Pieces like this Newsweek one come out every so often. They compare today’s Apple to the Apple that lost against Microsoft, insisting that Apple is doomed to repeat history and stumble in the battle against Google:
Meanwhile, Android is already outselling Apple, according to market researcher NPD…My sense is that today’s Apple event marks an important tipping point—the point where Android starts to surge past Apple the way Windows surged past Apple in personal computers back in the 1990s.
The media loves conflict, and nothing could be better than finding the mythical “iPhone killer” or seeing Steve Jobs fail spectacularly. And now, we have an exciting narrative for the tech press: a great powers war between Apple and Google for the hearts and minds of smartphone users. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Daniel Lyons is totally wrong. Market share is indicative of nothing. Ever heard of Symbian? Well, Symbian by Nokia owns about 44% of the global smartphone market (by 2010 Q1 shipments), with Apple clocking in at 15% and Android at 10%. But, volume does not equate to success, especially for Apple. Steve Jobs would never make the devil’s bargain of cheapness for market share—the strategy of PC makers for some time (Dell). That’s part of the reason Apple struggled in the 1990s.
Steve Jobs truly cares about only one thing: creating amazing experiences. It’s not about this feature or that feature. It’s about creating something that people want and feel an emotional bond with. You might even say people treat their smartphones like their politicians. Policy and features be damned, we want things (and politicos) we can love. The tech press is filled with number-obsessed nerds (like the political press) who think that consumers choose based on obscure features. But, normal consumers don’t care what kind of processor goes into a phone or whether the phone’s software is open source. They want something that works, that is easy to use, and that makes them feel good. That’s Apple’s strength and something Google can never beat Jobs at. Sentiments like this couldn’t be more wrong:
Also, a lot of what Apple is focusing on in the new phone seems to be kind of cosmetic. (I wanted to say “foofy,” but I guess that’s not an actual word.)…He showed off a new gyroscope that will let you play cool games, which is fine, except I’m a grown man and don’t really sit around playing games on my phone.
People love “foofy.” People gawk at the iPhone’s design and at the extremely sharp text in iPhone 4. We want to be wow’ed. Who cares what an OLED screen is or how IMAP is implemented? Grown men and women do play games on their iPhones as they sit on the train or bus. The tech press simply can’t get the average user, how they actually use and connect with their technology. Users don’t judge phones on feature lists, but on feel and everyday use; they don’t think about using phones, they use them. That’s the world that Apple excels in and the world that the tech press just can’t really get.