Annexure

Homework Title / No. : Customer analysis of Apple Iphone

Course Code: _MGT532

Course Instructor: Mr. Roktim Sharmah

Date of submission: 27/09/10

Student’s Roll No B (43) Section No. : RS1901

Declaration:

I declare that this assignment is my individual work. I have not copied from any
other student’s work or from any other source except where due acknowledgment
is made explicitly in the text, nor has any part been written for me by another
person.

Ashutosh Kr Singh
Evaluator’scomments:
___________________________________________________________________
__

Marks obtained : ___________ out of _________________

Apple I-phone
Customer Analysis of Apple Iphone:-

• Introduction

Collection and evaluation of data associated with customer needs and market trends, through
customer focus groups, customer satisfaction measurement, field testing, etc. The customers
are very important and play a crucial role in any process of marketing. Today, customers are the
kings of the market because the customer loyalty and customer preference are built by the
products and the services offered to the customers and they seek for the more benefits and
money’s worth for the amount they spend. That is where the concept of customer preference and
consumer behavior comes because the customers make the marketers to rethink about designing
the products and services. They have to think about the market segmentation, market strategies,
consumer behavior, consumer’s tastes, consumer’s lifestyle etc also. Many marketers are smart
enough to understand consumers’ needs, wants and demands and perform beyond their
expectations i.e. they delight them. It provides them growth, profitability and creativity with lot
of inventions.

Customer Analysis on different Factors

We can analyze the customer on three different factors…

• Descriptive factors
• Customer relationship stage
• Life time value

Descriptive factors
Many of the users discussing the iPhone portrayed it as a competitor to all "smartphones", But
the idea of a "smartphone" is a mobile industry term that doesn't have much resonance with most
users, who buy devices to solve problems rather than get technology. Different smartphone
designs solve different problems, and so are bought by different groups of people. RIM's
Blackberry, for example, is bought primarily by businesspeople with heavy communication
needs, especially in government and the financial services market. The Blackberry has extensive
corporate e-mail features, and is directly tied to an e-mail delivery system that integrates with
Microsoft Exchange. The Palm Treo has a somewhat broader range of features, with a huge
base of third-party applications. But its core customers are middle-aged "mobile professionals"
who need to manage information on between meetings, and like the Blackberry it is offered with
a corporate email service (provided by Good Technology). The iPhone, by contrast, will be
connected primarily to iTunes. It doesn't have the corporate e-mail infrastructure of RIM; it has a
consumer-oriented e-mail client from Yahoo. Although Apple brags that the screen-only
interface of the iPhone is superior, BlackBery users are generally very enthusiastic about using
their “thumb keyboards” (Shaw, 2007). Unlike the Treo, the iPhone can't read Office documents,
and it won't have access to the vertical market applications written for Palm. The wide screen and
relatively large flash storage of the iPhone will make it better than either Blackberry or Treo
for viewing videos and playing music, while the presence of the Safari browser may make the
iPhone better for recreational browsing. Those features are most attractive to younger users who
want to use a mobile device to enhance their lifestyles . Those features are not as high a priority
to Blackberry and Treo users, who care most about e-mail and business software. Rather than
competing with Treo and Blackberry, the iPhone opens up a new segment of potential
smartphone users. This segment has been estimated to account for about 12% of mobile phone
users in the US and Europe.

Customer relationship stage :-

if we are talking about customer relationship stage of apple then we can say that due to their
innovative technology they have a huge potential customer of young users throughout the
world. if we are talking about awareness then if their will be 100 user of smartphone then about
95% will definitely aware about the apple iphone because of its uniqueness. they aren’t
emphasise much on advertisement ,we can see that they are not giving a single advertisement
but still the demand for their iphone is huge throughout the world.if we rae talking about
unawareness then they are targeting only th preemium segment so they are not advertise more
so the below the premium segment if there will be 100 user from non- premium segment hardly
15 to 20 are know about the Apple iphone. Apple iphone are well accepted among the customer
they have great trust on Apple and some of the facts also support them like…

• In the first year of ownership, the iPhone had a 5.6% malfunction rate, half the rate of
the Blackberry and one-third the rate of the Treo.
• The iPhone is projected to have a 9-11% malfunction rate in the first 2 years of
ownership, compared to 14.3% for BlackBerry and 21% for Treo handsets.
 Apple ‘s 2008 fourth quarter results showed 6.9 million iPhone 3G handsets sold. That
number – higher than the 6.1 million total 2.5G handsets sold in the previous 5 quarters –
puts total iPhone sales well on track to exceed Steve Job’s stated goal of selling 10 million
3G units this year. Apple’s extraordinary success with the iPhone has not come without
complaints and skepticism. Shortly after both the 2.5G and 3G launches, hundreds of users
expressed grievances with the iPhone in online forums and blogs, with abundant reports of
users plagued by hardware and software problems.

• Touch-screen issues were the most frequently reported iPhone problem, accounting for
nearly one-third of all reported malfunctions.
• The iPhone is prone to failure due to accidental damage, with 33% more failures reported
in the first year. Nearly one quarter of iPhone handsets are projected to fail due to an
accident in the first two years of ownership.

The advocating in case of iphone are very much because they always come with new innovation
and their target customer are young user and the business people,they just like these thing so
advocating is very much in case of iphone.

Life time value :-

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is one way to measure the relative attractiveness of a customer or
a customer segment. Apple working hard to provide better life time value by providing a better
innovative product and by the less malefaction rate proved their work if they are coparing the
iphone with their competitors then they found a 5.6% malfunction rate reported on iPhone
handsets, significantly lower than BlackBerry and Treo handsets. they project the iPhone will
have fewer malfunctions over the 2 year minimum lifetime of a phone – the length of most
wireless carrier contracts. Finally, they took a look at the different problem types reported for the
iPhone. These are the few problem which is categorized by the iphone to increase its customer
life time value these are the few reported malfunctions into the following problem categories:

• Software / Features. Includes operating system lockups, frozen applications, voice

recognition software, etc.
• Battery Problems. Primarily batteries that fail to hold a charge.
• Bluetooth / Camera / Accessories. Includes functional components that are part of the
handset.
• Antenna / Hardware / Casing. Includes all physical integrity issues.
• Screen / Keypad / Touchpad. Includes burn-in, screen spots, dead pixels, and touch
screen dead spots.
• Call Issues. Includes outbound calling, call reception, poor call quality, dropped calls and
microphone issues.
• Power Issues. Includes power connectors, powering on/off, and inability to stay on.
 • Other. Other issues, not categorized above.

Apple’s customers are primarily in the education, creative professional, consumer, and business
markets. The Company distributes its products through wholesalers, resellers, national and
regional retailers and cataloguers. No individual customer accounted for more than 10% of net
sales in 2007, 2006, or 2005. The Company also sells many of its products and resells certain
third-party products in most of its major markets directly to consumers, education customers, and
businesses through its own sales force and retail and online stores, so we can say that Apple
trying hard to provide better customer life time value by identifying the key area where they have
to work as given above,and also with great innovation in its product.

Conclusions

From above we can conclude that, Apple’s much more focus is on younger users who want to
use a mobile device to enhance their lifestyles . Those features are not as high a priority to
Blackberry and Treo users, who care most about e-mail and business software. Rather than
competing with Treo and Blackberry, the iPhone opens up a new segment of potential
smartphone users. they are not giving a single advertisement but still the demand for their
iphone is huge throughout the world. . Apple iphone are well accepted among the customer they
have great trust on Apple and some of the facts also support them ,In the first year of ownership,
the iPhone had a 5.6% malfunction rate, half the rate of the Blackberry and one-third the rate of
the Treo.The iPhone is projected to have a 9-11% malfunction rate in the first 2 years of
ownership, compared to 14.3% for BlackBerry and 21% for Treo handsets, , with abundant
reports of users plagued by hardware and software problems.Touch-screen issues were the most
frequently reported iPhone problem, accounting for nearly one-third of all reported malfunctions.
The iPhone is prone to failure due to accidental damage, with 33% more failures reported in the
first year. Nearly one quarter of iPhone handsets are projected to fail due to an accident in the
first two years of ownership but the data suggests that Apple’s first foray into the cell phone
handset market has not been plagued by hardware problems, as some early reports suggested.
Aside from exhibiting a relatively high rate of touch screen failures, iPhones have not had
significantly high malfunction rates in any of the areas we identified. However, the data also
warrants closely monitoring iPhone failures during the second year of ownership. If the reported
malfunction rate continues to trend in a straight line, it may indicate higher out-of-warranty
failure rates for iPhones than other handsets. Another area for future investigation will be to see
if the iPhone 3G exhibits a different problem profile from the 2.5G. The data looks comparable at
the 2 month mark, but we will hold out for further data before drawing any conclusions.
Likewise, there may be significant differences in the failure rate of BlackBerry models that are
not explored in the scope of this paper. Apple’s customers are primarily in the education, creative
professional, consumer, and business markets. Apple trying hard to provide better customer life
time value by identifying the key area where they have to work as given above,and also with
great innovation in its product.