“It all started with the notorious bending video. Honestly, the first time I saw this, I thought it was pretty moronic. The guy’s hands are literally trembling from the force he exerts in his attempt to bend the thing,” Ken Segall writes for Observatory. “None of this is to say that Apple hasn’t had some real problems — or that it isn’t perfectly capable of shooting itself in the foot. The Maps fiasco was for real. The iOS 8.01 update fiasco was for real. (And utterly inexplicable.) These are things for which Apple was properly slammed, and has most likely learned from. But Bendgate was a crisis in search of relevance.”
“We now know that only nine bending complaints have been registered at Apple after more than 10 million new iPhones were shipped. We’ve seen Apple’s testing labs, and the stress testing that was done on the new iPhones. Surprisingly, we’ve even seen Consumer Reports chime in that iPhones have no serious bending issues — even though that publication has in the past treated Apple unfairly,” Segall writes. “While bending iPhones were on the public mind, we got to see a bit of Apple’s character in the way it responded. We also got to better understand the character of a particular Apple competitor… Samsung of all companies should have recognized the lack of substance to this story. They demeaned themselves by jumping on what at the time was highly unsubstantiated rumor.”
“If you’re familiar with this blog, you’ve probably heard me talk about the importance Steve Jobs placed on getting customers to love Apple,” Segall writes. “By doing so, he would ensure that customers would (a) buy more stuff, (b) evangelize to others and (c) stick with Apple when unforeseen problems arise. He understood that such things were inevitable, even for a company like Apple… Despite the intense media blasting, Apple customers did not defect because of Antennagate or Mapsgate. It’s pretty obvious that there will be even less damage from Bendgate… Building customer loyalty as Apple has done requires vision, talent, investment and determination. For many companies, a Bendgate-style story could cause incalculable damage, whether or not it is based in fact.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Samsung’s history makes it impossible for them to further demean themselves. Illegal slush funds, IP theft, and God only knows what else; Samsung is already stuck to the bottom of the barrel.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Arline M.” for the heads up.]
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