The Walkman, the Macintosh, the NES, the Gameboy, the Nokia 2110, the Playstation, the iPod, the Razr, the iPhone, the Kindle, the Macbook Air, the Kinect, the iPad...
These companies couldn't be more different. Samsung is taking the brute-force path, while for Apple it's embedded within its DNA. It's the only company with the determination to take out a feature which would have been cool but otherwise wouldn't have made the product to go all the way. It's the only company with the drive to create an entire media ecosystem just to make their products that much easier to use, and the only company with the craziness to create a brick-and-mortar retail chain in the age of e-commerce just to let people play with their products. Most importantly, it's the only company with the discipline to withhold a product release until it is ready to become a cultural force. That's why all this talk about Apple lagging behind Samsung in innovation is short-sighted in my opinion. Why is Apple taking so much time to release a smart TV or a smartwatch? Releasing a product is easy, but releasing a product with the optimal combination of price, technology, consumer expectations, features, and timing, this is the most difficult thing to do. Apple understands that this long, arduous path is what it takes to come up with true cultural force products.
Aside from being all household names and hit products, what do these products have in common?
Well for one, they have have far bigger footprints than the sum of their sales. These products are not just milestones in the history of technology, but archetypes in themselves. These are products which occupy a disproportionate amount of consumer mindshare, products by which all their competitors are measured, to the point that even their best competitors are just relegated to being *insert name here* killers. These are cultural force products.
The pinnacle of consumer technology success is to be able to make products that could be cultural forces. It's more important than being the first, or even being the best, although these could certainly be excellent prerequisites to being a cultural force. Having a cultural force product gives a halo to all the company's other products which most likely will not have to wear off for years. They take company investments much farther than regular products. Companies even resort to using brands of cultural force products long after they're gone. Cases in point are Sony Ericsson's Walkman phone or Motorola's Droid Razr. Looking at the history of technology, the turning points of companies from good to great usually coincided with the release of a cultural force product.
Creating such a product might be a surefire formula for greatness, but it might also be the most difficult thing to do. What is the secret to making a cultural force product? Cool technology? Price? User Experience? Brilliant advertising? A combination of the above?
Let's take the exception out first - the video game console industry. In here, you have so few players and so much differentiation that there can be room for 2 or 3 cultural forces. Consoles only get refreshed once a generation, so they somehow get embedded in the public imagination.
The most obvious path to being a cultural force is to be the first in a category, and it does work even with a poor 1st gen product, such as the Kindle. But then again, there are also countless examples where it doesn't. Who remembers the first MP3 player? Or the first digital camera? Being the first e-book reader did give the 1st gen. Kindle huge leeway in the public imagination. It bought their time to refine their product while still retaining consumer mindshare. That's why companies are always scrambling for this position.
Related to being the first is coming up with a whiz-bang technology straight from the future. The Kinect is an example. It's guaranteed to generate a lot of press, and that is about halway to becoming a cultural force product. Google for example wanted to be assured of this spot, so they announced Google Glass way before it was market-ready.
Aside from being the first, other superlatives don't go as well. The tech industry goes so fast that taking the world's thinnest, world's smallest, or world's fastest crown only takes a few months. Who knows about the reigning world't thinnest smartphone, Huawei Ascend P6? What happened to the world's highest resolution smartphone camera, the Nokia Pureview 808? Superlatives only matter insofar as they significantly improve the consumer experience.
A straightforward but dangerous path is a crazy price. This is the magic of Xiaomi. It was only released in 2011, but it's since become a massive cultural force in China. It's certainly not the best phone, but it could well be the best at its price point. If there's any one superlative which people respond to more than anything, it's price. It was achievable for Xiaomi because they had the chance to create a new business model optimized for cost-cutting from the ground up, but it wouldn't be so easy for the incumbents.
Being the best device is the obvious golden ticket, but this is so subjective and so many factors have to be squeezed in that in effect it doesn't say much. WebOS for example was highly regarded as the most intuitive and user-friendly, but it sputtered and died not long after it was released. The Razr for example wasn't even the best phone of its time, but it became a cultural force through timing, the right appearances (Oscar's), and an out-of-this-world (at that time) design.
Apple is a master at this. The reason why Apple is so admired is that their entire product lineup are cultural forces in themselves. The Mac, the iPhone, the iPod, and the Macbooks. What could it be? They're definitely not the biggest advertisers. They play in crowded markets. They're almost never first in any category. They don't excel in superlatives. And their prices are crazy, but in the other way. One thing they're great at though is balancing constraints and framing products as experiences. They're great at simplifying a product to the point that only the archetype is left. That's why even though Apple is hardly the first at any category, they somehow get to define that category.
Even so, these are not enough. What makes Apple products so compelling is that they also come with a mythology not found in other products, stories that stick like gum to consumers' minds - the vision of Steve Jobs, the minimalism of Jony Ive, the rebellious ethos of "Think Different", the approval of so many respected pundits. This combined with Apple's archetypal products make a very potent combination.
Being integrated also brings a huge cultural force advantage to Apple. Because they design the whole 'widget', people do not get to fragment Apple devices in their minds. The iPhone is iOS, and iOS is iPhone. It's not like Android where beneath it there's still so many choices. The paradox of choice in the post-PC era make cultural force products more important than ever. You need to define your territory, and Apple by who they are, get to take the entire iOS territory all by themselves. With Apple, you're not choosing a product, a brand, or even an experience, you're choosing a lifestyle.
Even so, these are not enough. What makes Apple products so compelling is that they also come with a mythology not found in other products, stories that stick like gum to consumers' minds - the vision of Steve Jobs, the minimalism of Jony Ive, the rebellious ethos of "Think Different", the approval of so many respected pundits. This combined with Apple's archetypal products make a very potent combination.
Being integrated also brings a huge cultural force advantage to Apple. Because they design the whole 'widget', people do not get to fragment Apple devices in their minds. The iPhone is iOS, and iOS is iPhone. It's not like Android where beneath it there's still so many choices. The paradox of choice in the post-PC era make cultural force products more important than ever. You need to define your territory, and Apple by who they are, get to take the entire iOS territory all by themselves. With Apple, you're not choosing a product, a brand, or even an experience, you're choosing a lifestyle.
Samsung has been trying very hard to create a cultural force product of their own. It's probably the reason why they released the Note in the first place, to set down their flag on the "phablet" territory. It's likely also the reason why they released the Galaxy Gear smartwatch way before it was market-ready. Being first in a category goes a long way to the cultural force finish line. Obviously, Samsung doesn't know how to do it, but they have a back-up plan: gargantuan investments in advertising. They pour in so much money that the public doesn't have a choice but to think about Samsung. I also think that their big courtroom battle with Apple was a blessing in disguise for them. Given that human beings are susceptible to dualistic black vs white thinking, people started to see Apple and Samsung as rivals on opposing ends. Samsung became the de facto Apple rival and thus what people immediately think of after a mention of Apple.
These companies couldn't be more different. Samsung is taking the brute-force path, while for Apple it's embedded within its DNA. It's the only company with the determination to take out a feature which would have been cool but otherwise wouldn't have made the product to go all the way. It's the only company with the drive to create an entire media ecosystem just to make their products that much easier to use, and the only company with the craziness to create a brick-and-mortar retail chain in the age of e-commerce just to let people play with their products. Most importantly, it's the only company with the discipline to withhold a product release until it is ready to become a cultural force. That's why all this talk about Apple lagging behind Samsung in innovation is short-sighted in my opinion. Why is Apple taking so much time to release a smart TV or a smartwatch? Releasing a product is easy, but releasing a product with the optimal combination of price, technology, consumer expectations, features, and timing, this is the most difficult thing to do. Apple understands that this long, arduous path is what it takes to come up with true cultural force products.
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