I actually never claimed Apple's strategy is illogical. I did say it's not a common one, but I never said it's illogical
But you did say:
Is it too much to ask people to put aside their love for Apple or hate for other companies and just think a little logically for a bit?
You have yet to reconcile who -- or why -- you think anyone is "hating" without logical thought in this discussion. One would presume that you would use logical reasoning to show why I (or perhaps others) are not thinking logically. So far, you haven't done that. It was a mistake to bring the h-word into the discussion -- especially since you've provided nothing to justify it.
Yes and no. The smartphone market as we know it did not exist back in 2007.
Actually, yes. I didn't say
smartphone market; I said
mobile market. Samsumg has been in the mobile market for over 25 years. They allowed a company who had never made mobile phones to come into that market. Apple now commands the lion's share of the profits in smartphones -- the only part of the mobile market that's making any serious profits. With things like commodity prepaid Android phones, the entire marketplace is rapidly shifting to smartphones.
You can't really blame Apple's success on Samsung's (or any other handset company) failure in management simply because it was an undefined market back then.
Of course you can. Nokia, Samsung, RIM, and others, all failed to have the vision and leadership to see where the mobile phone market was going. Apple's move was innovation on a grand scale -- innovation of the entire mobile ecosystem.
I mean, people weren't even sure if the iPhone was going to be successful.
Of course. Whenever a company does something truly innovative, you never know if it's going to be successful. Why in heaven's name does it justify Samsung's failure of vision to create this now-dominant segment of the mobile phone industry? That failure to act had a huge impact on the bottom line of Samsung.
Apple even had to turn to AT&T after conflicts with their initial first choice, Verizon (today, companies would line up to be first to release an Apple product).
Apple realized the existing contracts between manufacturers and the carriers were strangling innovation in the mobile phone industry. Whether or not Verizon was Apple's "first choice", they were not ready for those changes. Cingular/AT&T was willing to dive in, and they were able to ride the wave of iPhone success.
Those pointless practices continue by the carriers to this day -- including AT&T. They still demand that the manufacturers
skin their Android phones. These superficial manipulations do nothing for the manufacturers -- or even for Android customers as a whole. They have absolutely nothing to do true innovation.
Apple doesn't play this nonsense game. They have drawn a line in the sand; they don't allow gratuitous "skinning" of their phones by the carriers.
I haven't checked: does Samsung accede to carrier demands to skin their Android phones, too?
So Apple's lack of experience didn't matter in a sense because they defined the market.
That's what the leaders/innovators do: they define where the market will go. You seem to believe that Samsung was justified in failing to drive the mobile phone market to the next great thing. That's not logical;
it is the job of an industry leader to anticipate/innovate their marketplace. What you are describing is complacency.
BTW "lack of experience" is somewhat relative; Apple's experience in computers and OS surely played a role in the development of the iPhone. I bet that's one of the reasons why, to this day, I still feel iOS runs more smoothly than the Android OS.
Apple was able to
innovate its experience with personal computers and iPods to be a game-changer in the mobile phone market. With the iPod, Apple realized that the status quo with the music industry was unhealthy for consumers. They were able to leverage that into altering the fundamental relationship with the carriers.
Of course they did! Do you understand the magnitude of the lost opportunity for Samsung? At the start of 2007, Apple had a market cap of around $80b. Today, their market cap is $390b -- the #1 publicly-traded company in the world. They have blown right by Samsung Electronics, who has
a current market cap of around $134b.
But all I’m saying is that Samsung, to me, is simply following the standard business school’s positioning/marketing point of view.
They lost the opportunity to be the world's leader in the smartphone market.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m not aware of any major tech company that operates similarly to Apple even today.
Just look at the companies that have succeeded in being game-changers in their industry: Amazon, Google, Facebook. And you can bet 310 billion dollars that Stanford is teaching this way in their business school. Check out
this new innovative program.
I’ve been saying it allows the customer to buy what is good for their needs.
You've made the
conjecture Samsung's models do this. But you've never ever provided any
specifics to back up that claim: what model works for what purpose. You have never addressed the obvious shortcomings of that approach: there will be far more limited availability of accessories (e.g., cases) for any particular Samsung model. And, most importantly, you've failed to explain how Apple's one model doesn't work well for everyone's needs.
I can’t provide any more tangible evidence than that; to get something more tangible, you’d need to have a pretty large survey given to Samsung users asking what phone they bought, what their needs were, if the phone satisfied their needs, how happy they are with it, etc… But I don’t have the ability to do that.
In short, you have a conjecture and you can't back it up.
That’s why I explained how the multiple products approach is commonly taught in business school… They teach that because there's enough cases that have shown tangible evidence of how multiple models benefits both consumers and businesses. And because of that, to me, it’s not too far fetched to see why Samsung did what they did.
And you didn't back up this conjecture with any specifics, either.
If I were in one of those business schools and they actually taught me that, I'd ask the instructor what we should be learning from the company with the highest market capitalization in the world.
And before you jump on me for saying I have no tangible evidence, remember that you don’t have tangible evidence that the different models confuse customers or how Samsung doesn’t operate like Apple because they lack vision and discipline.
Nonsense. I've provided tangible evidence that Apple's strategy is running circles around Samsung.
You need a certain amount of confidence to decide to create a phone designed to go head-to-head with the market leading iPhone.
I suppose. RIMM certainly needed a certain amount of confidence to go head-to-head against the Playbook.
You need even more confidence to commission ads that position your phone as such;
Nope. You just need money. RIMM even had more "confidence": they bought rights to Queen's 1980 song
for their commercial. Did Samsung have enough "confidence" to rent a Queen song?
But the SII is a popular phone with overall highly positive reviews. So I'd say they have some confidence in their products and what they are doing... and delivering on their claims too.
So what measurable impact has this phone had on Samsung's profitability? Remember: profit trumps market share; winning market share at the expense of profit is the booby prize.
I wanted to use recent examples as to the older ones. I was thinking if I used an old example, people would say it doesn’t apply to today’s Apple.
But the two examples you cited were also irrelevant. FCP is less than 1/1000 of 1% of Apple's bottom line. And the speakers are even less than that. Both of those products are peripheral to Apple's main lines. And the strategic changes to FCP should work out just fine in the long run. If those are the best examples you can come up with, that betrays the weakness of your argument.
You do realize that Apple reached
another all time-high in its valuation this past week, right? I don't think those "mistakes" had much impact on their bottom line, do you?
My very first post on this thread (and all the subsequent ones) said Samsung’s multiple offerings does not mean they lack confidence in their products. That’s all I was saying [SNIP]
AFAICT, you don't know the difference between a conjecture and a well-reasoned factual argument. And you really don't understand the opportunity that Samsung has missed in the smartphone market.
Also, you still haven't answered: how many different smartphones do you think Samsung or another manufacturer have to offer before the product spread was confusing?
I've noted repeatedly: haven't explained your "hating" comment. You still haven't done that. Please do not use labels like that in this discussion -- especially if they don't make any logical sense.
Do you now retract your "hating" comment?
lol what? Those are just facts.
As @MacCurry noted, the statement was entirely irrelevant what we're discussing in this thread. That's what was incorrect with your contribution.