For Apple, the hits keep coming. The company launches a new iPhone and 5 million people snag one over the weekend. An iPad Mini, expected to debut later this month, could get into the hands of 10 million users before the end of the year. And this is despite the fact that competitors offer a far broader array of smartphones and tablets, with a price, size and feature set to match the needs of almost any discerning customer.

The extraordinary popularity, and profitability, of Apple's products is in part based on the quality, consistency and simplicity of the offering. Apple avoids the pitfalls of the paradox of choice, a theory by psychologist Barry Schwartz that suggests too much choice makes it difficult to choose at all. No need to choose between Apple model 7844PQC, 6533PHX or the 5055PDQ or decide what operating system you should buy.

You want an iPhone 5? It comes in one size and two colors, with a few options for storage and networking. If you already know how to use an iPhone, this new version won't challenge your skills. How about a tablet? Apple has a model with a 9.7-inch screen and your choice of connectivity options.

Apple doesn't try to offer the most feature-rich or advanced mobile devices available. The way Apple chief designer Sir Jony Ive tells it, "Our goals are very simple -- to design and make better products. If we can't make something that is better, we won't do it."

Bigger than a 4-inch screen is not better for a smartphone. Apple has decided you should be able to operate your phone with one hand, and will only offer you a 4 inch iPhone 5 screen, or its 3.5 inch antecedents, the iPhone 4S and 4. Better is an iPhone 5 that is 18 percent thinner, 20 percent lighter, up to twice as fast and slightly longer than its predecessor, a flawed Map app notwithstanding.


"Most of our competitors are interested in doing something different, or want to appear new -- I think those are completely the wrong goals. A product has to be genuinely better. This requires real discipline, and that's what drives us -- a sincere, genuine appetite to do something that is better," Ive said in an interview with the London Evening Standard.

Whereas Apple offers limited choice, competitors are in the multiple choice business. They offer many more price points and feature options, including a variety of screen sizes, operating systems, cameras, networks and chips. And, they are doing more than just something different or new.

Motorola, for example, recently introduced three new Android phones, including a $99 unit with a 4.3-inch edge-to-edge display, a model with a 4.7-inch HD screen size and one with up to 32 hours of battery life. Samsung says it has sold 20 million of its Android-based Galaxy S3, with a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display at 1,280x720-pixel resolution, in its first 100 days on the market.