Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: apple

  • Attacking Apple iPhone 6

    Attacking Apple iPhone 6

    One of the saddest things in life is the company that bleats ‘but we thought of it first’ when overtaken by a smarter or more credible competitor.

    Since the release of the iPhone 6, the knives are out for Apple with Samsung, HTC and even Sony poking fun at the new product pointing out the features already in their products.

    The problem for Apple’s competitors is the market isn’t listening to the attack ads. In China alone a million iPhones were sold in first hour they went on sale.

    For companies competing with Apple they have to find a compelling product, not be sniping at the market leader. For Samsung in particular with its falling revenues it needs to be generating some excitement in the market, not depressing its customers.

    Here’s the Samsung ad; while it’s pointing in the wrong direction it’s good in that it holds the critics to account but it makes not a spit of different to the marketplace.

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  • iPhone ME — Apple risks becoming the new Microsoft

    iPhone ME — Apple risks becoming the new Microsoft

    It’s been a tough week for Apple, after the spectacular launch of the iPhone 6 the company has had two humiliating and worrying setbacks that indicate standards may be slipping at the once untouchable giant.

    The iPhone 6 Plus should have been a triumph, and for a while it was, but the news the phones bend and distort has tarnished the product.

    Compounding the bendable phone problem are the claims users are being charged to replace their damaged handsets.

    On its own this problem might have been manageable like the iPhone4’s antenna problems in 2010, however today’s news that the latest iOS8 has had to be withdrawn after user complaints indicates a sloppiness has crept into the company.

    Both problems, or all three problems if it turns out the stories of Genius Bars charging to replace damaged phones, show Apple isn’t paying attention to detail to the degree they’ve become known for.

    The botched iOS8.0.1 rollout is sloppy work while the bendable phone is very much an uncharacteristic lapse in design.

    For a premium brand with a large dose of arrogance, shipping defective products is both an embarrassment and damages the company’s name.

    This inattention to detail is horribly reminiscent of Microsoft’s horror days at the turn of the Century where the company repeatedly rushed incomplete products to market — Windows ME being the most notorious example.

    So maybe we are seeing Apple become the new Microsoft and the iPhone 6 Plus as the Windows ME of our time.

    That doesn’t mean we’ll see the end of Apple, Microsoft is still a huge corporation, but it may be the tech industry’s most iconic business is beginning to lose its edge.

    Image of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates via Wikipedia

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  • Time to strike deals

    Time to strike deals

    It didn’t take long for the competition in the payments market to heat  up after the announcement of Apple Pay last week as PayPal launched a campaign asking if you’d trust your financials to a business who can’t protect your selfies.

    While PayPal  pokes fun at Apple, there are more serious competitive pressures developing as the companies start negotiating with credit card providers and banks to reduce their rates. This is something that will be an immediate benefit for businesses of all sizes who are prepared to renegotiate their contracts.

    Most businesses, big and small, are poor at monitoring what they pay for a service; while they’ll shop around and negotiate when they’re looking for provider, they’ll let often these contracts go for years without reviewing them – something that utilities like banks, telcos and power companies take advantage of.

    I was reminded of this earlier this week at a lunch with some senior Qantas accountants who were quite open about how every supplier’s contract was constantly reviewed and discounts were aggressively pursued. It’s a tough life for the airline’s subcontractors.

    Times are tough for Qantas though, having sustained a 2.8 billion Aussie dollar loss last year along with constant declines in market share and stock prices. So it’s not surprising they have an aggressive cost cutting strategy in place.

    Many other industries are now looking at the same problem as the global economy is now in a phase of at best anemic growth for the foreseeable future, which makes it essential for all businesses to start reviewing their costs.

    With the banking sector now being disrupted by companies like PayPal and Apple, it might be time for all businesses to ask some hard questions of their banks and payment providers. The time is right to strike a deal.

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  • Changing the payments industry

    Changing the payments industry

    It didn’t take long for the effects of Apple’s payment service to be felt by the industry, within a day of the announcement Bloomberg reported Apple is negotiating with US banks to shift transaction fees from merchants.

    At the same time Bank Innovation reports the major credit card companies are considering changing the definition of ‘cardholder present’ rules which would make app based purchases cheaper.

    The changes Apple Pay is bringing in is part of a wider move to easier, frictionless commerce as Stripe co-founder John Collison discussed on this site last week.

    For the banks and credit card companies this means a very different operating environment. What was once a very profitable business is now changing rapidly and profits may not be so easy to come by.

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  • Apple and the long game

    Apple and the long game

    As expected, Apple announced their new range of iPhones and a smart watch today with many digital trees being felled as the tech media falls over to describe all the shiny features of the new devices.

    Buried in Apple’s announcements though are the company’s real long game in payments and the Internet of Things.

    For the IoT, the various ‘kits’ Apple have announced in the last year — HomeKit, HealthKit and now CloudKit — are the serious plays in this space as they bundle together programs, devices and data streams across health and smarthome applications.

    CloudKit moves Apple onto another level as it makes it easier for developers to build back end applications that tie into smart devices; even if someone isn’t using Apple equipment they still may find themselves firmly in the walled garden of Cuptertino.

    The long awaiting release of Apple Pay leverages iTunes’ strength as a payment platform, bundling a secure chip into the new iPhone adds to the company’s pitch of being a trusted partner to merchants and payments processors.

    What today’s announcements of new hardware, software and APIs indicate is Apple’s shoring up the perimeters of its walled garden.

    For it’s competitors, this raises the ante; Google Wallet has nothing like the market penetration or customer acceptance that iTunes has and earlier this week Amazon effectively admitted the Fire smartphone has been a failure by slashing prices. Facebook has made promising noises about payments but still remains locked in an advertising driven business model.

    While there’s no doubt the new iPhone will be a success, although the jury is out on the smart watch, Apple’s real game is in controlling a large part of the payments industry and the internet of things. Today’s announcements are a key step in that strategy.

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