What Apple absolutely positively will not do ever

11 years ago

“A recent analysis [SteveJack at MacDailyNews, Nov. 3] suggested that Apple needs to expand the customer base by selling products for less; making affordable products below the iPhone and iPad,” Ron McElfresh writes for Mac360.

“The example given was that Apple should buy BlackBerry. After all, the brand is well known, the price would be low (as in bargain basement), and, well, I can’t see any other reasons,” McElfresh writes. “A Bizarro Apple could sell BlackBerry smartphones and tablets with iOS and expand the company’s domain into the mid-tier of smartphone and tablet makers.”

“Buying BlackBerry is a perfect example of what Apple absolutely will not do ever,” McElfresh writes. “Stick that idea into the same festering landfill where licensing the Mac OS and a selling a cheap iPhone reside. It won’t happen.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: SteveJack responds:

1. My article was an opinion piece, not an “analysis.”

2. Nowhere in my article did I say to buy the company.

3. I simply proposed buying the “BlackBerry” brand. The remaining roadkill up in Waterloo can re-rename themselves back to “Research In Motion” in order to continue trying to sell off their dismembered pieces to suckers and fools. Direct quote from yours truly: “Buy an established brand (on the cheap, no less) and design and market products for mid-tier consumers. There are other possibilities – other brands, creating your own (quite expensive) – but the BlackBerry brand would fit the bill quite nicely. No sense letting a widely-known brand just whiter away to nothing.”

4. Brands cost big money to create. They have value even when tarnished. As recently as 2012, Interbrand placed a value on the BlackBerry brand of US$3.922 billion. Millions upon millions of current and just-recently-former “CrackBerry” addicts roam the planet. The BlackBerry brand is still worth billions and could easily be revived in Apple’s hands. As I said in my article, “Mini Cooper has worked very nicely for BMW.”

5. The point of using a brand other than “Apple” to market mid-tier products was to preserve Apple’s brand while delivering iOS to a wider audience that will be more amenable to buying Apple products next if they’re already on an iOS device instead of slumming it with some fragmandroid POS.

6. Licensing Mac OS to other companies has nothing whatsoever to do with my article. Obviously, marketing mid-tier, Jony Ive-designed iOS products under a “BlackBerry” (or any other brand, existing or created) subsidiary’s label would mean that Apple keeps the money, not Power Computing. Win. Doing so, they would also (1) preserve the sanctity of the Apple brand while (2) significantly hurting the Apple knockoff outfits and (3) sowing the seeds for future Apple brand (higher margin) purchases. Win, win, win.