“I’m not going to dive into all of the different ways Apple’s iPhone changed the industry. We’ve done that dozens of times in the past, and I’m sure we’ll do it again in the future,” Zach Epstein writes for BGR. “Instead, I want to focus on one particular piece of Apple’s strategy that every other global smartphone company has adopted.”
“The problem, of course, is that it doesn’t seem to be working very well for any company other than Apple,” Epstein writes. “Despite the striking similarities between each iPhone model and the one that preceded it, Apple’s phone sales continue to climb. Every year, Apple sets new launch-weekend sales records and new full-year sales records.”
“Everyone has his or her own theories on why Apple is able to find so much success with this strategy. In reality, it’s the result of a combination of several of the most popular theories — hype, marketing, a shockingly faithful fan base, superior design, superior quality, a superior user experience, and so on,” Epstein writes. “But Apple’s unprecedented success has led its rivals to adopt the same strategy with their flagship smartphones, and to be frank, it’s just not working… Apple pulls in more than 90% of the smartphone industry’s profit among global vendors each quarter. That staggering figure isn’t likely to change anytime soon…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs called it “revolutionary” for a reason.
Here’s what cellphones looked like before and after Apple’s iPhone:
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “MotivDev” for the heads up.]
It’s called insanity! 🖖😀⌚️
The worst is they think they can be like (successful as) Apple by doing the same thing (copying) which is not the same thing at all (innovating).
To be successful like Apple they need to identify some big unmet needs, that Apple isn’t meeting, and focus focus focus on finding deep solutions to those needs until they are no only leading with shipping products but have a long internal R&D lead.
But that would take someone at the top who knew how to skate to where the puck is. Not many of those.
Bingo!
Apple has simply put the innovation & development cycle on steroids for smart phones. Apple has done in 5 years what a normal product improvement cycle in another industry might take 10 or 20 years.
As a result, Apple has the cash, mindshare and technical people to beat any competition. I wouldn’t want to compete with Apple.
Because Wall St think every phone maker is Apple killer. Exhibits: Motorola, Palm, HTC, Samsung, Xiaomei, ….
Exactly. Wall Street thinks it’s easy for any company to build much cheaper products that will instantly win over the hearts and minds of consumers. I don’t know where they get this idea from. Is it really a tenet of marketing that has existed from the dawn of sales? Is it based on how most humans think? I don’t really get it.
I don’t necessarily buy products based solely on how cheap they are. I have been always taught brand loyalty and if the brand cost a bit more but has served me well in the past, I won’t switch. Wall Street seems to have this cheesy ecology-ruining theory of how it’s better to sell cheap, throwaway products to keep high sales going which I consider highly immoral. I think the longer any product stays useful, the better it is for me and the ecology. I guess growing up many people praised companies making products that were built to last and it stuck with me. That’s how I see Apple as making products built to last.
Actually, I’m surprised cheaper products HAVEN’T taken over. The idea that “cheaper is better” turned Sam Walton’s kids into the wealthiest family on Earth. Don’t underestimate the average American’s tolerance for crap as long as it’s a nickel cheaper than the competition.
Don’t hurt yourself protesting oil rigs in your plastic kayak, man.
As more and more Android users see we iPhone users not having to put up with mediocre hardware and software they are finally deciding to switch. There are several people I work with that have done it in the past year, and my boss was one of them.
On another note, I was talking to our VP of accounting the other day, and he said he’s had enough of Windows and is going Mac. He has an iPad he really likes, and after his parents bought his son a MacBook Pro for college he can’t take it anymore. Slowly but surely.
Again, technology has become too important to the everyday lives of everyday people to risk trying experiments or “redesigned” software and hardware.
Every new iPhone customer is really becoming new customer for the entire Apple eco-system — iPad, Mac, iCloud — at some point.
Apple’s biggest selling feature is “It just works.” And, it’s basically stable.
We are witnessing the slow migration from a Windows-centric universe to an Apple-centric one, and that is what is driving Apple’s phenomenal growth.
products may cost more, but are a better VALUE overall. Consumers are finally starting to realize this. 🖖😀⌚️
Agree. I was just gonna say: Android phone manufacturers think they can be like Apple by selling similar (ie, copied) stuff at a lower price, and thereby garnering the lion’s share of unit sales. Apparently, Wall Street and so-called analysts and other talking heads have everyone thinking that cheaper is better and will win the race in the long run.
Except what I don’t get is their phones are not much cheaper (if cheaper at all) than Apple’s iPhone. Part of the scam is the phone carriers selling bundled contract services at a fixed price, regardless of whatever Android phone they peddle to get people to buy in to the contract.
But luckily most smart people …and eventually almost everyone …appreciate the full life-cycle product value proposition. There is no substitute for VALUE.
Competition is good. I won’t begrudge other companies their ambitions, pathetic and misguided though they may be.
Competition is oversold and not as important as we are led to believe.
I has a kee bored so umma righter two.
The reason is obvious. Apple’s iPhone is integrated with iOS. Almost all competitors’ smartphones, no matter how fancy or cheap, have some version of Android (often not even the latest version).
With all other smartphone platforms now (essentially) out of the game, It’s a repeat of Mac versus Windows. Apple knows how to play that game
Right, ken1w. Epstein misses the secret sauce when he writes
“The “next big thing” isn’t a bigger, faster version of last year’s phone. It’s something novel and exciting that smartphone users have never seen before.”
Wrong, Zach! Our phones pretty much do enough for us. People are learning which phones do these things best. Consumers don’t leap at revolutionary cars that sing and dance. Top sellers have been slowly morphing and evolving cars since the 40’s and do the same things other cars do. They just do it a little better.
Common sense in the Windows world is literally thrown out in the Android world.
In the Windows world:
• You wouldn’t pay top dollar for a hardware running Windows 3.1
• You wouldn’t accept that a computer probably can’t be updated without an expert or rooted or…
• You wouldn’t hear someone say, “Updates aren’t necessary. Don’t worry about security.”
▲ Yet all that nonsense is perfectly acceptable in Android-Land.
Hype and marketing are important, but mean nothing without superior design, superior quality and a superior user experience to back them up.
A “shockingly faithful fan base” are the result of the latter three.