A decade ago, the smartphone market looked nothing like it does today. Nothing at all. Major players included Nokia, BlackBerry and Palm, and none of those companies even make smartphones anymore. OK, BlackBerry still makes a phone or two, but they’re hardly of consequence.
Moving beyond the companies that dominated the market, smartphones themselves were much different than they are in 2015. They came in all shapes and sizes, and each new year brought new phones with new features and new designs. They launched when they were ready, not on any set schedule, and new models were released all throughout the year.
I’m not going to dive into all of the different ways Apple’s iPhone changed the industry. Instead, I want to focus on one particular piece of Apple’s strategy that every other global smartphone company has adopted.The problem, of course, is that it doesn’t seem to be working very well for any company other than Apple.
Each and every year, Apple releases a new iPhone that is very similar to the previous year’s model, but a bit better. New iPhone models are faster than their predecessors, they’re thinner than their predecessors, and they sometimes feature better displays and other upgraded components. But generally, they look a whole lot like the iPhone models they replace. In “S” years like 2015, Apple even goes as far as to reuse the same case design and only upgrade the phone’s internal components and features.
Despite the striking similarities between each iPhone model and the one that preceded it, Apple’s phone sales continue to climb. Every year, Apple sets new launch-weekend sales records and new full-year sales records.
Everyone has his or her own theories on why Apple is able to find so much success with this strategy. In reality, it’s the result of a combination of several of the most popular theories — hype, marketing, a shockingly faithful fan base, superior design, superior quality, a superior user experience, and so on.
But Apple’s unprecedented success has led its rivals to adopt the same strategy with their flagship smartphones, and to be frank, it’s just not working. The only other company this strategy has really worked for is Samsung, and it took tens of billions of dollars in marketing and advertising for Samsung to find success.
Think about that. Tens. Of billions. Of dollars. And even then, success was short lived; Samsung’s growth hit a wall eight quarters ago and its profits and flagship phone sales are now in decline. In its most recent quarter, the brand new Galaxy S6 was no match for the aging iPhone 6, and Samsung’s mobile profits plummeted 38% as a result.
Look at LG and HTC. This year’s G4 and One M9 are fantastic phones, and either one is a fine choice for consumers. But they’re “S” phones. They look just like their predecessors but offer more power and a few new features.
Meanwhile, Apple is expected to release theiPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus in less than two months, and sales will skyrocket. Apple might even manage to top last year’s holiday quarter, which was the most profitable quarter that has ever been reported by any company . If not this year, certainly next year when it launches a redesigned iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, potentially with a third new iPhone as well.
The iPhones 6s and 6s Plus will look almost exactly like last year’s models. They’ll be slightly more powerful and will include some new features and upgraded hardware, but nothing major . As an Apple rival, it’ll be easy to look at the monster sales numbers Apple will proceed to put up, and think that continuing to copy the same strategy will eventually pay off.
Apple pulls in more than 90% of the smartphone industry’s profit among global vendors each quarter. That staggering figure isn’t likely to change anytime soon, and it might never change unless Apple’s rivals start to think outside the box and come up with phones that are truly new and truly provocative.
The “next big thing” isn’t a bigger, faster version of last year’s phone. It’s something novel and exciting that smartphone users have never seen before. If you build it, they will come.
Source : bgr.com
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