The Success Of The Iphone Marketing Essay

In recent years, the Apple company has become one of the greatest companies in digital industry, which can be competitive with the Microsoft in this area. After Steve Jobs, the chairman and CEO of Apple, came back to Apple, he adjusted the product development and marketing strategies, those measures promoted the development the Apple company, and create many miracles such as the “iPod” miracle. He launched many famous products like “iPod”, “iPhone”, “Apple TV”, these products enriched products` categories in Apple ,enhance its competition, with their help, Apple becomes the giant of digital industry.

The first generation iPhone was released on June 29, 2007 in the US. The second generation iPhone called 3G was launched in July 2008, and the third generation, the 3GS, released in June 2009, the fourth generation iPhone 4 was launched on June 24, 2010. And in less than one month after its launch, iPhone 4 got a 3 million sales turnover. From 2007, the year iPhone launched, iPhone sold 50 million, and iPhone 4 predicted could be sold 39 million in 2010, so the total amount of turnover will be reached 100 million in the next year. The iPhone is a cutting-edge product; it is at least 5 years ahead of the competitors, and it accounts for more than half of the market share in Japan. Why the iPhone becomes so successful? The objective of this essay is to illustrating the marketing tools which lead to its success and state some mistakes iPhone marketing strategy plan has made. Finally, conclude by showing how these tools are contributing to the development of iPhone, and iPhone will get more benefits if they keep carrying out these strategies.

The first tool that Apple got right with the iphone using is target market strategy. This strategy is let company divide the customers into a smaller segment, and meet the needs of different customers, enhanced its core competition in this area. IPhone targeted the right consumer groups, “the obvious current target audiences for the Apple iPhone include young people between the ages of 20 and 35, affluent teenagers, “jet-setters”, and “mobile” employees who work outside of the office.”(Smith J, 2009)These group members belonged to college graduated and the middle-upper income level; they have abilities and desire to buy a mobile product at a high price which can fulfill their need. With the help of analyzing these customers` attitude and behavior, Apple company success to understand its competitors, help them advertising more effectively, and carry out lost of effective marketing campaigns and strategies to supporting the selling. It is clearly, this marketing tool is very successful that let iPhone got many extremely high sales.

As well as focusing on all behaviors of customers in order to sell the product, iphone investigate customers` need to develop new products with the customer-led business strategy. According to Doyle P and Stern P (2006, P.37), this strategy help company improve its exchange process with customers and boost the enterprises` ability of meet the customers` needs, it concludes “identify those customers it desires” and “collect information on the current and potential needs of customers”, it can be defined as an efficient way to help company develop innovative products and services because traditional market research tools was limited in this subject. IPhone use the method to attract group customers who pursuing fashion design and need a portable multifunction device to communicate with friends and colleagues and record information while moving, traveling, etc. Beside that they require many functions with good performance such as the ability to input and search some professional data, even access and update some contracts detail for entrepreneurs. This mobile phone introduces features like instant messaging, applications for note and record-keeping, wireless access to check appointments and edits paperwork to corresponding them.

Moreover, according to the research of Laugesen J and Yuan Y F(2010), smartphone and mobile internet users have some user preferences like they do not prefer a too complicated mobile service, at the meantime, they hope to get real time gratification through entertainment applications. Clearly, these user preferences are hard to fulfill. However, “user preferences are some of the most important success factors” while “real time gratification through entertainment applications can be attributed to iPhone part of success” (Laugesen J and Yuan Y F,2010). Definitely, iPhone “success to understand customers` personal values”(Hollenson S, 2008,P.157) while its customer-led business strategy is clearly responding to the consumers requirements and preferences, this enables iphone to achieve market innovation and to offer a sustain competitive strong point in all types products.

A third factor that contributes to the success of this phone is Apple brand strategy. As Doyle P and Stern P (2006, P.192) said, strong brands can attract customer preference and builds a defensive wall against competition. Iphone is a product of Apple; it could get the brand values directly with the help of Apple brand profound influences. Doyle P and Stern P (2006, P.42) concerned that the customer wants to meet their need instead of purchase a product, just as Lenovo, a famous computer manufacturer in China, define its brand to afford service for customers, other than products to fulfill customers’ needs, “Now, IPhone has been built as a brand which can be defined as a specific service, symbol and have lots of faithful customers, while iPhone has been seen as a status symbol in many countries. Furthermore, “Apple has marketed iPhone more like a service than a product” (Laugesen J and Yuan Y F, 2010). And iPhone is focus on afford people more entertainment and pleasure, it provides security and “subjective norms (use of an innovation tied to one`s social status)”which let people “achieve personal enjoyment” (Laugesen J and Yuan Y F, 2010) through the use of phone and the applications it affords. Besides that, the iPhone also carry out strategic alliance, in 2006, iPhone signed an agreement with Nike to release software named” Nike + iPod”, this measure opened a new area of joint marketing. After that, iPhone signed agreements with Ford, General Motors, Mazda to launch varieties software. These methods affording a new market watch of iPhone, stimulating the customer demands. At the same time, all the applications foster consumer brand loyalty, long-term friendly relations with a new lifestyle was building in this foundation.

However, iPhone marketing strategies were not perfect; it also made some serious mistakes. The first mistake was the pricing at market launch. When it launched the first generation in 2007, the price was $599, but it reduced to $399 after only 3 months from its released. This let the early customers felt being betrayed. A company must avoid doing so serious mistake which let their faithful customers feel exploited. The second mistake was the iphone forced consumers to sign contract with AT&T as revenue business model. This policy let customers who do not like use this company `s network feel awkward, and people who live in other countries have to give up buying it. This leaded to a strong impede in the selling activity. A third mistake was the launch strategy. It made a mistake of late launch in European markets. Although it launched to some European countries in November 2007, it was only two countries: Germany and France. What made worse, they made the same mistakes. A full year later, on July 11, 2008, the iPhone launched in other several European countries: Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Denmark, Austria, Norway, Ireland, Belgium, but missed the golden sales time.

As can be seen from the factors iPhone gets many great achievements. However, it is not perfect. It also experiences some disadvantages in its development history. But iPhone is becoming more and more mature and creative, and it just in the growth stage of the product life cycle, it continues to release new models to attract both old and new customers. At the same time, many iPhone users do not want to purchase the new version, so iPhone develops varieties applications hold on to existing customers by giving them what they need. With the revenue of new customers and existing customers who purchase the applications, iPhone gets a well foundation to support the research on it. Finally, to continue improving some weakness of hardware and software, and taking further steps of marketing strategy research, iPhone can have to be even more successful in the future.

Total Words: 1386