Apple: Iphone 4 Mismanagement
Boy I can’t wait till this video is out so I can post this press conference, this is breaking news in the making.
Apple’s stock is falling, and after their press conference, which is currently going on, they continue to fall. Apple usually takes the road of being superior, that’s kind of their pitch…superior products, superior personnel…superior everything.
With these new problems Apple’s Steve Job’s has resorted to something not like him…he’s blaming everyone else. He’s mentioned that other phone’s also have problems, that the IPhone isn’t perfect, and admitted publicly finally that they knew if the phone was gripped a certain way, that the reception bars would go down. He is quoted as saying “We’re not perfect, no phone is perfect”. This is true, but when you’re Apple, and when you’re the leader in the industry, you’re supposed to be better than this. He quoted a number for the first time, one half of 1% have complained about this reception problem. That sounds like nothing, however based on the numbers of sales, and when you do the math, that’s about 15,000 phone’s. That is no insignificant number.
Do you think if Microsoft had this mis-hap, that Apple would let it go? Jobs would be all over it, attacking Microsoft and boasting about his own companies success and how they work harder to get things right; not this time. He’s even gone as far as to point out other phone’s problems other than his own; deflecting the blame. The bottom line is what I said in my last blog series that Apple doesn’t know how to handle being the first in the market. Of course this doesn’t affect their advertising department, which you can see by these videos is still going strong. What they did do today was keep the news away from the Motorola and the Android X released today.
When companies are perceived as being invincible that is when they can fail. An important rule in marketing from one of my favorite books “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing” by Ries and Trout says that “success breeds arrogance, and arrogance leads to failure”. This is so true and Apple may be on the verge of portraying this. Recent press has portrayed Apple as the invincible company, whatever they put out, sells. The problem is that when you’re at the top like they are now, and Microsoft was for so long, people take more shots at you, and everything you do is being watched.
So far, based on this press conference (I am listening to it as I update this blog) Jobs is doing an absolute terrific PR job covering up all of his problems. His claim to why this may be happening? “Because of this new sleek and attractive design, less customers are walking out with bumpers or soft covers because they want to show off the look of their new cool phone”. Cop out? Yes. Brilliant? Even more so. The argument of not being perfect was also excellent. It’s a deflection for anything anybody can says now. “Well what about this problem”…”we’re not perfect”, etc etc. “We care about every user, the company will not rest until we get to the bottom of every customers issues”. Brilliant, and another new solution to the problem? The News Desk has come out as saying that they will give a new case out to every IPhone 4 purchased up to September 30th. If you already purchased a bumper, you are due a refund. This is just excellent and was exactly what I was looking for from them. This is an excellent response for their first big issue with this phone. It is less than $1 to make a bumper, they sell for $30. It is a smart, less expensive way to fix this. Hey guess what? After these announcements, Apple stock has just started going up again. It’s amazing how these solutions can work isn’t it? The world is based on marketing and perception, and now that it is perceived that Apple is capable and willing to solve this problem, their stock is up, already back up a whole 1% in less than one minute! Currently selling (as I write this) at $252.81 after bottoming out at about $248. This doesn’t sound that dramatic, but for a leading company, it is pretty extreme.
My god this man is a genius. Do you know the difference between your high school nerd and these men? Nerds have no social skills; these men are not nerds. If you are a nerd you may be extremely smart, however you are not capable of interacting in social scenarios. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs do not fit this bill. They are not nerds, they are genius’s.
Jobs is under fire for a few things. First, shipping a phone that they knew had problems like this. How could a company of such stature do this? It’s true that this is a relative blip on their radar, they will get through this. The bigger problem is the resurgent Android phone, with this problem and re-emergence of the Android, will Apple be able to regain all the position that they had before? It is highly unlikely, the Android is a big success. Steve Jobs understands his brand, he came back from vacation in Hawaii to handle this. Don’t for one second think that someone told him to return, Steve Jobs calls the shots at Apple. He made the choice to return himself. Jobs has also been criticized in the past for tightly controlling the development of his products, from the IPad to this IPhone. He’s so secretive about his plans that it’s hard to believe that anything ever gets done. Developers aren’t allowed to take any plans home to work on and only a few eyes get to look on the real design of the machines. Maybe if more eyes had seen this phone, these problems could’ve been averted? No one really knows. Another criticism of Jobs is his placement of Apps on the IPhone. He wont allow certain things onto the IPhone (Google Voice) and although it makes sense when you look deep into the reasons, it’s really just because he’s afraid of giving up any more ground to his competitors. They don’t know how else to slow down their competitions except…stomping them out. That sounds a lot like Microsoft to me…and you know why? Because it’s exactly what Microsoft has done and does to stay ahead in it’s category. Like i’ve said many times, this is something that Apple just hasn’t ever had to do, and now they do; stay up front in a category that they lead in no matter what the cost. Following the same type of topic, Jobs recent bashing and neglecting of the Adobe Flash player has a lot of people upset. He refuses to make his products compatible as possible with the Adobe Flash player so that they can’t get the credit that Jobs wants for his company. The problem with this is that Flash is currently the accepted video software on the internet and on many websites in general, and he surely can’t just keep ignoring it…but, he is. Finally he is criticized for the new IAd technology which was supposed to revolutionize the advertising on the IPhone. My friend Marina wrote a blog about this awhile back you can read here. It seems so far, there hasn’t necessarily been as many glitches as their has been lack of interest in the channel of advertising. It has experienced success, but it wasn’t the revolutionary idea that he and many others (including myself) thought that it would be.
Sept 30th there will be a new hardware design for release for the IPod 4. This could change the cost in the device nationally and internationally. Apple has not swayed from its international release date, sticking it with July 30th for 17 new countries, well before the new hardware and software will be out. I guess all there is to do now is wait and see what will happen. I will update again later when the video of the conference is available if anyone is interested!
