The $10,000 Smartphone

Print version of Fortune poses the question to its readers,

Are you ready for $10,000 smartphone?

Then teases us with a promise to answer

Who buys these phones and why?

Un-Fortun(e)-ately it is asking the wrong question and fails to answer who and why in its article. The digital version does not commit these mistakes opting for a benign informational title.

Asking its readers whether they are ready for $10,000 smartphone is wrong because that’s not whom Vertu is targeting. Opinions of the columnist or the comments of their readers are irrelevant. You should consider the possibility Vertu understands

1. Who their target customers are? (Hint: Not Fortune readers, likely Richistan )
2. What job are they hiring the luxury phones for? (Hint: conspicuous consumption)
3. What is their phone’s competition? (Hint: not $650 iPhone, likely other luxury products)
4. What their willingness to pay and wherewithal to pay are? (Hint: No pricing pressure here)
5. What budget will customers pay from? (Hint: not their smartphone budget)
6. How to reach them? (Hint: Not through Fortune magazine)

Fortune quotes McKinsey study (don’t you love those sentences that start with, “McKinsey study states …”),

brand needs to continue building on its heritage — highlighting the skill of its craftsmen

And guess what? Each Vertu phone is assembled by a single craftsman and Vertu shows it off to its customers at its manufacturing site.

You don’t believe $10,000 price tab is due to the labor cost, do you? Or that the craftsmen are more precise and produce better quality smartphone than the automated machinery that can assemble parts with near perfect precision? In this case McKinsey finding is partly correct.

It is true Vertu wants to highlight the skill of craftsmen but not to the target segment buying the watch  but to us in the peanut gallery (and Fortune readers) how great the craftsmanship is so our admiration makes it worth it for those buying the $10,000 smartphone.

Finally an IDC analyst interviewed for the story states,

“even capturing 1% of the $295 billion global smartphone business would be an achievement for the firm”

If you followed the real target segment and understand the job they are hiring Vertu for you will see how irrelevant the size of smartphone market is or the share to capture. Vertu is not competing for the job of iPhone/Galaxy and customers are not paying for it from their budget for smartphone (as a utilitarian device).

The real market size should be based on luxury spend and the market share question is how much of that spend on Gucci handbags and Tiffany’s diamonds can Vertu capture.

The moral of the story is, your understanding of business opportunity, market size, market share, competition, pricing and likelihood of success will all be wrong if you do not start with customer segment and what they are trying to get done.

How do you size your business opportunity?

 

 

You can’t let your past cannibalize your future – Note on iPhone 5 Sales

You most likely know by now that Apple is cutting back its demand for iPhone 5 components. Analysts who did the supply chain check attributed to the slowing iPhone 5 sales. And among the many reasons they quote the one that stands out (and probable) is

The less-expensive iPhone 4 and 4S is eating into iPhone 5 sales. With a two-year contract, the iPhone 4 is free and the iPhone 4S is $99, and they might be popular enough among consumers that not everyone is opting for the iPhone 5, which costs $199 with a two-year contract in the U.S.

The number to watch out for in Apple’s earnings report is the average selling price (ASP) of iPhone line. We have seen similar drops before when Apple decided to keep its $399 iPad 2 product. Now it appears it is iPhone’s turn.  (By the way, you can learn a lot from earnings reports.)

This is basic second degree price discrimination – when offered multiple versions at different price points, customers self-select themselves to the version that offers them the most consumer surplus. But to execute effectively on the multi-version strategy the business must raise appropriate version fences such that those who have higher wherewithal to pay and prefer the higher priced version are not tempted by the lower priced version and switch down.

In case of iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, these are extremely very well done products that offer lot more value especially when combined with the lower prices they are being offered at. And these older (yet superb) models are cannibalizing iPhone 5 sales.

Most people say, “it is better your products cannibalize your own than others doing it to you”. While no cannibalization is good, that statement would make sense if newer higher profit generating models replace your older models before your competitor does that to you. You can’t however let your past cannibalize your future. It also says something about your future product pipeline.

I also don’t believe we have seen the end of iPhone downturn. Here is what I wrote in GigaOm about effect of iPad mini (before it was released)

iPhone: The crown jewel. It is harder for most to see how a smaller tablet could threaten the iPhone. Consider this in the context of total cost of ownership of an iPhone over two years: At $100 per month for mobile service fees and at $199 for the device, it costs $2,500. Mobile service providers are moving towards just one bundle of voice and data at $100 per month. If there were a $299 4G iPad Mini, some may consider a regular phone for occasional talking and the iPad Mini with $40 data fee as an iPhone replacement.

Is Apple, a company that is unusually excellent (here, here and here )in multi-version pricing strategy, starting to stumble?

Cheaper iPhone – Use of Plastic is Not About the Cost

Apple rumor mill believes Apple may be working on a cheaper iPhone. The definition of cheaper prices is different for Apple – as you can see from their pricing for iPad mini. They most likely won’t price it lower than their previous gen iPod Touch.

The news report states Apple is considering using plastic over aluminum (or is it aluminium?)

The new model  could resemble the regular iPhone, but come with a less-expensive body. Apple could employ a shell made of polycarbonate plastic, with many of the other parts remaining the same or being recycled from older iPhone models.

It is instinctive to think that cheaper components are necessitated by lower prices. After all, as Henry Ford wrote,

You first find the price and do everything to drive down costs

With Apple it is not the case given their success with high margin iPhone. If they indeed use cheaper components, especially cheaper body using plastic, it is definitely not about reducing cost to price it lower but about making it as unattractive as possible to the current segment that is happy to pay $550* price.

In fact they have no reason to change any of the internal components – after all these are not externally visible nor are they judged easily. They only need to change the one factor that can be seen, sets it apart from its higher priced brethren, affects buying decision and affects how the owner believes she is seen by others. It is like removing roof from third class train cars.

Even if they can only eke out a smaller profit, if they can create significant price barriers preventing people from trading down they will do it.

 

Waging the right price war – The $65,000 Mistake

I believe “price war” may be a misnomer if both sides do not live to fight many rounds. We only see price battles or skirmishes that go for 1-2 rounds before one side throws in the towel or runs out of cash. There are two kinds of companies when it comes to price wars.

Category 1: There are just handful of companies that can wage incessant price war  by consistently keeping their prices low

Category 2: Even fewer that can withstand such low price attacks by their competitors.

Amazon.com and Walmart fall into the first category. Apple is in the second category.

In fact if the two players know that the other has the will, reserve and wherewithal to keep up the fight without ever letting up they most likely will choose not to enter price war in the first place. This is very much like nuclear deterrent  — mutually assured destruction.

BestBuy does not fall in either of the categories but was tempted to take on Wal-Mart with its iPhone 5 pricing. The result? BestBuy lost $65,000 in a single day.

Let alone the price war dynamics this is simply the wrong fight to pick. A tactical blunder.

First the product is not yours and the customer has many alternatives. Most are willing to pay full price at Apple stores. Customers do not think where they buy is important when it comes to iPhone (a qualifier is some insist they buy only after standing in line in front of Apple stores).

Second Walmart did not cut the price uniformly across all stores and did not make available unlimited quantities. Agreeing to match the price on such promotional tactic is simply wrong. It appears smart deal-seekers, instead of running from one Walmart store to another, simply walked into to neighborhood BestBuy and asked for the low price match. How convenient.

Finally, the low price was not attached to any other product sales and not designed as a loss leader that would help maximize customer margin.

And the result? Deal-seekers walked in, probably for the first time in many months, bought the $127 iPhone 5 and walked out without buying anything else. That is the $65,000 loss in a day.

Other readings:

See here for Waging Effective Price Wars.

See here for Effective Pricing

 

 

What is phone doing in smartphone

What job do we hire a phone for?

If it is talking and if we are using a smartphone for less and less of talking, should these even be labeled as phones?

If you take out the ‘phone’ part from the name, does it smash down the rules and expectations on the form-factor for a phone?

If it is a “revolutionary internet device” for consuming content and occupying time, why settle for smaller screen? As Kevin Tofel writes,

Why watch the content on a small, low-resolution screen when you can watch it on a high-definition screen that’s still easily portable?

…

Simply put, we can’t think about today’s constraint of needing to put a mobile device in a pocket. We only put phones in our pockets when we’re not using them. Guess what? We’re using them more and more, which means they’re in our pockets less and less.

That is right, we put phones in our pocket. What if it is not called a phone and there are no more phones?

Another factor that could hasten the transition is the service providers’ reliance on voice revenue. While it is great pricing scheme by service providers, some customers may start giving up their phone altogether for tablets or adopt a tablet plus dumb-phone for occasional phone function.

Add to that Apple’s rumored iPad mini. A mini tablet from Apple will likely hasten the move away from phone. Is the possible demise of iPhone (as we know it) the reason why Apple may introduce iPad mini?

Disclaimer: Any prediction about the future that is about specific solution is bound to be wrong. So this prediction is likely going to be wrong as well.

Just because there is a gap in product line

Recently I wrote an analysis on the implications of rumored  iPad mini on Apple’s profits. The best case scenario, one that will result in another billion profit, is the one where Apple successfully positions iPad mini as yet another device we need between iPhone and iPad. This may sound like a recent piece in The Onion,

Any other scenario is fraught with risk of cannibalization, not just to its iPad but to its iPhone and iPod Touch products as well.

Recently there was another article that looked at price points of iPod and iPhone product lines and made a prediction about iPad mini. The premise is based on Apple CEO’s comment about price umbrella,

“one thing we’ll make sure is that we don’t leave a price umbrella for people” in the tablet space.

The chart we see on the left is simply a representation of Apple’s current price points using bar-chart. From the iPhone and iPod examples it asks us to make a leap of faith about iPad.

Strategy is not about nicely completed artificial triangles. Absence of iPad in the lower price points does not point to a gap but Apple’s choice for profit share and not market share.

If filling the gaps in the price points is the driver then you we should have several sub $500 laptops and desktops from Apple. Just open the flyer from Fry’s and count the number of laptops available in the $400-$700 range and compare that to the price of MacBook and Macbook Pro laptops. Shouldn’t Apple be worried about yielding that market to others?

This is not to say there will not be a iPad Mini but pointing out that the case being made for iPad mini lacks any kind of rigor or evidence.

The gaps in the price points says nothing about the segmentation or the demand.  Nor does it say what happens to demand for current products when a newer cheaper one comes along.

If one is going to use charts to make a case for iPad mini, it will look something like this

This is the representation of the demand for iPad and iPad mini. We do not have data on how these demand curves look like. May be Apple has this information. What this chart tells us is the impact of the demand for $499  iPad when there is a $299 iPad mini. As long as the profit from iPad min sales exceeds the lost profit from cannibalization of other products, Apple will introduce iPad mini. Not because they do not like gaps in someone’s bar-chart.