Missed the Boat?

At what point does a company admit that they missed the boat? This is a continuation to Pizza Delivery And The Blockbuster’s Missed Boat.
When a company brings a product to market, beating all of its competitors to the punch on a particular item, does it mean that “Company Y” has to go back to the drawing board and instantly make some sort of improvement to the product for it to be successful? Do they have to cut into their profit margin and sell it at a cheaper price to gain a larger market share from its direct competitors?

Of course not, think of all the gas stations out there today, all of which have self serve gasoline. Now think how much they actually differ from each other. Before the age of the credit card it was accepted that people go inside and pay a cashier to for the gasoline they had either already pumped, or were preparing to pump (some people still do this). Credit card readers were then installed on pumps, and certain pump manufacturers started selling these pumps to stations around the world. Surely their competition was already developing this product, but does it mean they missed the boat? Did they have to wait to release a new product which would allow authorization and activation in one fail swoop before bringing the product to market? Nope.

Of course it is this direct competition which eventually betters, or worsens the product eventually (think new coke in the case of failure. Then again that lead to classic coke being released. Never mind that). It is this direct competition for comparable goods and services which lowers prices benefiting the consumer, because it will lower the price of the current products leading to the development of the new items.

Or did I miss the boat?

If this is the beginning of some of the conversations going to or from work, it should be entertaining to say the least.

Ciao!