There’s nothing wrong with the iPhone 4S – but what we do see here is a rare marketing blunder for the best marketing company in the world.
Despite spending most of yesterday on the bus making my way to Interop New York, I kept my Android phone glued to anything I could find on what turned out to be the iPhone 4S announcement. Like everyone else, I was disappointed – I had expected a wondrous new direction for mobile handsets, maybe a device the size of a USB key that, with the flick of tiny switch so elegantly designed that only a 16-year-old boy could find it in less than two minutes, would expand into a new, elegantly-rounded form factor hewn from hand-selected neutronium alloy that changes surface color to match the preference and even the mood of the user. And, of course, another elegant switch would convert the device into an iPad 3, with a screen resolution so fine that it exceeds by an order of magnitude the resolution of a human retina.
But what I got was – well, pretty nice. OK, it’s just a set of incremental enhancements, but the result is more than competitive and Apple will sell a ton of them. The problem, then, isn’t with the device itself, but rather with a rare marketing miss from the best marketing company on the planet. Apple should not have staged a major press event for this one – given that so many wait with baited breath for anything new from Cupertino, it was easy to see how the hype exceeded the reality, resulting in disappointment. One of the great truths of marketing remains that the best way to create a satisfied customer is to set their expectations properly, and, again, Apple failed here. The hype machine – generated by pundits and the press, but not exactly tempered by any action on Apple’s part – did its job. But the net result is that speculation regarding future announcements will be toned down by that same group of press and pundits so that they don’t end up looking silly again. Believe it or not, this is ultimately not good for Apple, as the competition will quickly, I believe, catch up to the iPhone 4S. Announcements must exceed hype, not fall short.
Still, I wouldn’t want to over-analyze this one to say that Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs (OK, he’s not) and that Apple is on the decline (they absolutely are not). Apple is still the best marketing company anywhere and still makes great products – I’m writing this entry on a new MacBook Air, and I couldn’t be more pleased with this notebook – the best of its type that I’ve ever owned. It’s fast (very fast), easy to use, and perfect for people who travel a lot. Apple will continue to do just fine – but they’ve undoubtedly learned that controlling the hype machine is just as important as building great products to begin with.
