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Apple Comes Clean, Admits To Doing Market Research
colinneagle writes "In an interview with Fortune a few years ago, Steve Jobs explained that Apple never does market research. Rather, they simply preoccupy themselves with creating great products. On Monday, Apple's Greg Joswiak — the company's VP of Product Marketing — submitted a declaration to the Court explaining why documents relating to Apple's market research and strategy should be sealed. Every month, Apple surveys iPhone buyers and Joswiak explains what Apple is able to glean from these surveys. And as you might expect, Apple conducts similar surveys with iPad buyers. Apple wants all of these tracking studies sealed. Joswiak explains that if a competitor were to find out what drives iPhone purchases — whether it be FaceTime, battery life, or Siri — it would serve as an unfair competitive edge to rival companies. Further, competitors, as it stands today, have to guess as to which demographics are most satisfied with Apple products."
A few other interesting facts have come out of the trial so far; Apple spent $647 million advertising the iPhone in the U.S. from its launch through fiscal 2011, and they spent $457.2 million advertising the iPad from its launch up to the same point.
Deserves to be repeated:
As usual here a lie is made by twisting the truth. He was talking about market research telling them what products to pursue or markets to enter, that is the consumer would be driving the business goals. Apple clearly didn't do that. There was no clamor for yet another MP3 player, yet another smartphone, yet another tablet. But that's OK, Steve is dead and the hapless harping hypocrites will continue their attacks and telling themselves how gloriously wonderful and clever they are for using some other product (Windows, Linux, Droids) even if it's substandard or blatantly imitative.
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
Yes, Windows is better than Linux for the desktop. Sorry, that's just a fact. I tried to get my dad set up on Linux. He really liked that it was free and he could keep using the same computer that had been running XP. He gave it a shot but felt guilty about "bugging" me and just bought a new Win7 system.
When something is free and still can't compete with something that costs around $100 there's very little room to argue that it is better.