According to SamMobile, the “nobody asked for this” criticism has become a common social media response to tech products that fail to make significant market impact in 2025, particularly citing the Galaxy S25 Edge as an example of a product facing this criticism despite Samsung’s attempts at innovation. The article argues this perspective undermines creative thinking and innovation attempts, noting that historically successful products like the iPhone, iPad, and even peanut butter weren’t specifically requested by consumers before their creation. The piece highlights the paradox of consumers demanding innovation while criticizing companies for taking creative risks, and points to the failure of compact flagship phones despite vocal consumer demand as evidence that consumer requests don’t guarantee commercial success. This creates a challenging environment for companies trying to balance market demands with genuine innovation.
Sponsored content — provided for informational and promotional purposes.
The Economics of Market Creation
The fundamental business challenge here revolves around market creation versus market serving. Established companies like Samsung operate in a delicate balance between incremental improvements that satisfy existing customer bases and breakthrough innovations that create entirely new markets. The financial reality is that most radical innovations fail—studies show between 70-90% of new products don’t succeed commercially. However, the few that do succeed often create billion-dollar markets that wouldn’t have existed if companies only listened to what customers said they wanted.
Strategic Positioning in Saturated Markets
In mature markets like smartphones, companies face the innovation dilemma: differentiation becomes increasingly difficult as technology plateaus. When most flagships offer similar core capabilities, manufacturers must either compete on price (eroding margins) or attempt distinctive features that might seem unnecessary to current users. The Galaxy S25 Edge represents this strategic challenge—Samsung needs to maintain its premium positioning while avoiding becoming just another Android manufacturer. The business risk isn’t just whether a specific feature succeeds, but whether the brand maintains its innovation halo effect that justifies premium pricing across its entire product line.
When Market Signals Fail
The compact flagship phone example reveals a critical business insight: vocal minority demand often misrepresents actual market size. Companies regularly face situations where highly engaged users request features or products that the broader market won’t actually purchase at viable price points. This creates a signal-to-noise problem in product development. As product management research indicates, successful companies distinguish between what customers say they want and what they’ll actually pay for. The financial consequences of misreading these signals can be severe, as evidenced by multiple failed compact flagship attempts across the industry.
Building a Balanced Innovation Portfolio
Sophisticated technology companies approach this challenge through portfolio-based innovation strategy. Rather than betting everything on either customer-requested features or radical innovations, they maintain a mix: core improvements for existing users, adjacent innovations for near-term growth, and transformational bets for future markets. This approach, similar to McKinsey’s Three Horizons of Growth framework, allows companies to manage risk while pursuing breakthrough opportunities. The criticism of individual products often misses this broader strategic context—what appears to be a failed product might be part of a larger learning process or technology development roadmap.
The Financial Reality of R&D Investment
Behind every “nobody asked for this” product lies significant R&D investment that shareholders expect to generate future returns. Technology companies typically reinvest 5-15% of revenue into research and development, with the understanding that not every investment will pay off immediately. The business calculation involves whether the learning and intellectual property generated—even from “failed” products—creates long-term value that outweighs short-term losses. This explains why companies continue launching innovative products despite social media criticism: the potential upside of creating the next iPhone or iPad justifies the risk of multiple failures along the way.
The Innovation Imperative
Ultimately, the “nobody asked for this” critique represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how technological progress and market leadership actually work. Companies that only build what customers explicitly request eventually face commoditization and margin erosion as competitors catch up and differentiation disappears. The most successful technology companies understand that their job isn’t just to satisfy expressed needs, but to anticipate unarticulated desires and create capabilities customers didn’t know they wanted. While individual products may fail, the strategic commitment to innovation remains essential for long-term survival in fast-moving technology markets.
