Following my post last week, I talked about the success of the Google Android phones and how they are taking over the market by storm similar to Apple. I came across an interesting article recently that talks about Apple’s strategic approach to launching products.
Steve Wozniak, the co-founder and a current major shareholder, is a very outspoken individual who “tells it as it is”, sometimes going out of the way to bash on his own Apple products to praise for the competitor’s offering based on how he truly feels about them. Just recently Wozniak states ” that while the iPhone isn’t for everyone, Android is more of an OS for the masses” and that “Apple has the direction for the entire world, but Android phones have more features”.
Wozniak also claims that Apple’s early success with the iPhone came thanks to a perfect storm of breakthroughs in screen, battery, software, and manufacturing technology and memory. It appears that Apple already had a next-generation phone in development and ready by 2004. However, it did not have enough of a “bang effect”. At the time, Apple was satisfied with the quality, but it wanted to wait for something more impressive and thus didn’t release the iPhone until 2007 when it felt that all the features and hype was ready for the market. In other words, Apple wanted to wait for the ideal product and take the market by storm by offering the first of its kind and revolutionizing the smart phone industry, using this market strategy to allow the remainder of the market automatically assume Apple’s place and leadership in the industry.
Not only did Apple want to surprise the world, they wanted to have a real breakthrough. Their marketing strategy is that companies need to wait to capture a market until they have something extremely strong. As a result of this, Apple’s iphone was not only able to capture the attention and hearts of early adopters and software developers, they were able to maintain their presence and recognition as the primary smartphone for the years to come. Even until today, everyone associate a touch-screen smart phone as the iconic iphone. And that strong iphone icon/brand isn’t going anywhere in the near future.
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