Samsung announced a new phone called the “Instinct” at CITA (wireless industry) show going on in Las Vegas. It’s a nice looking device with some impressive features – large, sharp screen, 3G capabilities, haptic feedback (so you can feel when the device registers your touch), built-in GPS and microSD slot, among others. On paper, people in the market for a touch-screen smartphone would compare the Instinct to the iPhone and say, “No contest. Come to me, Instinct!”
As good a game as the Instinct talks, it won’t matter for two reasons. First, Apple has won the PR war. It’s become the Kleenex or the Xerox of touch-screen smartphones. Any phone with similar features will be compared to the iPhone, and knockoffs, no matter how well made, will still be seen as knockoffs, at least for the foreseeable future. It’s like the Gamera to the iPhone’s Godzilla. Yeah, they’re both giant, bipedal reptiles that emit flames and trash cities, but if you were to describe Gamera to people on the street, they’d say, “Oh, he’s like Godzilla?” (Answer: Pretty much, but he’s a turtle.)
How did Apple capture the hearts and minds of so many with the iPhone? They made an awesome product and it was the first of its kind. As we know, first counts for a lot in marketing. A whole lot.
Second, Apple has made a habit of unveiling updated products that blow the doors off of the competition – and when the competition comes close to catching up, Steve Jobs yawns, calls for a keynote, and unveils new versions that leave competitors scrambling to incorporate similar features into their products. They’ve been so consistent that people are willing to wait out competing products with (temporarily) superior features in order to get their hands on Apple’s latest and greatest a short time later.
It’s a simple mission that may be difficult to implement, but will always lead to success: Be first or be dramatically better than the others right off the bat, and then never let up on the competition. In doing so, you’ll own your niche, and that’s where the money is.
Look at a company like Palm. They created the PDA space with the Palm Pilot, and were primed to take the smartphone market with the Treo. Unfortunately the software couldn’t keep up with the evolution of the hardware, other products like Windows Mobile and BlackBerry passed them up, and even Palm loyalists decided they simply couldn’t wait for Palm to release a product that compared to what else was out there. Palm sold its software division to a Chinese company and now puts out Treos that run Microsoft Software and use BlackBerry Connect. Although they created their niche, they didn’t work to keep it filled, and other companies were happy to fill it for them.
I wouldn’t worry about a similar fate befalling Apple anytime soon.
0 Responses to “iPhone competitors trump Apple’s features, but it won’t matter”