A few years back, Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 were launched almost simultaneously. At the time, Sony was going to face bankruptcy in no more than 6 months if its console was not a hit.

What was quite interesting back then was that the reason wouldn’t have been because of a failure to market and sell the PS3, but rather the failure to sell millions of video games associated with it. The PS3, six or so years ago, was sold for a few hundred US dollars when that could be the price of one video game. This brings us to a certain notion that indicates that it’s not only the product but the momentum created and maintained in the product or in products associated with it.

There is only so much you can introduce in a device like a PlayStation. However, you can still develop and sell many video games associated with it to support the sales of the console and guarantee its survival until the market is skimmed for profits. In other words, you guarantee a first-mover advantage then adopt a self-competition kind of strategy, where a product replaces another once the momentum has slowed down.

According to the BCG Matrix, a corporate analysis tool, a product starts in its initial research phase as a ‘question mark’. Once it has been developed and is expected to excel, it moves to the next stage of being a ‘star’. This is where you probably get the first-mover advantage as growth potential is high. When other companies start manufacturing a product similar to yours yet you are still making money out of it, the product has moved to being a ‘cash cow’. Finally, when the product’s potential has been exhausted already, it moves to being a ‘dog’, where it should be abandoned or in this article’s interest, replaced.

An example that illustrates this is Nokia in its good old days. When Nokia was a leader in the mobile phone market, it initiated its strategy of competing with itself, frequently launching different models not only to attract as many customers as possible but to ensure its own success by the survival of its products. According to the BCG Matrix, Nokia was rushing towards developing products faster as more products moved to being dogs, i.e. low market share and low growth rate.

Then, as the dark ages were replaced by those of smartphones, Apple was there to guide us all. Despite the already existing Mac system in the 1980s, Apple could only rock the market when it launched its first iPhone in 2007, after the launch of its iPod. The mixed feelings of being surprised, curious, interested, amused and impressed did the rest. Apple’s performance after that was stupendous. It bombarded the market with one upgraded model after the other to restrict movement between only the star and cash cow phases.

Now besides the innovation in Apple’s products, another cutting edge was introducing iTunes. As a medium for songs, apps etc, the product further ensured that each Apple product stayed as a star or latterly as a cash cow for as long as possible. So even when you don’t want to replace your iPhone 4 with iPhone 5, you still get to enjoy the software upgrades and all of your favorite apps. And as a bonus for Apple, a year back, iTunes held a value greater than all of BlackBerry, which is still in Nokia’s age with its most recently launched BlackBerry 10.

Companies realise that there is a lifespan attached to each product launched. And so every company comes up with one way or another to postpone the imminent death of their star product. In the examples mentioned above, PS3 succeeded because of its video games. Nokia, on the other hand, succeeded temporarily by launching one product after the other. But because the entire company did not evolve, it got left behind. Apple focused its energy and creativity on a few products. It then developed iTunes to enable its products to endure business cycles and to have another source of income. Though now, Samsung’s rebirth is what’s new in town. With its existing pool of knowledge in making smartphones’ chips and parts, tapping into the market itself with Galaxy products, its stars wasn’t a problem. And even though they still lack a decent app store, Samsung chose to do it differently by developing additional products, like its unique Galaxy camera.

Now the last thing I want to leave you with is this: would Samsung beat Apple, which has enough cash to probably bail out Greece?

The writer is a commercial consultant and a commentator on economic affairs. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/aj_alshaali