Apple iPhone's International Marketing Gaffes
The Apple iPhone was a path breaking device, bringing new meaning to terms like convergence and innovation and was perhaps not only far ahead of competition but also ahead of its time. No one can take this away from Apple.
Now you probably don’t go wrong with a product like that and well, by most conventional standards the iPhone did a pretty good job. At the end of its first quarter of launch, the iPhone 3G held a 16.3% share of the world smartphone market, overtaking RIM for the 2nd place. In the US it is now the largest selling handset , pipping the Motorola Razr for the top spot. The iPhone app store was a stroke of genius and is apparently bringing in big money for Apple.
So far so good, but guess what,
the Japanese apparently “hate” the iPhone, we Indians haven’t shown a lot of love since its launch in late 2008 and apparently the Europeans are not falling over their feet to get hold of one either. The 16.3% market share is mostly due to its tremendous success in the United States alone. Overseas, the reaction to the iPhone has been less than stellar.
Apparently the folks in Japan take their mobile phones quite seriously. No self respecting Japanese will allow him to be caught with a 2 MP camera, no Video recording and would you believe it, a non-Japanese brand – it’s just not cool there to use foreign brands.
In India, they got EVERYTHING wrong. There was no marketing – they left that entirely to the local wireless operators, Flawed Distribution - iPhones were being sold through the outlets of these wireless operators – not where Indians go to buy their 100 million units every year.
The list is endless, and perhaps the only consistent thought emerging from this list is that maybe Apple is suffering from that all too familiar ailment of marketing myopia.
Why do we repeatedly fail to appreciate that cultures, habits, values, aspirations, needs everything changes when you step out of your home? No product is going to succeed in the international arena until the marketing and product strategies are adapted to the realities of that market.
“Think global, act local” – was that not the mantra for businesses aspiring for a piece of the global market?