Lack Of iTunes Phone Marketing Irks Motorola

Alias777 writes "Motorola has criticized Apple for not marketing three proposed new phones that will be able to play downloaded music from Apple's iTunes service. "[Steve Jobs'] perspective is that you launch a product on Sunday and sell it on Monday," says Ron Garriques, president of Motorola's mobile phone division. In response, Motorola has delayed release of the iTunes-equipped phones a few more months."

Comments

Re:Motorola's Loss

[gl4ss]

why would they whine? to put pressure on apple.
"hey bitches if you don't co-operate.. well, then we'll walk out on you and find someone who wants to do business WITH us."

steve tactics don't work that well out of apple, if you don't announce anything the operators will assume that you got nothing coming, and will not do business with you. he's succesful yeah, but the company(apple) isn't extremely succesful.

WTF?

[Monokeros]

From TFA:
Motorola Inc. did not show upcoming phones designed to work with Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes digital music service at a recent tech show because of the pair's differing approach...

Uhm. So Apple isn't marketing Motorola's phones for them. Motorola is responding by NOT showing their phones at a tech show, that is, they aren't marketing their phone at a tech show.

Motorola is "punishing" Apple for not marketing Motorola's phones by... not marketing the phones??? That's bizarre to me.

Why is this Apple's job anyway?

Revenge

[Goo.cc]

Obviously, this is Steve getting revenge on Motorola for dragging its feet in PowerPC development. (Just think of all the money Motorola's lack of effort cost Apple.)

Re:Revenge

[DLWormwood]

Obviously, this is Steve getting revenge on Motorola for dragging its feet in PowerPC development.

You do understand that Motorola dragging its feet was in revenge for Apple killing of the Mac cloning program, right? Moto did have a clone line (using the "Tanzania" mobo, IIRC) and they invested some serious R&D capital into the StarMax product series. They didn't even get the buyout offer Apple provided to Power Computing. As a result, Moto refocused their PowerPC processor line towards embedded systems and portable devices, reducing effort into implementing desktop machine friendly technologies like DDR memory and high speed data bus interconnects.

too much complexity in the first place

[Selecter]

Ya know what I want to do my my phone? Call people I need to talk to from anywhere to anywhere, at a reasonable price.

I also want it to have nothing more than what I need to do that task as well. I guess I wont be buying any of these phones. Seriously, whats wrong with a phone being.....a phone?

"Innovators Do It Innovatively"

[amichalo]

This article reminds me of those beach T-shirts "Divers Do It Deeper" and so on.

The thing is that Motorola doesn't do a whole lot of innovating. They do a whole lot of embracing and extending. There is a completely different phylosophy at work:

Embrace and Extend model:
(1) wait for an innovation
(2) wait for market reaction
(3) reverse engineer competetive product
(4) profit by reduced R&D costs, fewer "oops" moments (a la Mac Cube, etc)

The key to this is to let the public know you will 'soon' have a product just as good or better than the innovator's, preferably at a lower cost.

Innovators Model:
(1) be first to market with a faster/better/cheeper way of doing something
(2) DRIVE market reaction (e.g. get early adopter testimonials, etc)
(3) build the product inhouse under high levels of secrecy to ensure (1)
(4) profit by first mover advantage (Netscape), free publicity and market cache of being the innovator (TiVo), and hopefully market domination (eBay, iPod).

The key here is to surprise the market, and competition, with your product. Ususally, Innovators don't have the manufacturing/distribution capacity to deliver mass quantities on day 1 anyway. Because the product or service is innovative, the customer really needs to see it and use it to perceive the value.

So merging an innovator with an embracer yields this Apple/Motorola conundrum. Just weight the Pros and Cons of an early product announcement:
Pre-availability Announcement:
Pros
- Media exposure (free publicity)
- Market reaction to better guage demand
- Price point reaction to better guage promotions
- Use of the above to negotiate deals with Carriers to sell the phone
Cons
- Media exposure will be lower when product is released
- Competitors get sneak-peek at what is coming
- Impulsive customer base (young adults) may find their appetite has changed once product is available
- Loose the impact/anticipation of an "unveiling"

Plus, in this cell phone market, products promissed and then delivered half baked or way late (Sprint's Bluetooth Sony Ericsson T810 or whatever that was less than expected) really drive customers away.

not when Apple benefits more than Motorola does

[SuperBanana]

Motorola should realize that their hardware stands to make them a lot of money given the market/mindshare of iTMS

Umm...beyond selling the phone, Motorola doesn't make a dime off iTMS sales. Apple does. Furthermore, very few devices (read: none except the iPod) support iTMS. If Apple doesn't hurry up, the market will turn, because there will be differentiation; every other music service will hawk "oh, you can't download that music to your phone or PDA! You can with ours though!" Come to think of it, that's what they have been doing for quite some time. What has been Apple's response? To just keep cranking out iPods.

Sorry, but I see Motorola's point. Apple promotes all sorts of devices to show people what they can do with Apple products, and it wouldn't kill them to put a Motorola phone on the front page rotation for www.apple.com, or the iTMS main page, etc...do demos in-store and have Verizon salespeople come in, etc.

The very fact that Motorola delayed the phones shows they feel they're getting the short end of the stick. If they stood to make a lot of money off the deal with Apple, they would be much more careful so as to not kill the deal and loose revenue.