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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.
Obviously, since he died, this new generation of Apple leaders have lost their way. They need to turn back to Steve before it's too late and realize that only through him can they find the correct path. And that path is not through market research, it's through listening to Steve's own words and letting them into your heart.
>> Joswiak explains that if a competitor were to find out what drives iPhone purchases â" whether it be FaceTime, battery life, or Siri â" it would serve as an unfair competitive edge
Hint: It's that patented rectangular shape.
Obviously, Steve meant market research for future products. The article describes a survey of existing customers, and I've gotten them before. While this plays a part in product development, they don't use focus groups. It's one of those things where, if Apple asked outside people (not customers), "what do you want in a phone," they'd end-up with a terrible product. Instead, they make the phone they, themselves want to use. As they've stated in their conference calls, they only enter markets where they think they can improve things. One example is student information systems. They sold PowerSchool to Pierson, exiting that market because they felt they couldn't do a killer product there. It's so obvious how they work; the only mystery is what future products will be. They keep those under wraps because, if they decide to scrap it or change it dramatically, there won't be a Microsoft-CES-announcement-style embarrassment. As the Samsung court documents show, they have hundreds of iterations of products that never see the light of day.
Yeah but they don't do it quite as much, on average.
And it's as anticlimactic as the cough syrup in Flaming Moes... they buy it because it has an Apple logo on it. The logo itself is a status symbol.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Joswiak? Sounds like Jobs + Wozniak.
Using it as Apple is saying here, to survey users, is one thing. It helps gather info on actual uses, usage patterns, customer feedback.
Using it to design a product or to test a product design, is quite another, especially if, like often, it ends up justifying half-baked committee-think. Apple forte has been Steve Job's "I'm the customer, please me" stance, which is far superior to the "Make none of us dislike it too much" design-by committee version. It requires strong leadership. Apple had that, and storng value too: sexiness and easse of use.
As an Android user, I wish, I wish Google did more user surveys. There are a handful of very easy changes that would make Android rock, observably so, including in the shop right next to an iPad.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I think that the summary misses a major point. Sure there was a bit of hyperbole when Steve said that Apple never did market research. But every word that came out of that man's mouth was hyperbole. What I think Steve's point was is that Apple doesn't base their product categories on market research. They just use market research for refining products once the categories are established. They didn't base the idea to have an all-touchscreen smartphone, a high capacity hard-drive based mp3 player, or a GUI centric PC on market research. If they did, they would have found out that people were perfectly happy with their blackberry and symbian keyboard smartphones, their low capacity flash mp3 players, and their DOS based IBM PCs.
There's a great picture along those lines: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2124177/internet-memes-he-was-the-first.jpg.
For those that don't wish to look at it it has Bill Gates introducing the tablet PC in 2002 and says "no one cares", in 2010 Apple introduces the iPad and "the world pisses itself like and excited dog." In 2012 MS rolls out the surface and "People claim they stole the idea from Apple." The final frame is a picture of Patrick Stewart in ST:TNG holding a PADD with the caption "Bitches, please."
Apple is rarely first on something, they rarely invent something. Nothing wrong with that, it is true of most companies. They just want to sell it like they are.
What Apple really does is sell fashion. The iPod wasn't amazingly successful because it was an MP3 player, it was amazingly successful because it was a fashion accessory. To own one was to be cool, and thus everyone wanted to own one. Suddenly the style for earbuds was bright white (something Shure, Etymotic, etc had never had demand for before) with the cable hanging down the front of your shirt to proclaim ownership to all (just like in the commercials).
Apple makes products people want as status symbols, as fashion, regardless of need for them. That is a great market if you can get it because not only is it big, but fashion is very price insensitive, indeed higher prices can be better. Consumer electronics is extremely price sensitive and charging a premium is hard. However in fashion, no problem.
Part of that image is convincing people they were the first in the world to ever do something and that because of that it is really cool.
By having the sense to look up what he actually said, instead of relying on media soundbites. Here's what he told Business Week in 1988:
Q: Did you do consumer research on the iMac when you were developing it?
A: No. We have a lot of customers, and we have a lot of research into our installed base. We also watch industry trends pretty carefully. But in the end, for something this complicated, it's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why a lot of people at Apple get paid a lot of money, because they're supposed to be on top of these things.
So now we're seeing breathless media reports saying "Apple does research into their installed base, proving that Jobs was lying when he said that Apple did not do this!!!" Except of course that Jobs specifically said that Apple did do that. If you look at the context of Jobs' statements about Apple not doing market research, you'll see that all of them are in the context of how Apple designs new products, as opposed to how they improve existing ones.
If they don't want to reveal stuff in court, maybe they should stop suing everyone
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.