Apple Shakes It Up
TAKING A POT SHOT AT THE STATUS QUO has always been Steve Jobs modus operandi. With the iPhone launch, he’s out to create a sea-change in the way cell phone services are bundled and controlled. In other words, he’s messing with who makes the money for what and how.
PROFIT MODULES FOR CARRIERS through limiting users access and taking home the additional dollars through owned services or partnerships with other companies adds to the bottom line for a number of “invisible” names. When you try to take people piece of the pie, that gets some backs up.
This time around, with iPhone, Apple is breaking some cardinal rules.(Read Associated Press article that follows.)
The only one who could take this “shot” and maybe get away with it is Apple. Chutzpah for sure. But where is the base of Apple power? What makes Apple iPhones so desirable.
Well, ask around, you will get some form of this answer: Design, for one thing. It’s the response you hear more or less from many consumers. And design has contributed wildly to other successful launches down the line for Apple, in computers and phones.
Design is and always has been crucial to the formation of the product because DESIGN is a big arena of decisions for how it looks, feels, acts, operated, provides and how it interacts with you, the user.
“If Apple made sliced bread, yeah, I’d buy it.” said Andrew Kaputsa, who waited outside the Michigan Avenue Apple store in Chicago. “It’s just good stuff. Everything they touch.”
Excerpt: June 30, 2007, from Jeremy W. Peters’s article “Gave Up Sleep and Maybe a First-Born, But at Least I Have an iPhone” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company (full article included: read on)
I’m proud to have spent my career working in DESIGN. Apple understands. Many of their big wins have come from that design innovation focus.
Can Apple lead a sea-change? They already are, because when a weakness is identified, others too will be picking at the wound. And all this, in today’s world, means players have to move smart, but move fast–for market share and territorial protection. Read on about “shaking things up” in the cell phone world.