How Android Phone Makers Are Missing the Marketing Boat

An anonymous reader writes "Why are Android device commercials showing giant robots and lightning bolts and not advertising features? Here is an interesting blog post of things Android device manufacturers could be doing to get ahead of Apple, but aren't." On a similar front, as a mostly happy Android user, I must admit envy for the jillions of accessories marketed for the iPhone, especially ones that take advantage of that Apple-only accessory port; maybe the Android Open Accessory project will help.

Comments

Marketing and user experience

[nepka]

It's because Android devices are marketed for nerds, by nerds. And nerds don't understand marketing or user experience. You can see it with Linux. Even if the Android advertisements would include features, I have a strong feeling it would be something like "Freedom! 1 GHz processor! 128MB RAM!", ie. just listing specs. That isn't interesting. Users don't know what and why. They don't need to know the specs. In this day and age everyone has lots of things to do, and contrary to popular Slashdot belief, normal people have no need to learn such things. Hell, there's many things I could learn and which would improve my daily life, but I rather learn more about things that really matter and interest to me - that being computers and everything related. At the same time I can see everyone is the same way, but about other things. I don't expect them to know computers or what I know, and they don't expect me to know everything either. Then you can just laught it off. That's being social, something nerds are really bad with.

What most nerds don't get about advertising and user experience is WHY. What can this do to me and why? "What do I get out of the freedom of Android (or Linux)?" It needs to be something that the user, the normal user, actually cares about. As a side note, I honestly can't think of any reason the freedom of Linux would provide to casual users, compared to Windows and OSX. That is probably the reason why Linux still isn't on desktop. It's also what Stallman constantly forgets to mention and just comes out as an asshole trying to force everyone to FOSS.

The iPhone ad shown in the article is actually perfect. It answers why, it shows what you can do and it doesn't go on and on about things users don't directly care about, like processor speed. Hell, I'm a geek and that ad made me want to buy iPhone (and on top of that iPad too!). The Android advertisement just left me thinking if it's an advertisement for some movie or wtf.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[tthomas48]

No it's because iPhones are marketed like wine. The people who buy them are going to love them at least somewhat based upon owning something of "quality". Something that's exclusive. Something that's better than what you have, because it is. And much like wine, you're never going to convince them that Android has all the same features. Because they have a price differential to prove otherwise.
Granted at one point the iPhone was far ahead. But it has long since become about the cachet of being able to afford the device and data plan. My wife voice tweets on her $120 unsubsidized android phone with an unlimited data plan for $35/month. Yet somehow that's not as impressive as a device with Siri and a $199 subsidized phone and a $90/month plan.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[goombah99]

Even if the Android advertisements would include features, I have a strong feeling it would be something like "Freedom! 1 GHz processor! 128MB RAM!", ie. just listing specs. That isn't interesting. Users don't know what and why.

OK. Then if you were a manufacturer that made phones with say, 32 GB (let's assume that's double the maximum everything else), market it?

I dunno, but I'll ask Siri.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because Android users don't have contracts or subsidized phone. Get real. The vast majority of Android users are paying the same price for voice and data as their Apple and Blackberry loving counterparts. The vast majority of Android users are also using a subsidized phones and, yes, many of the leading Android phones are going for prices that are in line with their iPhone cousins.
 
So you're dead wrong. While some Android device might be able to be got for a lower price point and while you may be able to get them with a cheaper data plan, the vast majority of Android users simply aren't doing this.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh, most of the big name android devices cost the same as the newest iphone, with service plans that cost the same.

Thing is, you can attack the problem from a price perspective or you can try to go head-to-head against apple in their own court. You can't really do both.

Porsche and VW have been down this road. You have to keep things very separate or one messes up the other. To some people an Android phone is that dogshit $100 phone that looks and works terribly. To others its the insanely crazy (and iphone-expensive) galaxy. Selling the two next to each is bad news... but that's how it goes with an OS deployed over a gajillion devices.

I see us heading to a bazaar situation in mobile some day. A real one. And then apple is going to get kicked out on their ass again, just like they did in the PC market when commoditized home computers yanked the market out from under them.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[demonlapin]

Siri is a lot more impressive than Android's voice functionality, which is basically just voice-to-text with the ability to say "call X", "send text to X", or "navigate to X" tacked on. iCloud is similarly impressive.

Yes, I can do almost all of those things with Android, using Dropbox and Flickr and Amazon, but with Apple you can just turn on iCloud and you're done. No setup required. If saving $60/mo is a really important thing to you, then you're not Apple's target market. They sell to people who have plenty of money and don't want to have to think about their technology. And the iPhone 4S, despite lacking 4G, is in most ways the best phone on the market. When you get down to it, now that Apple stole the notification bar, the primary reason I still use Android is Swype.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[gstrickler]

Market what you can do with that extra storage, not that is has extra storage. "7500 songs or 20 hours of movies". Market benefits, not specs.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[rolfwind]

It's because Android devices are marketed for nerds, by nerds. And nerds don't understand marketing or user experience.

Hit the nail on the head. There was a huge contingent here jeering and predicting in dire tones the huge failure of the iPad between its unveiling and release. Some nerds gets filled with nerdrage when tech isn't marketed to them, I guess. They also go about trying to sell products in all the wrong fashion and don't understand what drives people to buy them, and end up calling said (and popular) products crap in some hipster-nerd type of elitism which doesn't exactly bring them closer to understanding the market.

Anyway, from what I read, Apple's users more willingly pay for apps, so developers develop more willingly for iPhone. Since the price difference on iPhone and Android products are miniscule when subsidized, it's going to become a "It's the Apps stupid!" cycle ala Apple vs PC wars, except Apple is going to be on the flip side despite having a smaller base. (Also, less fragmentation of devices is nice for the developer as well, but $$$ is king of course.)

Though I wish Web OS became more popular, iOS and its clone Android has UI quirks that annoy me.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[bberens]

The average user won't carry around a USB stick.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[danomac]

The morning of the iPhone 4S the news crew was out downtown talking to a new owner who waited all night for one. He was like "this Siri thing is cool" and asked the phone for the local weather, and it gave him the current time... on camera. That was pretty funny.

I've experienced the same thing with the voice control on my Galaxy S, so I stopped using it. It took longer to get it to do what I wanted with voice than to just type it in.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[quacking duck]

About 63 kB per Siri query.

In other words, I could use Siri 6 or 7 times, and still consume less "bandwidth" (data) than loading the mobile version of Slashdot's front page (418 kB when I checked just now).

Re:Marketing and user experience

[Jumperalex]

You missed his point ... it isn't about what the average android user has blah blah blah ... it is about his specific example where EVEN CHEAPER AND UNSUBSIDIZED his wife STILL isn't as impressed as a the more expensive option with Siri.

In fact, you're being so obtuse you don't even realize that you and tthomas48 AGREE.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[jbolden]

I have Siri and have always hated voice control for the last decade. Siri is about 70% successful in practice when you can't use the full interface (mainly, while driving). That ain't bad.

And I think issues are being confused:

1) feature phone vs. smart phone
2) android smart phone vs. Apple smart phone

You can make a good argument for whether $25-30 / mo (I don't know where $60 / mo is coming from) diff between feature and smart phone is worth the jump from EVDO data to 3G data with another $10 / mo going to additional subsidy, but that isn't exclusive to Apple that is equally an issue with a Feature phone vs. RIM/Blackberry or low end Android vs. high end.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[jbolden]

For me

1) Not having to worry about how many apps I have
2) Music.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[ZackSchil]

Oh my god. No one cares about that bullshit! You just estimate a song at 3:30 and say 256kbps and multiply it out! Your mother is not going to flip through her music collection and sue the phone maker because she only got 3/4ths the number of songs promised. And most likely, if someone has that much music or that unusual of a collection, they'll figure out ahead of time if it will fit!

Re:Marketing and user experience

[nine-times]

It's because Android devices are marketed for nerds, by nerds. And nerds don't understand marketing or user experience.

I think the "not understanding user experience" is a big problem in the tech industry, and Apple seems to be the only company paying attention to the user experience. Nerds/engineers simply fail to understand; the whole thing goes over their heads.

I've had lots of conversations with nerds/engineers about this, and when I try to talk about how Apple focuses on "user experience", they insist that Apple just makes "prettier" interfaces. To a lot of the people involved in these things, there's a false dichotomy that research and development is either focused on "useful features" or "useless superficial things, like pretty interfaces". They don't understand that there can be such a thing as "too many features", making the user experience confusing and frustrating. They don't seem to understand that it matters how you organize programs, options, and settings in your UI, that it only matters whether the features are there, and not how you access them.

The reason usability is so important is that "features" are only useful if people can figure out what those features are and how to use them effectively. UI design is important, not just to make things pretty, but to give visual cues about how to use the Interface, and to provide intuitive organization. The fact is, smartphones and computers are about as powerful as they need to be to do the things we want to do, and improving usability is probably the most important challenge right now. That is, making it easier to do the things you want to do, and removing the obstacles that prevent you from being productive.

I'm of the opinion that iCloud may end up being one of the great underestimated advancements in computing of the past couple years-- comprehensive data syncing between an entire ecosystem of Internet-connected devices. However, it requires a sort of vertical integration that only Apple is positioned to achieve. In short, I'm probably going to be stuck being an Apple customer for the foreseeable future because Apple is the only consumer electronics company that hasn't stalled out in terms of developing more usable products.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[obarthelemy]

You wouldn't. Look at what Apple does: they hype Facetime, then Siri, and then when you go to buy that, you have to choose between the economy (16 GB), Regular (32 GB) or Deluxe (64GB) model. Flash or RAM size is not a deciding factor: most people don't really know what it does, everybody has the same, and most have SD card anyway, or had rather not say they don't.

Flash / RAM size is not a key feature. Apps and style are.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[schlesinm]

You're right those are great commercials. HTC also does a wonderful job of keeping their phones up to data and has a great reputation. Had Verizon not signed Apple I would have gotten an HTC.

I just wish they did battery life.

My wife has an HTC (the Droid Eris) and she would disagree about HTC keeping their phones up to date. She is stuck on Android 2.1 which means she can't even move her apps to the SD card. I rooted her phone and put Cyanogen mod on it, but it's not one of the main phones supported by Cyanogen mod, so it takes awhile for new releases of that to get to her. And after seeing that the iPhone 3GS (which was released before her phone) is still being supported and getting new releases, she decided that her new phone would be the iPhone 4S.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[Shihar]

You are delusional if you think Android is marked for nerd by nerds. It is marketed like any other crap on the face of the planet, which is to say mindlessly to build name recognition. Nerds are not going to get their nerd specs from a fucking TV commercial. Ads more or less just scream over and over the name of the product and try and lodge some sort of image in your head. It doesn't matter if it is big green robots or dancing shadow people, they just want to lodge something in your head, not actually convince you the product is worthwhile.

Hell, the commercials that started Android's rise to crushing iPhone in terms of the raw units solid numbers game were the "Droid" commercials. The commercials were as devoid of information as most commercials are, but they hammer something iconic in your head so that you remember it. It is just a bonus if at the end you go "oh, that looks cool."

Finally, this contempt for nerds whenever Android is brought up is getting dull. What are you, in high school? Android isn't out pacing the alternative OSes because an army of nerds has arisen and are buying hundreds of millions of phones. Android is outpacing the competition because it has broad general acceptance across the entire population. The normals have smart phones of both the iOS and Android flavor. In fact, they make up the super majority of all users for all OS choices. Get over it.

Android does have its nerd following to be sure, and it is, generally (though certainly not completely), the nerd phone of choice because you can get a phone in whatever flavor you want, with whatever specs you want, tear apart the OS, and there is a large community to draw resources from to do it. Just because a small number of nerds are tearing into the internals of the phone doesn't mean that OMG ANDROID IS ONLY FOR NERDS!!111!!!! It just means that some Android phones are particularly nerd accessible, in addition to being a normal old smart phone.

Now, is the nerd crowd worth capturing? Eh, your millage my vary, but you need to remember that your elite nerds are the trail blazers in technology. The "nerd accessible" features of the Evo got me to get one. When my friends (who are not nerds) turned to me for advice on what phone to buy, they all ended up with Android phones, most of them from HTC. HTC bagging me by simply making the bootloader easy to unlock, handing out the phone's drivers, and offering up some appealing specs, directly resulted in over half a dozen of my friends and family also getting Android phones, many of them from HTC, and none of them from Motorola who earned my "nerd rage" with their militant efforts to lock down the phone.

Nerds are a niche, but a wealthy niche that is generally willing to spend more than the general population for their gadgets. Perhaps more importantly, they are also strong influencers in terms of high tech tastes. When the normalz slam into a wall of technology options, they turn to their nerd friends to make the decision for them. Bagging yourself one well connected nerd is likely to also score you a pile of the his or her "normal" friends and family. There isn't a damn thing wrong with leveraging that a little and getting products that are, perhaps not tailor made for nerds, but at least accessible. Whine all you want about how the mean nerds keep trashing on people who sell locked down phones, but most of the Android companies, and most famously, Samsung, capitulated before vocal nerd rage and stopped locking their bootloaders and now actively support the modding community.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[demonlapin]

Like I said, if you care about $60/mo, you're not their target market.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[demonlapin]

Realized I should respond to both parts of your comment. My experience with Siri is that it's at least as good as Google's voice-to-text was a year ago, and that it's a lot more capable - the voice-to-text part of Siri isn't the part that's interesting, it's that it has natural language processing and can interact with your data much more capably than Android's Voice Actions.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[tthomas48]

No. other poster was right. I was basically pointing out that my wife tweets by voice with her android phone and is really happy with it. Yeah, she has to click on the twitter app first. But she doesn't get why having Siri being able to launch twitter and then send the tweet automatically is somehow worth the price premium.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[jbolden]

My success for basic voice control is probably closer to 20%. Siri was a huge upgrade in terms of accuracy.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[tthomas48]

It's 3G data. It is interesting, though. I've found that because people are so used to paying > $50 for a phone with any sort of data plan they find it really had to believe that the $35 can actually be real and worthwhile.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[errandum]

Actually, all your examples can already be achieved with voice commands on Android.

What Siri does best is the interface with the user, unlike voice commands, it provides some kind of natural language processing and gives reasonable feedback... And that's something no one ever thought about. Most developers worked on trying to have the phone recognize your voice really well, and spent very little time in the actual user interaction.

My hat goes out to Siri, but if google wanted they could achieve Siri in a week, based on their voice recognition engine and already extremely exact web results. But now they'll just be following apple instead of innovating.

And you commented that you'd never use it in an elevator... Neither would I. But I already talk to my phone while driving, so it's not all that much of a "fad"

Re:Marketing and user experience

[Sancho]

The ones on Slashdot claiming that Android beats Apple in terms of experience clearly don't see the problem.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[mspohr]

Ah! You've been suckered by the "free phone" scam, I see.

I pay $40/month for unlimited talk and text and too much data. Of course, I didn't get a "free" phone but I paid for the cost of the phone from my savings before the first year was over.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[nine-times]

I'm not sure what the whole sneering-at-nerds thing is on Slashdot

More like, "I am one, so I feel that I can point out our failures." Hopefully instead of being taken as a sneering attack from an outsider, people can understand that it's one of their own pointing out something that we tend to overlook.

Anyway, it's not true that nerds/engineers fail to understand.

No, really they do fail to understand. Not all of them, but a really large portion. Of course, one of the things that tends to happen when you don't understand something is that you fail to understand that you don't understand it.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[jbolden]

I'm an IT professional as well. There are features like near top of the line CPU and battery life which are great. The subsidy from the carrier are a little larger and so all things being equal you get better hardware. The warranty at $99 / 2 yrs sure beats the $7.50 mo for an Android warranty. But in general you might very well find a better fit for yourself hardware wise on Android, if not at least close enough. Hardware wise there were some HTCs I was very tempted to buy, lack of options is not a feature.

The real appeal is the walled garden. The iPhone isn't bad ass, it is just damn good with low hassle. The customers are snobs, so any well rated app has a good interface. The interface has the same ratios so apps are easier to graphically design. Look and feel is substantially better, NQA. It is like Linux desktops vs. Windows or Windows vs. OSX.

iOS unjailbroke simply cannot run a virus. No app can change the effect of my system, so everything I do is safe and hassle free. There are minus of that, like I can't change the default keyboard to the Smart Keyboard I like but the plus is 0 worry.

That's it. There is nothing spectacular. If I were still 15 or 20 or 25 I'd get Android.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[Sancho]

Apple design is great until someone actually points out an Apple failure. Then the fanboys will try to talk around the issue, marginalize the problem, and marginalize those that are capable of seeing the problem.

I haven't found a perfect phone, computer, or operating system. Every one has its warts. I choose to use the ones which annoy me the least. These tend to be Apple products for things I directly interact with, and Linux (typically Ubuntu) or FreeBSD for things I don't directly touch.

Are there problems with Apple products? Absolutely. There are also problems with Windows and Linux. So I'm not sure I see what you're getting at.

A shiny veneer is great, but some of us just want to get stuff done. Apple's designs aren't all they are hyped to be in this regard.

See, I guess I don't see that.

With (most) Apple products, I find that I spend less time trying to get my computer to work in a way that I can get stuff done, and more time getting stuff done.

Phone devices are a relatively cheap way to find this out for yourself. Hopefully Apple won't manage to litigate competitors out of the market.

Agreed. Without Android, Apple would likely still have a shitty notifications system. Certainly they wouldn't have been able to steal the best UI feature of Android. They might have come up with something as good. I doubt they would do better.

Competition is good, and the patent wars are patently absurd.

I went from a Windows Mobile phone to an iPhone, to and Android. Then I went back to iPhone. There are things about the Android that I loved--the reflowing text when you tap-to-zoom is fantastic. Far and away better than Apple, who only zooms to the DIV element (which might be too large to read, requiring pinch-zooming and then scrolling.) Though I never needed to use it, I like the ability to install third-party software (which isn't available on every Android device, by the way.) And Google had the cloud down long before Apple. The notifications were better than Apple's pre-iOS5. Both of these last two points are now addressed on the iPhone. I also loved that I could view an app manifest in order to know what kinds of things an app was going to have permissions to do, though this wasn't always completely helpful (full internet access was required to view ads--a fairly big permission to do a very common task.)

But ultimately, I felt like I was fighting my Android phone constantly. Scrolling was terrible--I would move my finger across the screen, and about a second later the view would scroll. Apps running in the background slowed my phone down constantly and drained the battery--I had to wipe the phone and install apps one by one until I found which one was doing it (the battery usage screen wasn't showing any third-party app as using a lot of battery.) People could never understand me on the phone--a problem I didn't have before or since (a different Android phone might have fixed that, but it's hard to shop for that particular feature and I don't want to have to return phones until I find one that is usable as a phone.) The mail client (not the Gmail client) was awful. Like something out of the iPhone's first release. I had far more problems with the market, which seemed to auto-update itself and often didn't show me accurate information. And don't get me started on updates. I was running a vulnerable version of the OS for quite some time before I finally rooted and used Cyanogen--more fighting with the phone. Updates to Cyanogen never worked right. Even when I managed to get the update installed, it often utterly killed my performance unless I wiped and reinstalled. Then I had to set a bunch of stuff back up--only some things would be restored from the cloud.

When looking for new phones recently, I realized that there's no coherence for Android devices. Every one is vastly different. On the one hand, this provides more choice. On the other, it's quite overwhelming

Re:Marketing and user experience

[gstrickler]

What you call a design failure is usually just a feature nerds care about and typical users don't. That's what most commenters on here completely fail to understand, and that's why the iPod, iPhone, and iPad have outsold ever competitor no matter what the nerds have called failures.

That doesn't mean those products haven't had design issues or missing features, it just means that your definition of a failure is skewed by your opinion of what a device can/should do.

As for just getting stuff done, that's exactly what Apple products make it easy for the typical user to do, get stuff done WITHOUT having the think like a programmer or engineer. And most programmers and engineers refuse to even consider that adapting a device/UI to the user is far more valuable and marketable than features that users can't figure out how to use because they're not interested in learning to think like an engineer or programmer just to play their music, make a phone call, or surf the web, or check email.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[DerekLyons]

No it's because iPhones are marketed like wine.

No, it's because iPhones are marketed like lumber - as a commodity. If I go buy an iPhone, it's just like every other iPhone, right out of the box. No need to do any research. If I read about an app in a blog, I can download it and it runs, period. Etc... etc...

Re:Marketing and user experience

[RogerWilco]

I have used many devices from many manufacturers (worked in telecom), and a few of the other devices are nice when they're new, but Apple devices (not just phones, also laptops) are still nice when a couple or more years old. Apple keeps supporting their stuff really well, especially if you get the cheap OS upgrades.

Apple is in the game to keep their customers. That's how they create such a loyal following.

To do this they make high quality devices, and those have a certain alure to some people like Mercedes, BMW have for cars. But just like the German car builds, they're just out there to build the best thing they can think of and keep their customers happy and returning. That it means some pimps also drive a beamer to show off is just a side effect.

The exclusiveness is a side effect.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[RogerWilco]

Exactly.

I'm a nerd and I know how to set up backups with rsync and a cron job. Quite often I just don't get around to doing that.
With my Mac I just turned on TimeMachine and since then my backup is never more than an hour old.

The last I can also successfully get my mom to do over the phone, the first one I can't.

Re:Marketing and user experience

[jscotta44]

I didn't see much of an opinion – just facts.

Some other facts are, the iPhone doesn't need a removable battery - that is a red herring and has been proven out by the millions that continue to purchase upgrades to the iPhone rather than go with a new Android phone with a removable battery and the constantly extremely high customer satisfaction rate far above the Android user satisfaction.

Android phones (all the ones that I've seen) require an SD slot because they are so anemic with internal storage.

4G is great except that nagging ability to keep a charge when you use it. And, according to the reviews, except when you are downloading large files (even with the Galaxy S 2, there is no advantage over the speed that the iPhone 4S gets on browser usage - in real life. Solittle speed advantage for very little battery life. That mean that one place where 4G would be terrific – streaming large files like movies – is made moot because you can't watch for long before you battery tanks.

In my opinion, Apple is offering the best real-world experience for the most people. The exception is for the very cash strapped where you can get very, very cheap Android phones instead of a feature phone. However, no one really wants those customers because they don't buy things. They are broke. Do anyone really think that if every adult in Ethiopia had an Android phone that Google and its advertisers would see much financial benefit? (no insult to Ethiopia intended, just a place that came to mind when I think of poor). No they wouldn't. However, you can bet that Google and the Android press would be trumpeting the additional millions of Android handsets in use!

Standard Connector?

[Rich0]

So, what's wrong with USB anyway? I LIKE the fact that I can plug my android phone into a $2 car charger, and not have to buy the $35 sold at the phone store.

They don't really need a standard connector so much as a standard protocol for communicating over it beyond just filesystem access/etc.

And yes, phone commercials that barely even show you the phone are really annoying. I really don't care that their CGI robot can smash a CGI alien or whatever - I'm buying a phone, not a combat robot...

Re:Standard Connector?

[jimicus]

If the Android makers could standardize on anything, ie that the port will be on the center bottom, you'd see stuff designed that way since it could work with multiple devices.

Never gonna happen.

If I, as a handset manufacturer, do something like that, what differentiates me from any other Android handset manufacturer? I'm already running out of things to compete on now that I'm using the same platform as everyone else, last thing I need is to reduce that further.

Android is not one man's vision. It is more/less.

[wombatmobile]

Why?

Because:

1. Android, unlike iOS, has marketing funded by many different organizations and managers separately, working competitively against other Android manufacturers. They are each trying to differentiate from the other.

2. And don't forget:

3. Android devices don't have a standardized dock/interface connector so dock accessories don't exist for Android.
4. Android devices just show up as dumb disk drives when you plug them into my computer.

Another problem

[Daetrin]

That ad for what you can do with the iPhone was actually an ad for what you can do with iOS. That works fine for Apple because if they convince you to use iOS the only product you're going to buy is an iPhone.

On the other hand if Motorola puts out an ad highlighting all the things you can do with Android then even if they convince you to get an Android phone there's no guarantee you'll by _their_ Android phone.

This isn't an insurmountable problem, they could split the time between what's good about Android and what's good about their phone, or talk about features of Android without mentioning they're features that _all_ Android phones have. But it probably seems safer to the executives to only focus on what's cool about _their_ phone.

And of course the other thing is that i believe historically commercials that have gone with the whiz-bang appeal have done better than commercials that tried to be informative. As a nerd this always bothered me because i'm more interested in facts than presentation. (Not that i don't enjoy a well done presentation, but i try not to let my purchasing habits be influenced by it.) But i guess the majority of the male 18-35 demographic that commercials always try to aim at doesn't think the same way.

So another question to ask is, what demographic is the Apple commercial appealing to? And is it actually more successful overall than the Android commercials? The iPhone is certainly selling well above any individual Android model, but it's selling well below the total Android ecosystem. If one company switched to similar informative commercials would they actually see an increase in sales? Or is the iPhone's dominance as a single model due to some other factor? Again, as i nerd i actually like the tack the Apple commercial is taking (even if i get offended at all the times they imply, or even state outright, that you can't do the same thing on Android when you most certainly can) but historically appealing to people like me hasn't usually led to widespread market success.

So given all the differences between the Apple/iOS/Apple/iPhone model and the Google/Android/Dozens of companies/hundreds of phones model it's hard to say when comparing marketing strategies and measures of success is valid and when it's comparing, well, apples to oranges.

Re:Another problem

[jbolden]

Good point about Android manufacturers. That's part of the downside of a fragmented marketplace. RIM and Apple just have to sell you on their platform while Android people have to sell you on their particular models, and that's frankly hard when they are so generic. Which is precisely the problem PC manufacturers have had, they are selling a commodity.

The other thing is that Android does well selling to a lot of niches. Android feature phones don't do all the stuff the expensive HTC do either.

What Apple adds work on
"There's an ap for that" = advantage of the app marketplace. Which is a real difference with Android.
"Digital assistant" = advantage of Siri
i-Cloud = advantage of integration
Camera = actual about the technicals an area where the hardware is generally better.

Even the if you look at the earliest commercials they were about the intuitive nature of the apps.

The theme that Apple sells is: It does what you want, easily.
And that goes with Apple's brand identity. Does what you want, easily.

Android's brand identity is "does lots of stuff". Which of course leads the average customer to think "hmmm that Android probably does more stuff than that Apple but does it do the right stuff?" Android marketing plays into this theme. Where Apple has problems is price perception. Android, even Smartphone Androids could advertise the cost and how your monthly bill is a huge subsidy to pay for a $700 phone.

Re:Another problem

[Swampash]

So another question to ask is, what demographic is the Apple commercial appealing to? And is it actually more successful overall than the Android commercials? The iPhone is certainly selling well above any individual Android model, but it's selling well below the total Android ecosystem.

The commercial is appealing to people with disposable income who don't care about the tech specs or ROM versions of the devices that improve their lives. That's why Apple is leading the phone market in revenue by an amount so great it's almost like no-one else is in the race. If you add up all the profit made by Nokia, Samsung, LG, Sony-Ericsson, Motorola, HTC, and RIM, that combined amount comes to approximately one-half the profit being made by Apple.

And that's just phones, i.e. not counting profit from Apple's share of the iPad market. (That was a little joke. See someone's going to jump in and say "HA! YOU SHOULD HAVE SAID 'TABLET MARKET', as if they're two different things.)

Even the author doesn't quite get it...

[gstrickler]

Some should be showing off new features that Apple doesn't have like the new face unlock feature in Android 4.0.

Yeah, when there are phones shipping with Android 4.0 and front facing cameras that can use the features. Marketing features that aren't yet available to the end users is a REALLY bad idea.

Others should highlight their restrictive model: picture the old Mac vs. PC ads, but with the iPhone checking with Apple before denying the user's request to install an app of their choice.

This would probably backfire, how many trojans and programs that send your info back to the developer's server have been found in the Android marketplace? Lots. Apple would almost certainly use that in a counter-attack ad.

Market your strengths, but be careful of those that also have an underlying weakness/vulnerability, it will come back to bite you.

Android needs more standardization. A standard UI, a minimum resolution, and a minimum hardware set. One of the things Apple has done very effectively is manage the user experience. MS Windows and Android have allowed manufacturers to put out devices with too little RAM, CPU, and/or poor quality screens, keyboards, touch-screens and it hurts the reputation of the platform. When a user buys a bad Windows or Android device, they're as likely to blame the OS as they are the hardware manufacturer. Failing to understand and address that is a marketing failure on the part of the OS vendor.

Re:Even the author doesn't quite get it...

[gstrickler]

And the reason they've shipped phones with too little RAM/CPU and poor quality screens is essentially that consumers often demand crap. It's kind of a general problem, not limited to cell phones, that people want stuff but they don't want to pay for quality. That's why we have McDonalds restaurants all over the place and Best Buys filled with eMachines computers.

Consumers don't demand crap. Consumers largely shop on price. Retailers (and in the US, wireless carriers) buy devices to hit certain price points that they can advertise. Consumers don't have access to information to compare the devices, so put the blame where it belongs, with the sellers who are willing to sell crap because they know people will buy it and then blame the manufacturer (rather than the company who knowingly or carelessly sold them a piece of crap to make a profit).

I've worked in retail computer stores. I've talked customers out of buying products that I didn't think they would be happy with (e.g. products with poor build quality or a high return rate). Customer satisfaction creates repeat customers. Quality, value, usability, and customer service create customer satisfaction. Price is rarely the top consideration, it's just the one that sellers focus on because it's easier to sell on price than to actually provide information and service to the customer.

Marketing to no-one

[SuperKendall]

Watch those, and tell me with a straight face that this is advertising for nerds, by nerds, and by people who have no concept what the words "user experience" means.

I'll grant you that's not by nerds, for nerds.

But how is that anything about user experience? The ad is TOTALLY devoid of any user experience using the phone, looking out from the phone you know nothing at all about how the phone is to use or what it can do.

I am pretty convinced those kinds of ads (and I've seen them for other products) do nothing whatsoever to drive sales. How could they? Why would I remember HTC in connection to 30 seconds of nothing?

Can YOU honestly say with a straight face any of those ads would compel someone to even think about asking to look at HTC phones in a store, much less go out and get one?

I don't have an iPhone 4s. I have an iPhone 4. I didn't really feel like I needed a new phone right now, so I chose to skip this round... but every time I see a 4s commercial I start to question my choice to skip. Those are powerful ads.

Re:Marketing to no-one

[realityimpaired]

I don't have an iPhone 4s. I have an iPhone 4. I didn't really feel like I needed a new phone right now, so I chose to skip this round... but every time I see a 4s commercial I start to question my choice to skip. Those are powerful ads.

To Apple users. To me, I really don't see any reason to buy an iPhone when I can get all of the features I want for half the cost. (keeping in mind that I flatly refuse to sign a contract with a cell provider, so I'm paying retail, not a subsidized cost). Most of the iPhone sales I see happening right now appear to be people upgrading their old iPhone. The smartphone market is basically saturated, and the few people I know who've switched from one brand to another were actually switching from iPhone to an Android device, not the other way around.

And no, those ads won't convince me to buy an HTC. I have very specific requirements in a phone, and HTC doesn't currently have anything on the market that meets them all. They did, however, convince my brother to get an HTC phone, because he just wants a phone that works. That's the message in that campaign: that the phone just works with what you want to do with it. And honestly... I'll concede my bias in the matter if you concede yours: I am biased against iPhones, because I don't like the way Apple does business and because they don't bring any features to the game that I haven't seen and can't get elsewhere. You are biased against this kind of advertising, because you already have a phone that "just works" for you.

Re:Marketing to no-one

[Patch86]

They call it "building the brand". The idea is that the name HTC is now in your head. When you decide to buy a new phone and you flick through the metaphorical catalogue, you'll think of HTC as an option, where before it might have been some anonymous entity you've never heard of.

It probably works; most big companies play the same game. The recent UK McDonald's adverts, where there's barely a morsel of food in sight, is similar. Same goes for all those car adverts where you just get a stream of vaguely suggestive visual metaphors.

Re:Android is not one man's vision. It is more/les

[SuperKendall]

And this is a bad thing why exactly?

Because most people on earth do not understand file systems.

I keep hearing my iPhone-using friends say "iTunes borked my data and I have to sync it all again".

Possibly. But then you have it all back.

When you broke the filesystem on Android you are screwed unless you carefully backed up everything. Now with iCloud a user just shrugs and gets back all the data, should there be an issue.

People cannot really handle backup or file management tasks. Which is why even the bad solutions to those problems are preferred by most people as long as in the end they mostly work..

Standard is an end-user idea

[SuperKendall]

That's just de-facto acceptance due to the commonality of the device.

To the user on the street though that does not matter. The FACT is that as a user, you can find more ways to make use of the iPhone dock connector and more devices that support it in everyday life.

To the end user that is all they know, is what they can do. And to them the iPhone connector appears simply to be more standard, more widely available, even if they have no idea why other companies cannot use it.

So complaining about Android having a "more standard" connector totally misses the fact that from the standpoint of people buying the phone, the Android connector is simply not as standard.

Re:Standard is an end-user idea

[unixisc]

However, the user on the street can't use the iPhone (or Touch or iPad) to read anything on an external hard drive, an USB card or access any other USB peripheral. S/he is forced to use iTunes to do it, and is then limited by iTunes limitations.

That's not a limitation for any phone that is using an USB connector. If one can insert a micro-SD into a phone that has all the data that's been copied from elsewhere, that's an advantage. Being forced to access the App Store to buy something one already has, except that it's either bought from elsewhere, or downloaded, is not an advantage (I don't want to get into the argument of whether it's piracy or not). Similarly, the only printers iDevices will link to are Apple's proprietary Wireless printers. If you try using a different printer that you already have, you're out of luck.

You listed nothing an iPhone cannot do...

[SuperKendall]

I also like the fact that I can connect an android phone to a printer and print photos

I can connect wirelessly to a number of printers and do the same thing on an iPhone.

Or connect an android phone to a TV and watch video clips.

I can use either a cable or AirPlay to play video out to multiple devices, plus I can mirror the screen for games.

Or connect an android phone to a car stereo and play mp3s

My car came with an iPhone dock connector that runs audio out while also charging the phone, but I could also simply run an audio cable out.

Or connect an android phone to a PC and access the internet.

Yeah, the iPhone can offer tethering ether via WiFi, bluetooth, or over USB.

A "dock" would only be a hindrance, and limit the possible form factors of Android devices.

Knowing that almost any hotel will have a dock for an iPhone so that I can connect without a cable is far from a hindrance.

In the end the iPhone acts like any other USB connected device as far as charging, but you get additional options because of the extra data that can be run out of the dock.

Also I am really wondering how your device charges while you are running video out to a TV...

Re:You listed nothing an iPhone cannot do...

[manekineko2]

Also I am really wondering how your device charges while you are running video out to a TV...

MHL, it's a standard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_High-definition_Link

Video out and charging, simultaneously.

Re:Android is not missing anything

[jbolden]

Apple tried the 'vs' ads with their Mac vs Windows, and as popular as those ads were, they didn't help Apple much in sales.

Huh? When Apple started those ads they were a barely profitable niche player. After running those for 5 years (and making improvements) they owned about 80% of the profits from the PC market leaving everyone else fending for who gets to produce boxes for cost. And they are still growing, creating more users willing to pay them hundreds more for their perceived value.

Operating System? Or just a phone?

[ScottyLad]

I'm pretty sure not many of my friends know the difference between IOS and Android.

If I asked everyone I know outside of work what kind of phone they have, the answers would be something like this:

iPhone
HTC
Nokia
iPhone 4
Samsung
Motorola
etc

I'm not even sure the responses would be particularly different at work (I work in a technical environment). Perhaps tomorrow I'll try it and see if anyone actually mentions the terms "IOS" or "Android". I hadn't realised until very recently that lots of different phones ran the same operating system, and I'm reasonably technical - I just don't have much interest in phone technology beyond making sure the one I buy does the things I want it to do (make phone calls, sync with iTunes) without me having to learn how to work something new.

My first mobile phone was a Nokia. Over the next 15 years, every phone I had was a Nokia. There were probably "better" phones on the market, but I liked Nokia, I knew how to work them, and I couldn't see any reason to change. When the iPhone came out, I thought "I wouldn't need to carry my iPod around everywhere as well as my phone if I bought one of those", so I got an iPhone. I like my iPhone, it does everything I want it to, and I know how to work it. Which probably means my next phone will also be an iPhone.

In many respects, despite having a technical profession, and being a "geek" in many areas which interest me, I'm actually just a typical consumer. I buy stuff from brands which have made stuff I like in the past.

Most consumers recognise brands, not technical specifications

Re:Apple-only accessory port

[itsdapead]

You mean the port that means you always need a special cable? The port that proves that Apple's profit is way more important than user friendliness?

You mean the special cable that is so ubiquitous that it costs 50 cents? Heck, push the boat out and get the $1.50 one....

Hopefully your micro-USB chargers are the sensible sort with a full-size USB socket built into the adapter (like the Apple chargers) so you can also use them to charge older mini-USB devices as well as iDevices.

Marketing IS the user experience

[Eugriped3z]

1st of all, the premise that manufacturers sell to users is incorrect. Manufacturers sell to carriers. Carriers market to users. And the carriers don't care what approved phone you buy. Their selection is based on business concerns well outside the user experience.

Penultimately, the only thing the carriers actually care about is the monthly recurring services fees generated by the use of voice, text, data and the revenue share generated by music, video, and app sales. They do impose standards or operation that manufacturers have to meet in order to be considered for branding and sales through the company store, but they don't give a rats ass about usability. And the term reliability is reserved for the description of phones' performance as a network device.

As to the crux of marketing to the consumer, I've been around enough marketing and sales people to understand that most of them hold a low opinion of the consumer. Computer sales and marketing campaigns have rarely if ever provided meaningful or reliable metrics to the end user. Users are inundated with basic specs, processor speed and memory and storage capacity. Winmark and Winstone got some play in the rags that pass for consumer oriented periodicals, but I don't know anyone who considers these publications to provide much more than paid advertising, pretty pictures and hype. I mean, when's the last time any Slashdotterer read Walter Mossberg's column when seriously investigating a purchase decision?