苹果公司成功的秘诀
6 Reasons Apple Is So Successful
May 7, 2012
One of the more interesting questions I get asked about as an industry analyst who’s followed Apple since 1981 is why Apple is so successful. It’s an honest question becau to tho unfamiliar with Apple, the company’s ri and current dominance in non-PC devices is somewhat puzzling.
Most people have a working understanding of the fact that Apple lost the PC wars to Microsoft, and only nominally understand that when Apple created the iPod and then the iPhone, the company started to go in a new direction. And anyone who’s gone into an Apple store knows full well that Apple’s customer rvice and stores reprent the gold standard for lling and supporting tech gadgets. But beyond that, the reasons why Apple is really successful are still a mystery to many.
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There are plenty of books about Apple that talk about everything from Steve Jobs’ history to tenets of Apple’s business models to crets about Apple’s internal-management ideas. However, after years of watching Apple up clo and personal and having to deal with every one of their CEOs, as well as interacting with various Apple execs over the years, I would like to suggest that the reasons the company is successful can be boiled down to six key principles that make it very hard for competitors to compete with Apple.
1. For any product that Apple creates, the people who create it have to want it themlves
So many times with projects I do with other tech companies, the goal is almost always bad around the technology first, followed by whether or not people really want to u it. Geeky engineers are dazzled by the technology at their disposal and often create something becau they can. But Apple’s approach is quite different. The engineers who are creating Apple products actually make them for themlves.
And Jobs was the chief “ur” of Apple products when he was alive. All of Apple’s products are bad on the fact that Jobs reprented the real customer. And his engineers had to come to grips with that when designing a product. It has to be something that they personally couldn’t live without.
2. The products have to be easy to u
Jobs was a stickler on this point. While industrial design is a critical component of any product Apple makes, if it is not easy to u, it is considered worthless to the consumer. This is what drove the company’s ur-interface designs from Day 1 and is still the mantra pushed to the software and hardware engineers every day they go to work. All of the products they create have to be intuitive and easy to understand and learn. As technology has become more intricate and urs want more features, the task of keeping things simple is sometimes difficult. And Apple creates tools for power urs and rookies, which can mean a broad range of ea-of-u issues. But even with that, Apple is the only company I deal with where ea
of u is more important than the product itlf. Apple makes this a critical goal of its approach to creating anything for the market.
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3. Keep things simple
I was in Paris in the past two weeks and had talks with various French telecommunications officials about many mobile-computing issues. But one conversation I had in particular emphasizes this keep-it-simple point. We were discussing how to compete with Apple — a major pastime for all Apple competitors and carriers the days — when the question of why Apple is really successful came up. And one exec nailed it when he said he felt that the real reason Apple is successful is becau it has one product; in this ca the iPhone. It minimizes the decisionmaking process for the consumer by making things simple. The person speaking was with a carrier in France, and he said that in their stores, they have to have as many as 25 different models of phones available. That makes it hard for hi
s staff to be really knowledgeable about all of them all of the time, and their customers just have too many options to choo from.
But Apple only has one iPhone model, and anyone who has gone into an Apple store understands that every staff member there knows a great deal about each of the four major products carried in its stores. Apple doesn’t have five iPhone models to choo from; it has only one. While this may em limiting given the amount of smart phones available to urs, the truth is the rever. Our company has done consumer rearch for over 30 years, and consumers constantly tell us that while choice is nice, in reality they want the process of choosing a tech product to be simple and not complicated by a plethora of choices.
Yes, there are tech-savvy people who like more choices and sometimes even like complexity, but from years of experience as a market rearcher, I can tell you that in the end, the majority of urs are not tech-savvy, and keeping things simple for them is a plus. Apple understands this in spades and is never tempted to add multiple versions of a
n iPhone, iPad or even more than one or two types of iPods. This makes buying an Apple product simple. And consumers em to appreciate this considering the huge number of iDevices that are sold each year. I know the tech media and techies are the most vocal about this issue of choice, but in the end, while choice is good for competitive pricing, what nontechie consumers really want is simplicity.
