iPhone 5 - Smart, fast, elegant, well-made... and obsolete

<Firstly I realise this blog is about marketing for apps, but given the iPhone's influence on the app world I figure the release of the iPhone 5 warrants a blog post. Secondly, this is not a description of the product itself... I am neither interesting, interested or important enough to have managed to get my hands on one!>

So the waves of hype have crashed upon the shores of California and carried with them a new iPhone - number 5 as it turns out. As the hype recedes it's been interesting to see what they have left behind. First impressions of pictures online show a smaller slimmer and lighter phone, which we're told is lighter and more powerful as well. Smaller, slimmer, lighter, faster... sounds like lyrics from a Daft Punk song. In any case, for a phone that's a pretty compelling sales pitch, but will it work for the 5? Along with the release there's been some interesting aspects of the Apple narrative that are worth addressing, this narrative seems to be summed up in a general feeling from a portion of Apple's fanbase of disappointment, a sort of "Really? Is that it?" It's worth taking a look at this in more detail.

Don't believe your hype

First and foremost this feeling of disappointment is a natural product of the prerelease hype, combined with the actions of the fanbase. The interrelationship between Apple and its fanbase has an odd dynamic... as if the earth was in fact orbiting the Moon. The Moon, a silent enigmatic object being orbited by the frenetic, chaotic vibrant earth. So it is with silent enigmatic Apple and it's frenetic fanbase, this is how things have always been. We all know the routine by now; in the months leading up to an iPhone release we see mounting rumours, and apparent leaks, fans create their own versions of what they imagine, but when the time comes the reality is different to what anyone really expected. The look is different and the features are different. This time though, the leaks had largely nailed down the look and most of the features, and inevitably the fan based was disappointed... they got pretty much what they expected. It's not supposed to happen like that with Apple!!

Apple v Samsung - a Pyrrhic Victory 

The second narrative behind the release was the recent Samsung vs Apple court case. I'm not going to go into details here or add much opinion beyond my belief that jury trails in patent cases are absurd and that this case was a double edged sword for Apple. Yes they cemented their reputation as an innovator (like they didn't already have that), but the enormous publicity surrounding the case also drew public attention to the fact that Samsung do indeed make phones, and they're pretty damn successful at flogging them. Admittedly their first attempts where not much more than a knock off of the first iPhone, as the court case made clear. But they needed to get to market quickly and it's a heck of a lot easier when you copy to start with and then do your own thing subsequently.

We also learned much about the Apple design aesthetic (as we did about Samsung's willingness to be "flexible" with theirs), and importance of design in products. But this has created an interesting problem for Apple - on the one hand they are seen in the public mind as innovators, on the other they've very clearly established the importance of their design language. The consequences of this friction is nor apparent in the reaction to the iPhone 5 which looks very similar to the iPhone 4, yet fans were expecting something... different. In the fans mind they want radical change, not this incremental stuff. They want their cake and eat it, and with that Apple has given itself a bit of a headache. Added to this, whilst Samsung's design department clearly took a holiday when Samsung responded to the original iPhone, they have just as clearly been working hard with subsequent models. Few could say now that Samsung copies Apple now, and efforts by Apple to have current Samsung models removed from shelves look like acts of a desperate monopolist.

The fog of (marketing) war is lifted

The final narrative is I believe the most interesting and consequential one for Apple - the maturity of the smartphone market. When the iPhone 4 came out Apple was still the biggest player in the smartphone market, at least in terms of perception. The change from the curved iPhone 3 to the sharp edges of the 4 gave some feeling of advancement, but really Apple had done what they usually do - take the best of what is out there, make it more user friendly and put it into a well made product (aerial issues aside). This was enough to satisfy the majority of the market - to the majority of consumers, Apple was still the leader other brands weren't up to scratch and the iPhone was the best phone... of course. This of course was very much wrong, faster development cycles put makers like Samsung and HTC ahead of the Apple by the time the 4 came out, but reality and consumer perception are often mutually exclusive.

This time the iPhone 5 faces a very different market. In the intervening years other manufacturers have been busy, in the last 12 months makers like HTC (with the HTC One) and Samsung (Galaxy series) have taken a bigger market share and with it a much greater share of consumer perception - they also look, feel and work great. Whereas previous iPhones were (wrongly) assumed to be best on the market, consumers are now willing to look around the market before making a decision on a new phone. What consumers see now is a thriving smartphone market, with great devices, interesting differences in platforms with the addition of Microsoft's Metro, manufacturers adding customised software like HTC Sense and an ever growing list of useful features. Coming into this market, with this level of customer awareness, Apple did what it always does - take a range of excellent (though reasonably common) features, and package them into an elegant, well-made and user-friendly smartphone.

Sadly the market has caught up to and passed Apple in recent years... worse for Apple, the majority of consumers now know it.

Would I buy one though?

Despite all I've just said, I quite like the iPhone 5... it's first one I've thought I could actually own. I look at the smartphone market now and I see Apple assuming a position similar to the one it has in the computer market. As the market continues to grow and fragment, Apple should focus on what it does best, making excellent products that people will use. I like the sales pitch - smaller, slipper, lighter, faster. But mostly I suspect it's the contrarian in me. To me in recent years the iPhone was too popular to be cool... the iPhone was the default choice of an uncritical market. But the iPhone 5 finds itself in a world which it no longer controls... and I like an underdog!

Is Sergey Brin the new Steve Jobs?

This post may focus on hardware, but the implications for anyone designing a product are pretty abundant. If you can design a product with appeal that overcomes reason, you'll always do better than one with better features:

Remember when we all used to salivate at the thought of the next Apple convention? What did Steve have up his sleeve? What amazing piece of kit would he reveal that would have us all ignoring Apple's rather large price premium and just slap down our cash to have a slice of that amazing Apple cool? Year after year, product after product they seemed to do it - iPod (multiple versions); iPhone (fewer versions); Macbook Air; iPad... the list was amazing and made even Mac-sceptics like me feel the urge to just get me one.

There wasn't much secret to it, in true Apple style it was simple, they just made fantastic products that worked in perfect harmony with each other backed up by a beautiful OS. The trick is that it's really hard to do well. Google (with Android) for all of its dominance was far too fragmented to match Apple in that compelling human way. Its OEMs were far too focused on that bane of the OEM - features. Bigger screen this, faster processor that, brighter, more colourful etc etc etc. People bought these things certainly, but deep down really they just wanted an Apple because their devices worked better.

But something has changed... at least that's how it seems for me. Less than a year or so on from the untimely loss of Steve Jobs, Apple has continued to release fabulous products - Jobs made certain there was a few years worth in the pipeline - but something is different. As I see it, they've taken to marketing them in a really misguided way. Apple has now fallen into the features trap, it seemed to start with the "New iPad" with fab new screen but not much else to speak of, and has continued with the recent launch of the new Macbook with Retina Display. Don't get me wrong, both are excellent devices; powerful, beautiful and functional. Fanboys and tech geeks adore them and there's no shortage of evidence of sales, but it's a dangerous road that Apple has taken themselves down.

Why should this be a problem? When you play the features game you get yourself into a margin-destroying arms race, and whilst Apple is king right now, this advantage can be very quickly chipped away by hungry and capable competitors like Samsung who have already taken top place in Mobile sales, have blitzed iPhone in terms of performance, and can't be far away in terms of desirability. Likewise HTC are doing a reasonable job of a come back with the HTC One. Previously Apple traded on its desirability and the "lifestyle" aspects of the brand to retain dominance, but now Apple has decided to play the feature game, how long will this residual goodwill last (especially when brands like HTC roll out campaigns like this for the HTC One). I'm not saying that Apple won't see a spike in awareness and sales whenever they release a new product, this is natural. But the longer they play the feature game, the shorter those periods will last. The inevitable grind of the product cycle demands this; the market for smartphones has now caught up with Apple, it's only a matter of time before the same happens in other categories.

Which brings us back to the subject... what is the opposite of the feature game? In marketing terms it's the "Benefit" game... and we've just had a Jobs-like demonstration of this from Google with their Glass. In one self-deprecating swoop, Sergey Brin and his tech guys and assorted extreme sports buddies at Google have just laid siege to Apple. Sure their Nexus tablet may not knock the iPad off, but with Glass, Google have done what iPad did, created a market, showed everyone in a real and highly compelling way the benefits of Glass (and mind-bending Hangouts are just one potential of the device) and induced the I WANT ONE factor at a level not seen since people twigged to the iPad. True it's not everyday you get to demo a product like Glass, but the principles are the same - show people how their lives can be better using the product rather than getting all fetishist about the product itself.

This won't happen overnight. Jobs did remarkable work and has build a generations-worth of product goodwill, so Apple may hold out for a long time to come, but if Google have really figured out what made Apple so desirable, then it's just a matter of time before things get really interesting.