Some believe Apple needs to cater to niche
markets by offering a variety of iPhones. That
would be a mistake.
This is unfamiliar territory for Apple.
The smartphone market Apple ( ,
Fortune 500) spent the past seven years
dominating has matured, and there's
increasingly less to differentiate an iPhone
from the competition. Apple is now looking up
at the competition that passed it by. It has
ceded the software market share crown to
Google's ( , Fortune 500 ) Android
platform, and hardware market share to
Samsung.
As a result, Apple has spent much of 2013
taking a hit in the stock market, with its
biggest detractors citing a lack of innovation in
the past few years.
This has led for some to suggest that Apple
needs to rethink its smartphone a year
strategy, lest it wants to suffer the same fate
as BlackBerry ( ). They say Apple needs
to take a page from Samsung's playbook and
offer more; big phones, small phones, cheap
phones, and rugged phones.
That would be a mistake.
Virtually every strategic decision that Samsung
has made in the past three years lies in
opposition to what has made the iPhone so
popular.
Related story: iPhone 5C will be cheaper for
Apple, not for you
Design: When it comes to design, Apple has
without question set the standard that every
other company has chased for the last 10
years. You won't find another smartphone that
combines thinness, lightness and attractiveness
as well as the iPhone.
Samsung is openly ambivalent about design. It
doesn't care much about form or materials, at
least not enough to invest the time and money
into solving same sorts of design problems
Apple does. Plastic is cheap and durable, and
for Samsung, that's good enough.
Developers: One of Apple's biggest strengths
has been its app ecosystem and developer
community. But to follow Samsung's product
strategy and offer dozens of phones with
considerably different hardware and screen
sizes would be to give up a key reason why
developers flock to iOS -- it's easy to develop
for.
To date, there have been a total of six iPhones.
Their processors have largely remained the
same, and Apple changed the iPhone screen
resolution just twice. That makes the
development and testing process on iOS
extremely simple for app makers. Ask any
developer about their experience on Android,
and they'll tell you its a nightmare.
If Apple were to chase Samsung, it would risk
losing out on getting the best and most
innovative apps first. Apple absolutely cannot
afford that.
Consumers: Apple's strategy has made the
iPhone purchasing experience idiot-proof. It's
available on just about every U.S. carrier, and
Apple sells three versions: good (iPhone 4),
better (iPhone 4S) and best (iPhone 5).
At this point, there are those who like the
iPhone, and those who don't. Unlike Samsung,
which has dozens of other Android
competitiors, Apple doesn't have any other
rivals who make iOS smartphones. That means
Apple doesn't have to pander to consumers in
quite the same way. As long as a certain level
of quality is met, a significant consumer base
will always be there.
Sure, we're going to see a lower cost iPhone
appear later in September. We might
eventually see a larger iPhone appear as a
response to a natural shift in consumer
demand.
What we won't see is an entire family of
iPhones attempting to cater to every niche
consumer out there.
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