TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Kevin C. Tofel:

Look at the iPad, 3 million units of which the company has sold in just 80 days. Instead of floundering around by trying to define the device as a keyboard-less smartbook or a tablet PC without native handwriting capabilities, Apple gave it a definitive name with specific, usable functions and in the process — as I noted when the name was first unveiled in January – cornered the nascent smartbook market before that market even got started.

An even better example is the original iPhone announcement in 2007. Apple didn’t just describe the iPhone as the best smartphone on the market, but instead defined it by how it is to be used. They defined it by three uses: a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communication device.

This gave people trying to grasp what the device is something solid to hold on to. A “smartphone” is a nebulous, abstract concept—it doesn’t denote (or emote) anything specific. A smartphone could be anything, but the iPhone is simple: it’s an incredible iPod, a really good phone, and an Internet communicator. Done.

Because people could easily grok what an iPhone is, the iPhone transcended the smartphone category. It stood alone in people’s minds. There’s an important lesson here: when you’re launching something completely new (whatever it is—it doesn’t need to be a product), you should define it by something concrete and physical, in terms people can understand, rather than in abstract terms.

In 2007, no regular person could tell you what a smartphone was. But they sure as hell could tell you what an iPhone did.