Prompt Cast
The Success of Siri: From Acquisition to Product Development
TLDR This podcast episode explores the journey of Siri, from its acquisition by Apple to its development as a successful product. It discusses the challenges of building consumer products and the debate surrounding whether Siri is primarily a technology or product acquisition.
Timestamped Summary
00:00
Pilot is a startup-focused accounting firm that handles all of a company's accounting, tax, and bookkeeping needs, allowing startups to focus on their product and customers.
04:26
In 2008, SRI spun out what would become Siri, and the name was chosen because the CEO of Siri had once considered it as the name for his daughter.
09:11
In 2010, Apple acquired Siri for around $200 million and made it a baked-in feature exclusive to the iPhone 4S, removing the Siri app from the app store.
13:47
Apple's acquisition of Siri led to the creation of an organization within Apple that is responsible for dictation, voice search, and other features, and the success of Siri as a product today is attributed to more than just the initial acquisition.
18:25
The success of Siri today is not solely attributed to Apple's acquisition of the technology, but rather to the internal development and hiring of key people to architect the speech recognition pipeline and rewrite the code acquired from Siri.
22:51
The categorization of the Siri acquisition is debated between technology and product, with one person arguing that it is primarily a technology acquisition and another person arguing that it became a product for Apple.
27:36
The debate continues on whether Siri is a technology or product acquisition, with one person arguing that it is a technology acquisition and another person arguing that it is a product acquisition.
32:16
The podcast hosts discuss the limitations and challenges of building great consumer products, using Siri and Airbnb as examples.
36:14
The hosts discuss the limitations and challenges of building consumer products, and how Siri may not have had a significant impact on iPhone sales.
40:09
The hosts discuss the acquisition of Siri by Apple and how it fits into their strategy of acquiring technology companies to build into their platform, but note that Siri falls far down the list in terms of importance compared to other acquisitions like PA semi.
Categories:
Technology
Business
