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The Unbearable Pain of Competing with Apple: Samsung’s Sad Christmas Tale

Yesterday, I tried to not buy an iPod.

Specifically, I tried to buy a Samsung “P2″ - 4gb, touchscreen, bluetooth, video, music. I looks sweet, has a great UI, is tiny and slim, and hits an awesome price point at $149 - perfect for Christmas gift giving.

Sadly, Samsung is not Apple. Let us count the ways in which Samsung fucked screwed up and put an iPod in my wife’s stocking…

1. STOCK: Christmas is the make-or-break retail season for consumer electronics. Yesterday, I went to five retail stores: two Futureshops, one Best Buy, one London Drugs, and even Zellers. Each store (except Zellers, which apparently doesn’t carry MP3 players over $50) had a full array of iPods in their full spectrum of prices and capacities. They were flying off the shelves, and the staff kept on carrying out more from the back. Samsung? Not one. Anywhere. In the ENTIRE CITY. Someone at a Futureshop told me they were on backorder from the manufacturer. How do you let your retail distribution network run out of stock two weeks before Christmas??! Are you kidding? Nope. The Futureshop that told me about the backorder didn’t expect any until January.
2. PRICING: Every staff member at every store new the iPod product line inside and out, and knew exactly how each was priced. Each store had identical pricing for each item - my expectations were consistently met. For the Samsung P2, I saw $149, $169, $179, and $219. That’s almost a 50% spread on price. Talk about sowing confusion and alienating customers…
3. POSITIONING: Obviously, every store had the iPod’s front and center. OK, makes sense. But the Samsung’s weren’t just out of the way - they were generally dirty, unplugged and battery drained, mislabeled, and generally disheveled. Does Samsung not have a freaking Retail Merchandiser in Winnipeg? The city draws a shopping population of over 1,000,000 people, the majority of who probably get their consumer electronics from under 30 retail locations. Why doesn’t Samsung have someone out there doing the rounds every day to ensure product condition, correct information, pricing, etc.? I know PEPSI does it on a weekly basis, sending reps around to 7-11’s and other retail channels. Why can’t Samsung?
4. EDUCATION: That same merchandiser should be educating holiday staff at the retail outlets as to the product names and features. Most staff that I spoke too seemed surprised that the product existed, and when I pointed to the demo model reacted as if they’d never seen one before. Insanity.

The moral of the story? Apple has it together. Total value chain management. Prescient inventory loading of their retail partners. Flawless execution. Samsung doesn’t even appear to be making an effort. Is it any wonder Apple dominates?

The other moral: Samsung needs to get a clue.

apple, bestbuy, christmas, futureshop, ipod, samsung shopping

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Wow! Check out www.citrixaccessessentials.com

Ha ha ha, yeah. Try spreading that one successfully by word of mouth. Just because the product is called Citrix Access Essentials, doesn’t mean the microsite should be the hideously unparseable www.citrixaccessessentials.com.

Note to Citrix: why have a microsite at all? Its a core product, marketed to essentially the same audience as your main site, and its presented in a visual style consistent with the main site. So if there’s no differentiation in target audience, visual style, or product category, why split it off under a name that guarantees low type-in word-of-mouth traffic?

Well, actually, citrixaccessessentials.com maps out to a primary domain page anyway: http://www.citrix.com/lang/English/ms/ms_24616.asp.

Time to invest in some clean url’s folks.

citrix domaining

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Google Street View - Winnipeg

Just saw a post on Zoli’s blog about Street View being dramatically expanded. Zoli’s got a pic of the the Google cam-fleet - which reminded me that I saw one of these beasties in person this past August, cruising my neighborhood in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The funny thing was my reaction when I saw it and realized what it was. I had the simultaneous urges to:

1. Turn around, drop my shorts and moon the whole internet
2. Cover my face and run in the opposite direction (my PRIVACY!!)
3. Scrawl some political slogan on a notepad and jog alongside the car making sure my views were noted (SAVE MR. SPLASHY PANTS!)

In the end, I swiveled my head and stared at the damn car like an idiot, missing moment of internet notoriety.

There’s no streetview stuff live for Winnipeg yet, but when it shows up, I was right here when the Googlecar drove past me.

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Quoted: Blogger Jon Swift, banned from Facebook

Blogger Jon Swift was banned from Facebook for joining under a pseudonym:

What exactly does “real name” mean? Would Bob Dylan be banned if he didn’t sign up as Robert Zimmerman? [from Jon Swift]

The most interesting thing about the whole silly affair is to wonder how Facebook knows that Jon Swift was not his real name. He didn’t get a request for ID or anything, so how does Facebook “know,” with enough authority to ban, that a name is fake?

facebook jon swift

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The Cisco I-Prize Contest is Lame

The Register reports that Cisco is running a contest to find their next big business: anyone can submit an idea; the winner - determined by Cisco - gets $10M in funding over three years, and helps start up a Cisco business unit.

Huh. So I have a billion dollar idea. Why is it that I want to give it to Cisco for $10M and a management position? And why in god’s name would I want to make it public on their contest website?

You can tell this one’s going to be a winner - its got Digg-style voting! Some of the great ideas out there are short range radar for cars (already exists, thanks for coming out), injectable RFID health info chips (already exists, thanks for coming out), keyboards the generate electricity with keystrokes, and a bunch of other generally goofy, out of date, or impossible to implement ideas.

Good luck Cisco!

cisco iprize

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How To: Be a Successful Blogger

Jerry Bowles on the FASTForward Blog has the best post I’ve seen on “how to be a successful blogger” yet. His list includes the old standby’s like “be true to your self” and “be passionate about whatever you’re blogging about,” but also goes into some good specifics, like keeping posts at 500 words or less.

Has anyone built a word count widget for Wordpress yet? I see this one that does overall word count stats, but a javascript word counter that sits next to the text-editor box and counts as I write would be really neat.

bloggers, blogging, blogs success

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Part One - Dissecting the WordPress Import/Export Format: Categories

I’m working hard in my spare time on transitioning my longest running project - DVD review site UpcomingDiscs.com, which I co-own - from hand-built CMS to WordPress.

What I’m trying to do is move 3000+ reviews (including comments, screenshots, rankings, and DVD metadata) from my clunky, work-around riddled data architecture to nice clean blog posts. What this means is shoehorning the complete contents of UpcomingDiscs into the WordPress Import/Export format so that I can pull the whole site into a WordPress install - i.e.: I’ll be generating a fake WordPress export file from UpcomingDiscs and “importing” it into a real WordPress install. This is no simple task given the legacy complexities of UpcomingDiscs - but as I’m discovering with a lot of investigation, can certainly be done.

Continue Reading…

blogging, export, import, wordpress xml

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Apple, Steve, and Burnout

This is pretty much a collection of random thoughts, prompted by Michael Gartenberg’s post on similarities between Windows 95 and the iPhone. I hate to be the “rain on the parade” guy - lord knows, Apple is riding high and shows little sign of slowing down. That being said: reading around I can feel an undercurrent to Apple coverage, that maybe things are getting stretched a little thin over there. The AT&T “deal with the devil,” 2.5g instead of the obvious 3, Leopard delays, a stagnating core-iPod lineup — Are Apple and fearless leader Jobs burning out?

Anyway - Micheal Garetenberg’s posted pointed out that (a) rarely does a tech device elicit such public interest as with the iPhone (w95 being the last such example), and (b) that the iPhone is - like Windows 95 - a better mouse trap, not a paradigm changing device.

Two solid observations, that highlight the core of Apple’s approach: iterative design contextualized within an overall strategy (seeming media dominance in Apple’s case; compare to data-dominance in Google’s), actualized through a consumer-facing design process that eschews compromise and accepts a smaller slice of big markets for the sake of cultivating brand excellence.

Boy, that’s a buzz-word heavy description. “Brand excellence” - please - this is taking me back to my B.Comm. case study days. That being said, Apple is the stuff of case studies:

1. They’ve profitably commoditized the geek-subculture;
2. They’ve broken down the barriers between fashion and technology; and,
3. They’ve created a corporate structure that enables breakneck innovation.

But - can it last?

On points one and two: Technology is no longer distinguishable from the other components of our day-to-day lives; some may have more interest in the tech-details than others, but fundamentally, everyone that carries a cell phone or uses and iPod is a “geek,” based on yesterday’s definitions. My parents understand Bluetooth, WiFi, device pairing, DRM, syncing devices, and so on; so do all the other parents I know.

Geekdom has gone from subculture to mainstream. Apple was ahead of the curve on this trend, recognizing it and bundling it premium design and prices to maximize margins on the early adopter segments. RIM (Blackberry) got on the same curve via the corporate market. Other companies (LG, HP, MOTO, MSFT, ETC.) are still struggling to hit their stride with but I’d contend that Apple’s edge in design excellence is being eroded daily.

On point three: Apple’s corporate structure is a weird blend of benevolent dictatorship and hippy commune. Dictatorship allows for quick execution and long shot plays that steering committees, boards of directors, and so on would other-wise pass up, while the commune underneath allows for a wealth of ideas to land on the dictator’s desk. Problem: the success of the company depends on the dictator and their ability to dictate. (1) Who do you see as Steve Job’s successor? (2) As Apple grows, will there come a time when the board will go activist?

apple, iphone ipod

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Please Let It Be Available: Mobile Booking Service

PLIBA.mobi (”Please Let It Be Available” - here’s their non-mobi site, here’s their press release) aims to be premier the cell/mobile-friendly booking agent, allowing users to book from an expanding list of services and providers, which currently includes hostels and car rentals.

I tested the PLIBA.mobi website from my desktop. A RAZR on GPRS is just too painful an experience for web-browsing. That being said, PLIBA.mobi looks the same in a browser as it would on a phone - so you can try it out too.

PLIBA starts with a simple search screen:

Unfortunately, search results were generally weak, and would have been particularly frustrating on a mobile. Here’s the search results for “car rentals in london,” for example - what I would consider to be a fairly typical, easy to parse our search from a traveller:

I’d been hoping to see a list of major car rental outlets, sorted by location. The only relevant option is the last one listed, which appears to be a specialty service, unless Ferraris are common daily-use rentals in the London.

Ok, keep trying. It turns out the clicking “car rentals” in What’s New is the real way to access this functionality. That leads to a much more intelligent rental handling system that walks you through vehicle options, pick-up and drop-off locations and dates, and prices.

Much better - it even had good options for my own tourist backwater of a city, which implies good depth of coverage. Completing the request was a simple matter of selecting options and clicking through “Next” - until PLIBA asked for credit card info.

This is a finicky one: cleary its a good thing to ask for from a provider perspective, to avoide frivolous bookings. From a user perspective, its a bit intimidating, however. Do I trust PLIBA? Do I trust the mobile provider of whatever country I’m in? Are mobile connections “secure?” How about just billing services to my cellular bill (as with ringtones and other goofy downloads) instead?

Cell Phones as Digital Wallets - Carriers as Creditors?

That opens an interesting can of worms on the topic of mobile payment infrastructure, and the evolution of mobile phones as a “digital wallet.” Will carriers essentially become credit lenders, with your mobile account doubling as a credit source? IMHO, with the availablility of services like PLIBA, co-operation between carriers and credit card co’s is inevitable and beneficial. On my ToDo list: find out what goes on with mobile payments in Asia, where I understand the concept is widely deployed already.

Anyway, back to PLIBA. The service makes sense, and once you know how to use it, has great features and provides a powerful tool for mobile usage scenarios. That being said, the implementation is rough around the edges, lacking focus, and (speaking for myself here) difficult to figure the first time. Given that the mobile experience is generally lame to begin with, PLIBA needs to make the first experience as smooth and trouble-free as possible, or risk abandonment.

Ditch the Search Box

My first suggestion for PLIBA would be to ditch the search box. I never did get decent results out of it for any of the variety of searches available.

1. You have great vertical functionality. Surface it as a “Main Menu” instead, by starting with a list: “Hostels, Car Rentals, Restaurants” that leads users into each vertical’s functionality.
2. Doing it that way removes the need to type on my cell’s keypad too, which would be a big relief.
3. This does suggest a strategy of targeting verticals - i.e.: who are your users? Locals looking for a specific restaurant (do they need a search box?)? Or travellers unfamiliar with an area, looking for a type of restaurant (Tapas, for example, mmmmm, hungry)?

There’s a distinct possibility that I’ve missed some core piece of PLIBA functionality in which the search box would be useful, but if I’ve missed it, I’m sure many others would too.

Summary

In summary, PLIBA is at the bleeding edge of an emerging transaction mode, and has put together good functionality to start the ball rolling. Doing so in an evironment where there are no “best practices” white papers floating around is no small challenge, and PLIBA has expected rough edges. I’m looking forward to seeing where the service goes from here.

bookings, cellphone, cellular, micropayments, mobile, online pliba

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The Simple Pleasure of thinking Targeted

Its refreshing to see a simple niche online store in my inbox today - Two For Tea. Its not trying to be the MySpace of Tea Drinkers, or become the next Wikipedia for tea varieties, or build an international tea marketplace. Its just sharing a passion that two people have for unique teas, and making it available to others. A simple, tasteful way to build an online presence and grow a business. Not every business idea has to big & paradigm shifting to be great: don’t be afraid to think about your niche.

EDIT: changed “small” to niche, and targeted - small is relative!

smallbusiness, smb, tea twofortea

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