In a price sensitive society with technological advances, consumers are more conscious about their spending. The demand for online movie and music streaming are rocketing everywhere in the world. Rdio’s music streaming  service is a free to access on mobile devices in Canada, the U.S. and Australia. Traditionally a subscription-based service, Rdio gives its customers access to more than 20 million songs, chosen by algorithms that tailor the music to the listener’s tastes. As Rdio is the first provider of free music streaming in Canada, it has the competitive advantage over its competitors in the market. Not only in Canada, but Rdio also directly lures customers away from the well-know alternatives, including Pandora, Spotify, and iTunes Radio.

Rdio was created by the founders of Skype and has been opened for private beta testing on 3 August 2010. By applying the four growth strategies, we can observe that Rdio has been using market development strategy. By marketing its current product in a new market like Canada and Australia, Rdio is able to capture many new customers that its competitors cannot.

However, there is nothing as a free lunch. The only downside is that customers can only skip six songs per hour and there’s no rewind button after the Rdio Unlimited 14-days trial. The goal is to give users a taste of the Rdio streaming experience and persuade them to upgrade to the unlimited $10/month subscription. Rdio still has to pay for the licensing of all the music that’s streamed for free.

This blog post focuses on explaining the sales trend of Apple’s two new smartphones, the iPhone 5s and 5c. What is interesting about this is that although the 5c is available as a more affordable alternative, the sales record suggests that customers are still willing to pay more for the 5s.

I believe that the main goal for Apple on releasing the new iPhone 5c is to capture a new segment of customers. By charging lower prices and adding some ‘fun’ features into its new 5c model, Apple is able to cater a new group of customers with lower income and different lifestyles, most likely teenagers. Moreover, the 5c model allows Apple to play around with its STP. In the past, Apple relies on the ‘one-size-fits-all’ strategy on its smartphone product line. The introduction of 2 products this time allows Apple to segment its customers completely into 2 different groups and therefore attracts more customers, especially those customers who were put off by the previous iPhones due to their budget constraints. This diversification strategy has been successfully implemented by many of Apple’s competitors in the market, including Samsung and Blackberry.

However, by analysing the sales record provided, it clearly shows that the new 5c does very well in terms of sales, compared to its big brother, the 5s. Moreover, the interesting point here is that even in countries with lower level of income, customers are still willing to pay more to get the better 5s model. Apple should take into consideration of these trends and use them to adjust its current marketing strategies, especially the goal to capture new customers. Cost-benefit analysis should be done in order for Apple to gain insights and consider if the company is heading in the right direction or not.

(http://www.localytics.com/blog/2013/iphone-5s-outsells-5c-by-a-factor-of-3-4x-in-the-united-states-opening-weekend/)