{"id":4881,"date":"2010-08-09T12:52:56","date_gmt":"2010-08-09T16:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=4881"},"modified":"2018-09-18T15:49:59","modified_gmt":"2018-09-18T19:49:59","slug":"apple-execs-worst-fears-coming-true","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/08\/09\/apple-execs-worst-fears-coming-true\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple execs’ worst fears coming true"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple has seemed almost ham-handed in their attempts to control the media “storyline” since the iPhone 4 was released. If Eric Raymond<\/a> is correct in his analysis, Apple will continue to struggle:<\/p>\n

\n

Apple\u2019s bid to define and control the smartphone market is going down to defeat. I was going to describe the process as \u201cslow but inexorable\u201d, but that would be incorrect; it\u2019s fast<\/em> and inexorable. My prediction that Android\u2019s installed base will pass the iPhone\u2019s in the fourth quarter of this year no longer looks wild-eyed to anybody following these market-share wars; in fact, given the trends in new-unit sales a crossover point late in the third<\/em> quarter is no longer out of the question.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an important point that, so far, all the coverage seems to have missed. You can only see it by juxtaposing the market-share trendlines for both 1Q and 2Q 2010 and noticing what isn\u2019t there — any recovery due to the iPhone 4. This product has not merely failed to recover Apple\u2019s fortunes against Android, it has not even noticeably slowed<\/em> Apple\u2019s loss of market share to Android.<\/p>\n

Forget for now the blunder the trade press has been calling \u201cAntennagate\u201d; I had fun with it at the time, but bruising as it was, it\u2019s only a detail in the larger story. With the iPhone 4, Apple tried to counter the march of the multiple Androids using a single-product strategy, which was doomed to fail no matter how whizbang the single product was. As I predicted would happen months ago, the ubiquity game is clobbering the control game; Apple has wound up outflanked, outgunned, and out-thought.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As I’ve noted before, Apple had been running a very slick, very successful media image-building strategy of coolness and technological sophistication. For several years, they barely put a foot wrong in their complex dance of marketing and public-perception-influencing. When something finally did go wrong, they clearly lacked the ability to respond gracefully and recapture<\/em> the wavering affections of both the reporters and the readers.<\/p>\n

In short, the short-term effect of “antennagate” could have been limited to a one-off glitch: give the punters a free “bumper” for their phones, do it quickly and ungrudgingly, and reap the PR reward for being pro-active and showing that you care for your customers. Instead, the “smartest guys in the room” managed to squander almost all their accumulated goodwill in a few short weeks of bluster, denial, and arrogance. Nice work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apple has seemed almost ham-handed in their attempts to control the media “storyline” since the iPhone 4 was released. If Eric Raymond is correct in his analysis, Apple will continue to struggle: Apple\u2019s bid to define and control the smartphone market is going down to defeat. I was going to describe the process as \u201cslow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,28,15],"tags":[675,160,1235,27,547],"class_list":["post-4881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-media","category-technology","tag-android","tag-apple","tag-esr","tag-iphone","tag-smartphones"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1gJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4881"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7663,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4881\/revisions\/7663"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}