Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
This week witnessed a deluge of device launches from the likes of Nokia, Motorola and Amazon.com. These devices were all in their own right very significant to their respective makers as well as to wireless carriers, when so announced (cough, cough, Nokia).
The companies involved in rolling out the new devices did an admirable job in attempting to hype the news, looking to make the launch an “event” worthy of everyone’s attention. And for the most part, these device makers did well, … if not for the frenzy that is about to overtake the country on Sept. 12, when Apple is expected to unveil its latest iPhone model.
And there’s the rub.
While previous iPhone launches have nearly become national holidays, this next launch could come close to garnering intergalactic holiday status. You see, the next iPhone iteration is expected to provide an updated face to the franchise, which as we all know is often more important than what is going on behind the screen. Consumers that have their emotional state tied to the latest offering from Apple will have had to wait more than 2 years since the last design re-fresh came along with the iPhone 4 in mid-2010.
Sure, there was much excitement over the iPhone 4S rolled out in 2011, but the only real update to that model was on the inside, and people buy Apple products more for what it says about them than what it can actually do for them. And, if recent reports are true, consumers have grown tired of the 4S in anticipation for the next iteration, a sentiment that has allowed Samsung to garner
Further bolstering Apple’s gravitas has to be recent “home court” victories over rival Samsung, though it might also need to be pointed out that Apple’s road victories are a bit harder to come by.
As for those that attempted to garner their own piece of the device limelight this week, you have to at least give them a “C” for effort. Motorola and Nokia both held their launch events in the population and media center of New York City, which surely helped propel interest in covering the news.
Amazon went a little rogue in this context, holding the unveiling of its latest Kindle e-reader/tablet/coaster in Santa Monica, which has virtually no consumer electronics history to speak of, but is home to an awesome Ferris wheel.
(Apple could hold their event in the middle of an orchard, and would still out-attract their rivals.)
Outside of the venues, the main challenge for those device makers not named Apple remains the “numbers” game. That game requires companies to unveil a slew of numbers associated with their device launch in order to garner any sort of emotion from the masses.
Unveiling a device that does not have a dual-core processor with greater than 1.2 GHz of processing power, sporting a screen at least 4.5-inches and running a version of either the Android or Windows OS that is not even available? Forgetaboutit! If you are not named Apple and you are launching a new device at an “event,” better make sure that hunk of plastic is sporting the largest numbers or everyone will come away unimpressed.
And this will remains a challenge for those devices lacking the Apple icon as there does not seem to be any relief in sight from the onslaught of continuous device launches. This is especially bad in the Android universe where too many players are still chasing their tales.
I am not saying that Apple’s rivals need to stop trying to garner a bigger piece of the public’s adoration. Just that when it comes to matching wits with Apple in a game Apple invented, it’s best to leave that to the professionals.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–API platform provider Apigee, released a sort-of-survey last month that found 14% of 2,000 U.S. consumers questioned said they had used their mobile device to purchase “embarrassing or personal items,” which just outscored the 12% who said they use their mobile device to sneak in shopping time while at work.
Nothing sends the mind racing than hearing people are shopping for “embarrassing or personal items” view their cell phones, or at least racing to clear the cache on your own mobile device browser. Speaking of which …
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