Apple is famous for keeping a shroud of secrecy around its new products, a marketing strategy that has also served the tech giant well for the past decade. But what if this time it was that very buzz strategy that led to the epic fail that has been the iPhone 4 launch?
Since its launch on June 24, Apple’s iPhone 4 hasn’t exactly received the warm welcome that has come to be synonymous with anything that Apple launches.
This week, product review magazine Consumer Reports said it could not recommend Apple’s latest iPhone. Antenna issues lived on and Apple’s share price plummeted 0.51% yesterday on the news that CEO Steve Jobs would be holding an emergency press conference today in the US.
No one, of course, knows what the conference will address leaving us to only speculate about a product recall.
It could very well be one of the largest product recalls in history – the iPhone 4 is already in the hands of more than 1.7 million people worldwide with hundreds of thousands more on pre-order.
Let the blame game begin.
Jobs’s insistence on strict design control of the iPhone could have led the tech giant to overrule internal concerns about the iPhone 4′s antenna reception.
His stance is said to have forced the company to deny carriers adequate time to test the new phone before selling it.
Apple engineers were reportedly aware of the risks associated with the new antenna design as early as a year ago. However, Jobs liked the design so much that Apple went ahead with its development anyway, according to a person familiar with the matter talking with the Wall Street Journal.
This ‘person’ claims that the device didn’t get the kind of “real-world testing” that would have exposed such problems because Apple was determined to maintain its secrecy – something the company has become famous for in terms of a marketing strategy.
Apple is so fearful of deflating the buzz it creates around its products that the phones it sends to its carrier partners for testing are “stealth” phones that disguise the device’s shape and some of its functions.
This means that Jobs can walk around on stage in his blue jeans and black turtle neck skivvy delivering a revolution. It has worked time and time again and has seen hundreds of people around the world camp out the front of Apple stores in anticipation of a launch just to be the first to see and use these highly anticipated gems of technology.
A full recall seems a long shot for Apple but mostly, for Jobs who has long been credited with taking Apple from computer maker to technology giant.
Announcing a recall would mean the company has been dealt a significant blow by the fickle and unforgiving marketplace. Some in the US reckon that at the conference, Jobs will offer in-store solutions to fixing the antenna while others are saying the company could offer users cases or bumpers.
But whatever Jobs delivers, have no doubt that this conference is about damage control, not of the antenna, but the entire Apple brand.
Perhaps it sounds sinister to say so, but the antenna issue has highlighted a series of failures by the company, the main one being that its consumers were not at the forefront of the company’s minds during the launch phase. If they were, rigorous testing would have been undertaken. The big question now is will Apple be forced to change tactics in the future?
Secrecy is part of the Apple brand, buzz is the key to its marketing strategy and without those two things, Apple could be just another tech company. Remember, the Apple iPhone only has 18% of the smartphone market and it is solely its brand and reputation for making products that simple ‘work’ that has carried it that far.
Apple must apologize, but at the same time it cannot admit failure, otherwise all the merits upon which its brand was built in the first place will be insignificant.
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