I think the author still has a lot of work to do to defend his case. BMW doesn't hesitate to make concept cars (see, e.g., http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1890/69/), but it has brisk sales and an enviable brand cachet. It's tempting to find some one variable which differs between successful companies and unsuccessful ones, and then spin it, but I think that, in reality, no one variable explains things so neatly.
It's not about successful vs unsuccessful -- obviously nobody can argue that Microsoft is unsuccessful. It's about innovative and non-innovative.
Relative to Apple, BMW is a terrible example of an innovative company, nor do they need to be innovative to succeed: The automotive industry hasn't seen a dramatically different product design, comparable to the difference between an iPhone and a flip phone, since well before World War II [1]. Progress in automobiles has been all about slow, gradual evolution for fifty or sixty years. Even the new hybrid cars are incredibly conventional (they're designed to be nigh-indistinguishable from other cars) and are based on incremental improvements to technologies that are decades old (electric cars, for example, date back to the mid-to-late 1800s).
The most interesting recent BMW product (that I know of, anyway) has been the Mini Cooper, a vehicle whose major selling point is that it closely resembles a famous design from 1959. The equivalent Apple product would be the "iENIAC".
[1] That is, there hasn't been a dramatically different design that went anywhere. Even if you discount all the wacky concept cars that can't actually be manufactured, plenty of folks have tried to change the industry with real products: the Segway, the Corbin Sparrow, etc, etc.
Mercedes Benz SLK revived the concept of the hardtop convertible, and now almost every convertible make is shifting to a hardtop. The difference between a hardtop convertible and a soft top is basically the difference between a iPhone and a Nokia N95 (comparison to a regular phone is a strawman).
BMW's brand tells a very clear story: "We sell performance sedans and four seat coupes. You can denormalize for comfort or price to a limited extent."
Even their convertibles 2 seaters (the old Z3 which was fairly slow) and their SUVs (X5, particularly) are as or more sporty than their competitors.
I believe that attempting to define your brand through your concept products implies impending death by mediocrity, but releasing concepts consistent with your brand are probably net neutral, maybe of minor benefit if you're midway between two home run product releases. Releasing the concept technology as a product is ultimately what moves brands, in my opinion.
I contend that concept products correlate highly with companies that have a high cash/agility ratio.
GM and Ford, despite their dire financial situation, have such low agility that they pass this test. Toyota had some Scion car at the last Seattle auto show that was shaped like a bank vault. WTF. Attaboy guys -- you just let your guard down and gave the signal that the Koreans (Kia and Hyundai) have an entry into that segment.
Microsoft is flush with cash but won't make the hard choice -- cut the anchor to the desktop OS and productivity software business to transition into whatever their next fortune would be. Windows Mobile exists to sell Windows NT licenses. MS Surface is a UI device for some corporate middleware thing that is currently shown on 15" CRTs in cubicles across the world? This must be what it's like to paint yourself into a corner.
I can't say too much about Nokia because I don't think I even know one person who owns a Nokia phone anymore, and I certainly can't think of anyone who owns a Nokia Smartphone. My perception is that they basically make trusty but crusty candybar phones for people who learned a phone UI in 1997 and don't want to change.
Ultimately I think it's inevitable. GM, Ford, MS, Nokia and now Toyota are all huge behemoths in their markets. They have the blessings of huge volumes, but the curse of not having a focused market direction (other than "yes").
Apple has the luxury of a small enough and well enough tended market definition (premium phones + audio players + consumer PCs) that they can tell a story with the release of each product. The sheer volume of MS or GM products makes that impossible. Perhaps concept products are (an impotent) attempt to simulate the same thing for companies that can't.
I agree. I'm getting tired of Nokia's concept phones, while their real phones haven't changed a bit in 10years. Probably the hype is even worse here in Finland.
