“Has Apple lost its cool?” Matt Creamer writes for AdAge.
“It’s a question that’s been asked since Apple rose from the ashes in 2001, a time during which the company has become nothing less than the most valuable in the world,” Creamer writes. “Nevertheless, journalists, analysts and just about everyone else have been champing at the bit to pinpoint the exact moment when the company will lose its imagined Svengali-like grip on the minds of American consumers and Appleapocalypse is upon us.”
Creamer writes, “Ricocheting around the web last week was a Wall Street Journal article headlined: ‘Has Apple Lost Its Cool to Samsung?’ CNBC asked ‘Is Samsung Cooler Than Apple?’ … For a marketing world that has been hanging on every Apple move for decades, these are huge questions that seem to herald some sort of new brand order. They also might be the wrong ones entirely. After all, it’s been a long time since Apple has had to worry about issues of cool — it’s a ubiquitous cultural force with little of the underdog feel it had when it was the hip alternative to IBM or Microsoft.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “TheloniousMac” for the heads up.]
what always amazed me is that the iphone is still perceived as something special and superior – though everyone has one. how apple managed to do that is magic. it is a scary thought though. what happens when that magic suddenly disappears.
don’t get me wrong, i think the iphone is a superior phone but when everyone has one people might start to long for something else, and be it only to differentiate themselves.
I have a go-phone and you’re right. I am distinguished! ;D
iPhone still is magical.
What is not magical is, Android, let foreign companies even key partners close to Apple – mimic the iPhone, far too quickly, far too closely, far too easily. And the patents have not protected the product. Meaning, Americas own system fails homegrown ideas.
Yes, competition is good but seems rather unfair… my example comes from the pharmaceutical industries where drug patents do protect against the competition. from copying new drugs from Generic brands can not copy or compete, typically for 7 – 12 years.
iOS was magical. Apple bridged emerging technologies to its own line of device with grace… a iPod, a Browser, a Phone… in a seamless well thought out umbrella of a device called the iPhone. A better Smart phone. Where the magic fades is where the cannibalization started.
Yes, the prestige of owning an iPhone can be related to its price; even seen as a status symbol. But if thats magic to you – then your mind sits with the foggy minded folk who worry more about the stocks than the product.
If the entire planet all had iPhones… is the cool factor warn off – no… only the prestige in ownership… but not the prestige that you are using a great product backed by a great company who leads the industry in newer interests still yet to emerge.
I am a proud Apple consumer because they great products that work great and I feel safer and better off then using the competitors products.
Still, I have and do use non-apple products… and i will be honest… the competition merely has eye candy there is no advantages from them whatsoever. None.
So I ask you, if the Magic has gone – who is the new magician?
That perception is waning. You have to admit, though. Some of the Android phones available are strikingly good and Windows 8 phones have their own edge, too. Now with Blackberry back on the scene, it’s a very competitive arena. Apple has their work cut out for them.
Android phones strikingly good? If so, only because they are such a blatant ripoff, a poorly built iPhone with a few minor tacky variations. Take away the iPhone-clone bits, and there’s almost nothing left, except the headaches of Android fragmentation.
Windows 8 phones are the real innovators, but only prove that just being different is not enough, and like everything from MS recently, too little too late. They are no breakthrough, and have major shortcomings which means they will never be able to storm the iOS stronghold.
Blackberry? Again, the only way to postpone the inevitable is to become more like iPhone. A few clever new features might put off their death a year or two, not lead to a massive turnaround.
It’s “special and superior” because it *works*. There’s a combination of software & hardware that works well together.
You’ve got to be kidding me! Samsung cooler than Apple? What a joke!
The Scamdung rice cooker beats the Apple rice cooker, hands down.
Ditto the Scamdung supertanker. Apple has nothing like that!
Well the media sure has lost their cool.
These sort of stories pop up because douchey writers and analysts have to have something to justify their existence. Apple will always be cool to me just as they were before their rise to prominence…
Blogging and the internet as a whole have left us with an over-abundance of under/un-employed people posing as journalists; so much so that we can’t tell the difference between a real journalist and a blogger. Shakespeare, were he alive today, would have trouble deciding who to really get ride of!
If subpar is the new cool then Samsung should take the lead. No wait, Microsoft might be in the running too.
“Cool” people don’t read Wall St. Journal, Forbes, or Rob Enderle. They certainly don’t watch CNBC.
this will be good… what pray tell, do cool people read? I know, I know, lemme guess, Huffington Post?
Huffington Post sucks. “Cool” people probably don’t read but if they did, they”d read this: http://www.thelazypitbull.com
“… grip on American consumers…”
Author fail.
Next.
Led Zeppelin vs Gangnam…which one’s cool? And for how long?
Hate and dislikes are opinions most make far too easy.
Negativity is the fashion.
Cool is to fallow the other sheep.
Cool apparently is to copy or steal.
Cool is misunderstanding real freedoms and belief that guidelines, rules, structure, fairness are control – and not cool.
Apples control on the entire ecosystem from software to hardware FEELs to customers like a dictatorship… those who appose the Apple model seem to believe Android is better. Those fail to see that such control which Apple imposes actually maintains quality and safety for all customers.
They fail to see how cool that responsibility from Apple really is.
Its too hard for most to think positive and be patient.
Its not common or cool these days to think different.
“Cool”, as determined by people who wouldn’t know cool if it shot them in the kneecap: tech journalists, Wall Street.
As long as people still have lengthy conversations about all the stuff they can do with their iPhones and iPads (because of the superior apps available, compared to what on Android), Apple will continue to be cool. Face it; many people – if not the majority of people – buy Android-based phones not because they are better devices, or even cheaper devices, but because they are NOT Apple. The iPhone is the device against which all others are judged, thus it is in essence “cool” by default.
Remember that “grip on American consumers” once held by Blackberry? Or Dell? Yeah turns out you’re only as good as your last product.
well its said the customers are always right
so if Apple wishes to stay King? a larger phone is needed.
if the customer wants a smaller tablet the customer shall be offered such a device…
if not Apple needs to create and offer totally new devices that steer us consumers to new territories
tiny insignificant improvements in the publics opinion are heard loud and clear – so Apple must listen
Apple makes absolutely no compromises to quality. How can the best quality product (not to mention the superior performing operating system that no one seems to focus on) be anything less than “cool”??? Since when has Ferrari NOT been “cool”???
iPhone components – 80% were Samsung components
so is the Galaxy S1/2/3 inferior. Apple’s Tim Cook mentioned Samsung makes a good product. Ooops. He should have kept to Steve Jobs script, ” they make junk.
…COOL
One of the reasons Apple was cool was because its products were used by the Pro crowd, be that music, movies, television, photography or magazines to create or manage their content.
As Apple has abandoned the Pro crowd, so its cool has evaporated.
It’s the elites that are cool, not the masses.
lol – the pro crowd????
nice classification, but you make a good point
initially the elite richer people bought the iPhone, it was a status symbol to own one
once iPhone was achievable by so many with a 3 year contract everyone was seemingly able to afford it
Apple make iMac, its still conceived as an expensive computer but really compare it to the competition Apple is a great buy
Samsung s3 is priced at roughly iPhones price…
are these Pro Crowds buying Galaxy for coolness or elitist reasons? No.
– sense of freedom with the openness or a fair OS
– sense of better eye candy regarding a messed user interface
– sense of convenience with SD card slot opposed to wireless
– a sense of familiarity to windows hierarchy file structure
Apple made the computer simpler to use
Apple made iOS devices the most simplest computing ever, intuitive enough to a 1 year old, simple enough to a 99 year old.
Android did what?
Samsung did what?
Consumers who buy Android are less informed careless purchasers on a budget… compare directly Galaxy S1/2/3 to the sales of iPhone 3g/4/4s/5 then tell me who sells more – whos product is better liked – why and what is cool about it
– always looking at both sides
steve always said apple was more like BMW and Microsoft more like chevy. How ironic that the comparison might also extend to samsung being more like Hyundai. but to the rediculous question of apple’s cool. ask whether BMW has lost its cool. these idiot analysts don’t seem to understand the product very much.
Hurray, well said.
In addition, I fear for those consumers who chose Android; truly misunderstood the magic/cool of Apple products too.
Look hard at iPad mini. A very controversial move by Apple, since said they said they will never will make a 7 inch tablet.
But that said, there was a consumer base of Apple fans who really wanted it. And it was built. Now, considering the product, look how cool it really is.
Compared to other 7 inch tablets, Apples is slimmer then all of them. Even slimmer then its own line. It performs extremely well, it has processing power. iPad mini, blows the competition away.
Apple continues to do things right. Now that’s totally cool.
@Dr. Pill, Apple said they’d never make a 7″ tablet. . . and they didn’t. Apple made an 8″ tablet. I can never figure out why everyone insists on comparing the iPad Mini’s 7.9″ screen to the competitors’ obviously much smaller screens? It has 35% more screen area than any 7″ tablet!
Apple defines “COOL”.
Wall Street currently defines “FOOL”.