The Apple iPhone Phenomena - Why products that don’t suck, sell faster than suppliers can stock them.
When everyone else in a certain market product or service category, suck badly, it creates an IMMENSE opportunity.
Until recently, just about every smart phone out there, no matter HOW EXPENSIVE, they all sucked. They either crashed, were sluggish, or the functionality were just plain brain dead. Their battery life was pathetic too.
Whats worse, after you’ve spend your thousands of hard earned Rands with them, they don’t care about you. No software updates, no improvements. Usually the hardware of some of the phones are excellent but the software simply doesn’t take full advantage of the hardware, and the manufacturer doesn’t care. You’ve bought it, now good luck.
Then Apple decided they are going to build a PROPER smartphone, using great quality hardware, and build the software in such a way that they actually CARE that it doesn’t suck. Everything must just work really well.
...WOW!
What a revelation. A product that actually works properly without hanging, and no major glitches. (Obviously the iPhone 4 antenna problem is not so serious that it stopped people from buying it, and apple did eventually respond publicly by handing out free carry cases to mitigate the problem, as well as software updates to improve it)
Suddenly suppliers couldn’t keep their shelves stocked fast enough!
Of course Apple infuse the process with hype around its “insanely great products” philosophy, and charge premium prices. Yet people are SO DESPERATE for a product that actually works properly, that they’ll happily pay the premium price.
All the other phone makers (possibly with Nokia and Sony Ericsson as exceptions) having produced truly pathetic products.... I recall for example my Motorola smartphone that had to be swapped out repeatedly, and eventually I stomped on it when it kept crashing and dropping calls... I recall my HTC Touch Pro which was actually quite good, but it kept getting more sluggish and not a single software update reached it in the 2 years that I owned it, and eventually the keys on the keyboard stopped responding (This phone was priced similar to the iPhone when the first apple iPhone was launched here in SA).
The horror stories that I’ve seen (by looking over their shoulders while their faces are clenched in expressions of dismay) at some samsung smart phone users.... just unbelievable!
There was even a guy threatening a class action suite against HTC because HTC cannot be bothered to write proper software drivers that takes full advantage of the hardware capabilities of some of their phones.
It amazes me how the companies that produce such bad products do it. I mean, if I was the product development head, my self esteem and sense of pride would have stopped me from doing such a crap job.
There is some (economic) justice in this world :-)
Great, now that all these manufactures that really showed us (their paying customers) how much they care about us, is about to get squashed by Apple - a company that actually cares about how good their products are (or not).
In fact, in apple,legend has it that when someone comes up with some great innovation or improvement, then the honors bestowed upon him by his peers, is expressed with a simple sentence “This sucks less, good job”.
How much effort are you putting into your products and services to ensure that they suck less?
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