Apple Comes Clean, Admits To Doing Market Research 221
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.
Re:They've turned their backs on Steve (Score:2, Interesting)
The whole Steve Jobs is a genius god-child things was definitely part of an Apple marketing push. Go back and read the mainstream press coverage of things like the iPod or the lampshade iMac, and they make it sound like the designs appeared to Jobs like a vision while he was meditating in nature. But, as the Samsung trial materials show, Apple actually does a shit load of design iteration.
There's been rumors for years that Apple does extremely detailed market research and very much understands their 'psychographics'. However the fanboys have been in complete denial because they want to believe it's all about the product and there's no highly sophisticated marketing operation targeting them. (PS the products are pretty fucking good too.)
Joswiak? (Score:1, Interesting)
Jo[b]s/W[ozn]iak? Coincidence?
Re:They've turned their backs on Steve (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple had the same advantage that Palm had before them: someone willing to say 'no, this sucks' and be listened to. There's a story about the first iteration of the Palm Pilot, where the CEO saw it and decided it was too big. He got a block of balsa wood cut that was just small enough to fit in his shirt pocket and gave it to the product development team with an edict that the final version must be no bigger than that. Without someone like that, they'd have ended up with something too big to be conveniently carried. Steve Jobs had the same role at Apple: it wasn't producing great products, or products that could not be improved, it was to produce products that were definitely useful. As long as 'how Steve Jobs would use it' and 'how a normal human would use it' weren't too far apart, it worked well. Sometimes, it didn't - there were a few flops along the way - but a product designed for a specific user is far more likely to be useable in general than one designed for some set of focus-group set of requirements plus any features that engineers thought they could sneak in.
Re:They've turned their backs on Steve (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly.
My last block of Apple stock is going to be sold in the run up to the iPhone 5 release. I will be out of that issue prior to the actual announcement. Its been a good run, more than doubled my investment in a couple years, but now its time to go, ahead of the disappointment sure to arrive when iPhone 5 is nothing but an incremental improvement.
Buy the rumor. Sell the news.
Re:They've turned their backs on Steve (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly my plan, because when the detailed specs are ANNOUNCED the rumor becomes news. I suspect it will be a marginal improvement at best.
The 4S was a marginal improvement. It sold more than all previous generations of iPhones combined.