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Apple - Byting back big time

Coolbrands: Maarten & Anouk in discussion with Ton van Garderen and Juriaan Bosman
There’s gonna be a revolution
The Sixties set the scene. Screaming teenagers, some in tears, all ecstatic,
waiting for John, Paul, George and Ringo to appear with their soup bowl hair-
cuts and singing guitars. Jim Morrison with his dark good looks, darker lyrics
and a fire that was lit yet burned too brightly. Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe,
James Dean, Dylan, the Stones, Marley; all contributed to a change in society
that had been set in its ways and ruled from the top down.
In the seventies and eighties we reverted somewhat to those days and ways, with the
autocratic rise of technology changing the way we live and work for good. Yet what
goes around comes around and the sixties had changed our mindset. The days of rule
by software and hardware manufacturers are seemingly over, and the power is being
returned to the people, with many of the leading companies focusing on placing con-
trol and creativity back in the hands of users.
Apple has never been one for autocracy, giving its troop of hugely loyal users the
freedom to express themselves through its products. The unwritten rule was that
business used the competition and creatives used a Mac. There are, however, far
more businessmen out there than designers and so forth, and Apple computers re-
main, so far at least, the domain of a limited group of owners. Revolutions come in
strange guises, however, and the company’s recent ventures have taken the world
by storm. Sticking to his principles of new concept – not reworking – innovation and
manu­facturing excellence, Steve Jobs and Co. and their iPod have changed the way
we listen to music and raised marketing to a new level. The latest cars offer an iPod
connection. Talk about market penetration.
Now it’s time for the next step in the silent revolution and Apple is introducing its
next play – the iPhone. For the first time, a phone now integrates daily tasks with fun,
offering a proper web browser and simple interface. It could change the way people
Sexy quality
Building on the success of the iPod alone won’t get Apple where
it wants to be – it has to stand out in other ways. One of the
ways it achieves this is the development process. The core of
the development team in the US is small. All they do is focus on
design. Apple employees aren’t about hardware, they’re concept
people who understand what makes a number one device. With
the image the company has, it attracts a certain type of person
who doesn’t have to be enthused – they love who they work for
before their day one. And when designing their products, they
look at what they would wish for themselves and focus on ease-of-
use for the consumer. It’s no longer about the content, but about
the concept. It’s about user adoption. Now we use a phone, in 5
or 10 years time we might be using something else. Finally, unlike
other manufacturers who settle for good enough, Apple does not
make compromises; if it’s not 100% ok, it won’t join the Apple fam-
ily. Revolutionary design and innovation make the product. Sexy
quality sells.
As for the iPhone, the target group consists of the top side of the
iPod market and of (older) people who have the money to be the
first to buy it. This new device opens fresh markets through unex-
ploited channels. With the iPod, Apple had a considerable expan-
sion in retail in the past 3 years, from a few thousand points of
sale to 10-14,000 in Europe alone. Complementing the company’s
own stores and premium resellers, even more points of sale and
partners can now be used to market the iPhone, reaching an ever-
wider audience for Apple products.
Crop rotation
Following the trend of the past, in five years time Apple will be a
different company again. It expects to hold a 10% market share for
computers, and is expecting continuous financial growth. Compu-
ter sales will remain an important mainstream. With niche markets
like the iPhone, the brand is gaining in popularity with younger
people who’ve never considered buying an Apple computer. Apple
hopes to make an enormous impact on the current segments. As a
brand, Apple will likely continue its solitary occupation at the peak
of the hip and hot mountain. Not many people can keep inventing
as they do.
Apple has placed its first steps in the road of mass consumer elec-
tronics. Expect it to become an epic journey.
CEO Steve Jobs | Brand values ease-of-use, innovation, customer-
oriented | Brand promise (iPhone) ‘Say hello to iPhone’ | Tar-
get group all | Primary advertising media in-store, internet,
word-of-mouth

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use and experience their phones just as iPod changed the way people listened to
music. The company has great hopes for the product and believes it may create an even
bigger HALO effect than the iPod ever did, taking Apple to a new level and to the
dawn of other new and improved activities.
But how? Apple now has positions in four market sectors - Apple TV, Apple Computer,
Apple iPod and Apple iPhone. Yet many consumers know Apple from products other
than its computers. How then do you reach this target group that doesn’t enter Apple
stores or read door-to-door ads or flyers?
The true test and the proof of the pudding – apple pie in this
case of course - lies in the product, the phone itself, and whether
consumers will consider it as revolutionary and, above all, like it
as much as they did the iPod. It sounds good though, allowing
users to make a call by simply tapping a name or number in their
address book, a favourites list, or a call log. It automatically syncs
all contacts from a PC, Mac, or Internet service. And it lets users se-
lect and listen to voicemail messages in whatever order you want
— just like email. Just as we always wanted, but only Apple knew.
Again.