Jason Stamper's Blog

Apple’s brand is so strong that it hardly needs to spend money on advertising campaigns. It invites a load of people to a big convention centre to make its announcements, and it lets the world’s press, bloggers and its own customers tell its story.

CBR has interviewed the co-CEO of rival Research in Motion three times in recent years, as well as the CEO of Palm. Despite asking, Apple has not opened a single channel of communication with CBR: it believes it has no reason to explain its strategy to the press, and annoyingly, it’s probably right.

But it is also the behaviour of an arrogant company. One which genuinely believes its products are always the best, its strategy always spot on, its rivals fools. That strategy has worked for the company in recent years, with only a few bumps in the road to give it pause for thought.

A while back it was forced to settle federal charges in the US that it broke its promise to offer customers free technical support. It was found by the Federal Trade Commission to have been charging customers $35 each time they needed help, despite having promised those customers guaranteed free access to technical support staff for as long as they owned their products. Apple declined to comment on the settlement: surprise surprise.

Apple again showed just how much it valued the loyalty of its customers, this time iPhone early adopters, when it dropped the price of the iPhone from $599 to $399 within weeks of it going on sale.

Those who had paid the $599 price tag were understandably livid about the fact they appeared to have paid the price of simply being first in line to buy the device. Apple eventually did a major U-turn, offering rebates to many of those customers but even then only offering a $100 credit to many, which had to be spent in an Apple Store on Apple Online Store.

In an open letter to customers, CEO Steve Jobs apologised, but found it hard to do so unconditionally. He told disgruntled early adopters they would realise if they had been “in technology for 30+ years” like him, that the “technology road is bumpy”. “This is life in the technology lane,” he told them. How humble.

It’s been acting in a similarly discourteous manner over faulty power adapters, too. It was forced to settle a class action in May 2008 which alleged that Apple had covered up wide-spread problems with MacBook and MacBookPro adapters, and thereby forced yet more disgruntled users to have to buy replacements at the full cost of between $25 and $79. A similar suit, again related to faulty power adapters, was brought in May this year in Federal Court in California and is ongoing.

It’s a shame that consumers must turn to the courts for their concerns to be recognised. It makes it even more surprising that the firm’s loyal followers appear to remain just as loyal despite its apparent disregard for customers who feel they have a genuine complaint.

UPDATE: 'Apple tries to silence man and his daughter over exploding iPod'

But such is Apple’s iconic image that it appears able to turn seasoned commentators into cogs in the Apple marketing machine. Take the usually accurate CNet blogger Matt Asay’s article in July last year. “The Mac owns the US. Windows owns the world…” read his headline, for a story about desktop market share stats.

The facts? Gartner had said that in Q2 2008 Apple had 8.5% market share in the US, compared to Dell with 31.9% and HP with 25.3%.

Apple grew market share in the US by 31.8% that quarter, it’s true, but you don’t need a degree in mathematics to know that the smaller the number you are growing from, the bigger the percentage rise. Rivals grew units well but from far larger installed bases, so the percentages were far smaller than for Apple.

As Asay also pointed out, globally Windows growth was 16%, while Apple only managed 3.2% growth outside the US. Perhaps Asay’s closing remarks give some suggestion of why he led with the Apple good news, and perhaps over-egged it in their favour a little: “Good products continue to make headway… Does Apple reflect the US' consumer-spending binge? I'd hate to think my beloved Mac is making its gains at the expense of sound fiscal conservativism,” he wrote. “On the other hand, is Windows the new cheapskate strategy? Do people only buy it if they're looking for something cheap and ‘good enough’?”

If people buy Windows because it is a “cheapskate strategy”, that makes 91.5% of the US market cheapskates, according to Gartner’s Q2 2008 figures, and an even higher percentage if you look at worldwide figures.

Just yesterday, another seasoned hack succumbed to the Apple hype. The Daily Telegraph’s technology correspondent Matt Warman, discussing the launch of the iPhone 3G S in an article that was actually fairly damning of the new version, still wrote: “That’s the problem with Apple - it just keeps on pretending it always knows best. It’s fine while the iPod remains the world’s best MP3 player, but in the age of Google and its Android operating system, all phones are becoming computers. That may be an idea Apple invented, but the collective wisdom of the millions of people who use and develop applications for Google technology means that a battle is now on.”

To suggest that Apple invented the idea of a phone that has computing capability is a mistake, but unsurprising given the hype that surrounds any Apple pronouncement.

Although there is no industry standard definition of a ‘smartphone’, IBM and Bellsouth launched a phone with computing abilities back in 1994, called Simon. It featured a mobile phone, a pager, a PDA, and a fax machine. It included a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, email, and games.

IBM Simon: preceded Apple iPhone by 13 years, although it did resemble a brick.

It had no physical buttons to dial with. Instead customers used a touch-screen to select phone numbers with a finger or create facsimiles and memos with an optional stylus. Text was entered with either what was then a unique on-screen ‘predictive’ keyboard or QWERTY keyboard. Sound familiar?

The Simon was followed by similar ‘smartphones’ from Motorola, Sony and others. Fast-forward 13 years to 2007, and Apple launched the iPhone.

It’s inarguable that the first iPhone ushered in major advances in usability over its smartphone predecessors, in a form factor that still attracts admiring glances. As Apple’s British designer Jonathan Ives said at the launch with uncharacteristic modesty for an Apple employee, “It's not too shabby, is it?” Pleasing design has always been one of Apple’s greatest strengths.

Yet in other areas it still trails the competition. Its operating system is not multi-threaded, limiting users to accessing only one application at a time. Palm, Research in Motion and even Windows Mobile devices have the edge here.

As the Telegraph’s Matt Warman argues, the iPhone 3G S did not move the game forward dramatically. But thanks to the passion of Apple users for the Apple experience, the iPhone is unlikely to be anything other than a continued success for Apple. It's one of those inexplicable truisms of the IT industry that whatever Apple throws at its customers, they come back even more evangelical than before.

Recommended independent reading on the Apple iPhone:

Tony Cripps, Senior Analyst and Service Manager of Ovum's Wireless Software advisory service. "The iPhone’s real beauty is its ability to refresh itself."

Peter White, CEO of Rethink Research on Google Android versus iPhone's 'sideloading' via iTunes.

Please follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jasonstamper.

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