Phoney Pasta Time Treat

Product: iphone

Parent Company: apple

Strategic Vision:

Apple hopes to invade and dominate the mobile market, just as it did the portable music player market with the ipod, with its new iphone. While it introduces a few new landmark features never before seen on a mobile device (or at least not presented as efficiently), The key point of the iphone is it's over simplified approach to style and user interface. Just as in an age when buttons, sleek lines, and flashy colors where the benchmark for portable music players, today's smart phones are doused in fast lines, flashy graphics, and more "quick buttons" than we know what to do with. Apple's iphone looks past this to a device that will appeal both to the style nuts who are already ape over apple's "less-is-more" approach to product design, and the average consumer who may feel overwhelmed by a combination of a full qwerty keyboard, numbers, shift buttons, and several short-cut buttons that operate a number of different functions.

By utilizing what I preffer to call a "hard-to-get" approach to marketing, apple has built an astonishing amount of interest in the iphone by keeping marketing to a minimum and relying on it's already established niche of mac-maniacs and tech heads to hype their product for them.

Strategy: Differentiation

The iphone is one of the most versatile personal devices to hit the market to date. It utilizes a touch screen, mp3 playback, wi-fi with web browser, Bluetooth, a 2.0 mega pixel camera, and e-mail. The iphone uses the popular mac OS X operating system, but is also capable of running the windows mobile platform. Another first that comes standard on the iphone is a feature called visual voicemail. When someone calls you, it displays their name, number, and/or picture, but where the iphone separates itself from its competitors is that this feature is also active when you are checking your voicemail. The iphone is also compatible with the popular media manager, itunes. The vibrant 3.5" display fully utilizes the iphone's capacity to hold pictures and play movies. The iphone is available in a 4GB hard drive, or an unprecedented 8GB hard drive.

Situational Analysis

The iphone is being released in the U.S. where there is already a devoted market of mac fans. The cellphone market is already an established one, and gaining the estimated 1% of the global market will not be easy.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: The unlimited features available. The iphone also comes with a dedicated customer base due to apple's intrepidly loyal fan base.

Weaknesses: The price is the largest weakness, with a lofty $499-$599 price tag. The battery is not removable. This is a big weakness when you consider that the factory installed battery isn't terribly strong. They last about 8 hours of use, with an expected life span of a year or two before time to consider replacing the battery. The iphone is also only available through AT&T service, which for a dedicated verizon customer such as myself, is a turn off. Finally, there are also some security issues being worked out.

Opportunity: The iphone combines several peripheral features into one convenient device. It is the first truly mac friendly phone to hit the market. The combination of a hip public image, versatility, and a loyal fan base should work greatly in the iphone's favor.

Threats: The iphone is jumping into a cellular market as a newcomer. The consumer base is finicky at best. If they don't actually give two whiffs about what their phone does, then the phone they want must conform exactly to everything, no compromise. Also, the US makes up a relatively small portion of the international cellular market. This will make it nearly impossible for apple to reach its 10 million units sale goal by next summer without going overseas. The cellular industry is also relatively quick to adapt to good ideas. If there's nothing like it on the market now, then there will be soon enough.

Marketing Mix:

Product: The iphone combines a mobile phone, widescreen ipod, and a breakthrough internet device into one small, lightweight, handheld device with the best e-mail ever offered on a mobile phone; full-screen viewing with browsing, multi-touch screen, and applications.

Place: AT&T is the exclusive carrier of the iphone, but apple arranged for service sign-up