stuff.

　　Apple’s share price was under pressure yesterday from supply chain rumors, according to Philip Elmer-DeWitt over on Fortune ? it has cut orders again ? before spiking late in the day, feeding commentary elsewhere that the stock was now on a roll. The assumption is that Apple can at least benefit from Wall St’s recent gains.

　　The stock is under renewed pressure this morning. It is 1.4% off in early trading.

　　So Ritchie has it right here. But you need to go a step further and see how accelerated the development cycle has become in the Android community.

　　Samsung, and competitors like HTC, have reduced the product development cycle to 12 months and Apple simply is not ready for it. People like to say that Samsung is not innovative but reducing the product cycle from 24 months to 12 is big news and a huge innovation effort.

　　It means that Samsung is bringing out the S4 when Apple has only an S upgrade in the tank. And meanwhile companies like HTC are pushing Samsung, in the Android arms race, to continuously improve specifications.

　　That brings us to Thursday’s S4 launch. How big an impact will it have on Apple?

　　I said yesterday Samsung wants to pull a couple of software featuresout of the hat to show critics it can compete with Apple in software and services too. The rumors areeye-scrolling and health monitoring. But I doubt on this latter feature that Samsung has an ecosystem or strong partnerships in place.

　　The phone is therefore about the specifications and the WOW of eye-scroll. People may even discount the plastic casing.

　　Logically, the analyst community should be asking what is Samsung doing outside of hardware to show it can create a new paradigm for smartphones. But in fact Samsung will succeed as long as tech analysts cantake five headlines away. We know the phone is good ? it’s all about how good.

　　Meanwhile Samsung is taking product innovation to a new level of speed. Much as I think Apple has strong foundations and a great platform and ecosystem model, its competitors are doing something special.It has to respond, maybe by spending some of that money on more design engineers and a stronger innovation portfolio. A hit on the share price Friday will be telling them exactly that.

　　在自iPhone手机横空出世以来移动世界最有趣的一周里，三星(Samsung)将再次打乱了苹果(Apple)的脚步。三星的主要优势在于持续改进，而苹果在这一方面更胜一筹。但是尽管如此，这仍将极具颠覆性。

　　如果周五上午Galaxy S4发布顺利的话，这将反映在苹果的股价中。三星继续非常看好该产品。

　　颠覆性创新具有非常特殊的意义。一家公司凭借已有的创新一路顺风顺水，而更小的竞争者以别的创新加入进来并向价值链高处攀登。颠覆性创新也意味着新手们将重新设置价值体系。

　　几天前我说过，我们将在智能手机身上看到一种不同的创新――彻底击垮诺基亚(Nokia)的是苹果而并非某个初创企业。像这样的邻接发展是苹果和亚马逊(Amazon)之类上演高风险创新的舞台。

　　但S4甚至都不是一个邻接发展。它的长相类似iPhone，只不过比iPhone要好用得多。但关键是它的推出还更快。这是创新的一个新特点，至少是一个重要特征。

　　对此勒内?里奇(Rene Ritchie)在iMore网站上写过一篇关于苹果iPhone的精辟文章，尤其是苹果的新品发布战略。

　　他认为苹果喜欢每两年推出一款真正的革新设备。期间苹果会发布一个更新版(S版)。

　　三星和其他智能手机制造商纷纷通过发布新手机打乱了这一模式，无论如何在S版的年份里，各种主要的升级将有损于苹果的创新声誉，并减少苹果软件优势的影响力。

　　但实际上三星所做的更具有实质性。他们将在距S3推出后不到一年的时间里就发布S4。S3的开发周期为18个月。而由S3升级到S4则仅用了不到一年的时间。

　　这意味着他们不仅仅在S3阶段对苹果施压――在所有的发布年份中皆是如此。此外他们也宣布推出Note 3。这是一个非常引人注目的产品。

　　据菲利普?埃尔默-德维特(Philip Elmer-DeWitt)在《财富》杂志上的报道称，周一苹果股价先是受到了来自供应链传闻的压力(苹果再次削减了订单)，后来又在当日晚些时候大涨，令其他地方的评论纷纷认为该股涨势势如破竹。前提假设是苹果至少能从华尔街最近的获利中受益。

　　周三上午，该股承受了新的压力。早盘期间下跌1.4%。

　　所以里奇的观点在这里是正确的。但你需要再进一步，看看安卓社区里开发周期加速得怎样了?

　　三星，以及HTC等竞争者已经将产品开发周期缩短到12个月，而苹果对此还没有做好准备。人们总说三星没有创新，但将产品周期从24个月缩减到12个月是一则大新闻，也是一个巨大的创新努力。

　　这意味着当苹果还在筹备S版升级产品时三星就将推出S4了。而且与此同时如HTC等公司也正推动三星在安卓军备竞赛中不断提高自身规格。

　　这将我们的注意带到了周四的S4发布上。它将对苹果产生多大的影响?

　　日前我曾说过，三星想一下子拿出几个功能以向评论家们展示，自己也能就软件和服务与苹果一较高下。据传新功能有眼球滚动翻页(eye- scrolling)和健康监测(health monitoring)。就后一项功能而言，我怀疑三星是否已有一个生态系统或强大的合作关系就位。

　　因此这部手机关乎的是规格和令人啧啧称奇的眼球滚动功能。人们甚至可能会忽略其塑料外壳。

　　合乎逻辑的是，分析师群体应当追问在硬件之外三星正在做些什么以显示它能为智能手机创建一种新范式。但实际上只要科技分析师们能拿下五个头条，三星就将成功。我们知道这部手机很好――剩下的就是它有多好。

　　同时三星正将产品创新的速度推向新高度。虽然我认为三星有强大的基础以及一个很棒的平台和生态系统模式，但它的竞争者正在做一些特别的东西。三星不得不做出回应，可能要花些钱在更多的设计工程师和更强大的创新组合上了。周五的股价将向他们说明问题。