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Apple's Strategy Behind iTunes Mobile Phone
vishnu writes "CoolTechZone.com is running a story that analyzes Apple's strategy with ROKR. According to the author, the phone disappoints, but is this Apple's way of testing a potential market. Quote: "There was nothing wrong with the creative cells of the designers at Apple; ROKR is simply Jobs taking a calculated risk. He doesn't want a cell phone that doubles as an MP3 player to become too popular as that would cut straight into Apple's bread and butter product, the iPod. On the other hand, Jobs knows for a fact that in the future cell phones will play a huge role in portable digital music; therefore, he is hedging his bets. He wants to give people a taste of what is to come but at the same time, he wants to project phones as an extension but not a replacement of a portable music player. He's consequently hoping to discomfort Apple's competition with a cell phone that has nothing but iTunes going for it."
Apple's Strategy Behind ROKR
Written by Varun Dubey
Manufacturer: Apple
Tuesday, 13 September 2005
At a recently guarded press event, Apple launched its latest gadget and a product that has perhaps been long overdue: the Motorola ROKR cell phone. So why is Apple launching a Motto? It's simply because the phone has a mobile version of iTunes and can therefore play music. According to Steve Jobs, "it's more like a phone and a Shuffle rolled into one..."
In terms of sheer expectations, I would have to say that the ROKR fell way beyond mine, and if events keep churning the way they are, ROKR will fall short of achieving even basic industry standards. The phone can store just about 100 odd tracks while the N series phones from Nokia will store roughly a thousand. Similarly, the Sony Walkman W800i also stores just as many songs, plus you can upgrade the memory to 2GB quite easily with a memory stick. There really is no other great feature about this phone apart from the dedicated iTunes button and the fact that it automatically pauses the track when a call comes in, which isn't particularly path breaking if you ask me.
What is the Rokr about? Why would Apple waste its time, resources and brand value on something as particularly staid as this phone which, to top it all, is locked with Cingular as the carrier. I mean seriously, the product is simply not as exuberant as Apple products are supposed to be. So what happened? Why did Apple come out with a below standard product that fails in all expectations?
The answer to that question is strategy. There was nothing wrong with the creative cells of the designers at Apple; ROKR is simply Jobs taking a calculated risk. He doesn't want a cell phone that doubles as an MP3 player to become too popular as that would cut straight into Apple's bread and butter product, the iPod. On the other hand, Jobs knows for a fact that in the future cell phones will play a huge role in portable digital music; therefore, he is hedging his bets. He wants to give people a taste of what is to come but at the same time, he wants to project phones as an extension but not a replacement of a portable music player. He's consequently hoping to discomfort Apple's competition with a cell phone that has nothing but iTunes going for it.
Why would Jobs go to such great lengths at fumbling his rivals' plans to come out with an enthusiastic product of their own? That's because anything that affects the iPod sales hits Apple where it hurts the most (the cumulative sale of all iPods is estimated to be $4.8 billion).
Of course, the music industry and the music playing cell phone will take off no matter what Jobs tries, but the possibilities for Apple are quite a few. If ROKR really takes off with the iTunes mobile edition, Apple can have some serious bargaining rights in terms of digital rights and content provision for other users, which shouldn't be too difficult especially since iTunes online store has quite a few songs including the entire song by song albums of Madonna, the only online collection of such kind in the world. ROKR's success will also help Apple push FairPlay (digital rights management software) to other phone manufacturers, which would be interesting to watch as well.
The possibility that I like better, however, is that Apple could come out with its own "iPhone" (what else could they possible name it?) and beat Motorola and Nokia at their own game. Their partnership with Motorola for the ROKR could be for the simple reason that they want to understand what they are getting into before actually getting into it full time. As a personal request, if iPhone does happen, I wish they somehow include the click wheel on it so I can easily scroll through the address book.
If you get right down to it, Apple need not even manufacture the phone itself, there are always third party manufacturers like BenQ that will take care of the manufacturing while Apple can go on with thinking up cleverer ideas to leave us catching our breaths every time a produ
The nano's already going there - it has a lock feature; to unlock it you spin the click wheel and the screen shows a little combination lock. Absolute fluff, so totally Apple...I seriously wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone did just what you say.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
I fully agree and I don't know what all the fuzz is about - it's comparable to Nokia touting its phones as Opera phones. With the addition of iTunes to this phone, it can do exactly one thing that other phones can't - play FairPlay-DRMed songs. Compared to the rest of the phone, it's not exactly tipping the scale.
Did anyone see the part of the Special Event where Steve "demos" the phone? They're so embarassed about it that they don't have a camera to show the phone interface. When he gets interrupted by a phone call, he can't even press the right button to resume the music. It's a bad move. Steve probably would hate this phone if it hadn't got iTunes on it in the first place.
Motorola's interfaces are among the worst in the industry. Their computer connection software is a riddle and a half. The phone is clumsy. The 100-song limit, USB 1.1 connection and lack of Bluetooth syncing are all braindead, and three companies all trying to limit the functionality to not hurt other aspects of their business compromised what little was already good with this phone to suckiness. There's no fucking way in hell that this is going to sell well unless you're a complete must-be-Apple/Motorola/Cingular consumer fascist. This is the worst move Apple has made since the mid-90s era.
Someone (I can't remember who) once said (long before this) that this is the scenario: Steve Jobs has a cell phone which he uses daily, and which he hates, and which he one day is going to do something about. After watching that part of the event, I think for the first time in my life that the iPhone might actually happen someday, because if Apple's trying to push iTunes onto even an average phone, this just won't do.