viernes, 12 de septiembre de 2014

Is Apple a leader or a follower? by Xabier Rivas



Absolutely a follower. This is my vision about what Apple is doing nowadays! Is not a critique to Apple´s strategy, because as all of us know they´re still selling a lot. There are millions of Apple fans, and that is the reason why they´re still selling much more than others, and not innovation.
They have lost their magic a long time ago, that magic that impressed the world with their Keynotes and changed it!

No more a leader - just a follower

Jobs was a "visionaire" or a magician , someone delighted with changing the world with new gadgets, with innovation, he was the angular stone of the well named "wow factor".
Since Steve had passed away, there is no more "wow factor" in Apple´s keynotes. It seems like if they are not able to impress again, and what they are doing is just following the trends, and when they release new devices there is no longer "wow" in the air, they just make gadgets in order to be more profitable, what is good .
There is no longer innovation, I think that they´re only trying to improve their best-seller devices, but they´re not changing anything.
I can think in three main examples to try to explain this situation: Ipad Mini, Watch, and the Phablet.
- Ipad Mini: Here we have what Steve thought about the release of 7 inch tablet : "“The reason we [won't] make a 7-inch tablet isn’t because we don’t want to hit [a lower] price point,” Jobs said. “It’s because we think the screen is too small to express the software. As a software driven company, we think about the software strategies first.”"

Technology had not changed that much since the time those statements were done, but what happened is that those who were followers in the past, started making some good 7 inch tablets, that were selling good, and Apple didn´t want to lose the trend
- Watch: in this case there was not any brilliant statement from Cupertino´s CEO, but it´s impressive how Apple has lost that much time with the wearables thing. When all the fashion retailers around the world are making investments in how to put technology in our clothes, Apple just released a watch, copying previous ideas. Here you have a comparison between Apple´s Watch and Samsung Gear 2 .
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It´s obvious that Apple is going to help in the maturity of this kind of devices, but they not changing anything.
- Phablet: Here we have what Steve thought about bigger smartphones : "you can't get your hand around it" , "no one's going to buy that."

I think that Jobs was wrong, but that doesn´t really matters, what matters here is what Tim Cook said : "“The iPhone 5 offers a new Retina Display and is the most advanced display in the industry" , “It also provides a larger screen size without sacrificing the one-handed ease of use. We put a lot of thinking into screen size and we believe we have picked the right one.” . He said that there was not going to be a bigger Iphone.
A year and a half after those statements Tim Cook presented the new Apple´s Phablet: Iphone 6 Plus with a bigger screen.
For finishing the post, what I wanted to explain, it´s that even if you have engaged millions of us with great devices in the past, it´s not enough, we expect something else.
Images:
Apple logo: taken from http://logofreebrands.net/apple-logo-text-pictures/
Ipad Mini: taken from www.blogsperu.com
Watch: taken from http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/digital-and-mobile/6244124/apple-unveils-watch-two-new-iphones
Iphone 6: taken from http://www.imaging-resource.com/news

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