Is Apple Losing Its Touch? Yes

Today’s Independent Newspaper leads with the question, "Is Apple Losing Its Touch?"

The article by Stephen Foley summarises how we got here (i.e. the ‘death grip’ issue) and then goes on to dissect Apple’s most recent open letter ("What Apple wrote, and what it meant").

This is not good news for the company.

The Independent is just one of the mainstream media publications well and truly sticking the boot in. Unless the company resolves matters perfectly and unequivocally at this afternoon’s press conference, they’re seriously screwed.

Indeed, I wonder if the company is already nailed? Not badly, of course, they’re still making billions of dollars.

Apple Can Do No Wrong?

For years, Apple could do no wrong in the mobile industry.  It used to drive me absolutely nuts that the rest of the lumbering marketplace couldn’t even catch up.  I remember wondering why instead of aspiring to make brilliant devices with cool features that we’d never seen before, the marketplace switched to trying to make stuff ‘as good as’ the iPhone.

Utterly depressing.  Arriving in some parts of California, it was nothing short of painful to perceive the godlike status the company was granted.   Everything about the mobile industry focused on the iPhone and there was no argument. Oh on a technical level you could critique the design, the platform, the policies, but it was so perfect from a consumer viewpoint. It was all so smart.

Discovery vs Discovery

The fact that I can simply say ‘Bowmaster’ (a game where you shoot arrows from a bow on your iPhone) is testament to Apple’s achievement. Even my mother knows that all she needs to do is click App Store, search ‘bowmaster’ and boom, the game downloads and she’s got it. Whilst we speak of ‘discovery’ as a problem nowadays with so many apps, ‘discovery’ used to mean trying to help consumers work out where and how to download your app. It was a nightmare. Apple solved that whole process — and more. Instead of simply affecting some small change, Apple dominated. I doubt the company ever expected to hold so much influence in the market.

Even today it’s still painful watching Nokia executives sitting facing a crowd of Western (or American) media. Because Nokia has hitherto struggled to produce anything worth even 10% of Apple’s (apparent) innovations, the withering stares and downright criticism from the media was palpable. And there was next to nothing to be done about it.

Either do BETTER than Apple or don’t bother coming back.

There was no defence.

The screen technology is either rubbish or ‘nearly as good as the iPhone’. There was no chink at all in the iPhone armour.  Until now.

A Chink In The Armour

In the last few weeks, we’ve seen the armour melt away. I do love how the industry moves so fast. The small annoyances that much of the marketplace has suffered under Apple (the stupid and changeable App Store policies, the ‘flash’ issue and so on) were borne because everything else from the company was OK.

These little annoyances are now being added up by a rather impatient collection of media and industry people — and they’re not smiling. Publications that would shoot me down for even questioning Apple’s performance are now openly calling for redress. The functional issues with the iPhone 4’s ‘death grip’ are now irrelevant. Apple’s bluster and I’ll-tell-you-what-to-think arrogance has seeped out into the mainstream. That’s the worst thing you need when you’re selling consumer technology and relying on reputation and wall-to-wall advertising to sell the devices. The consumer perception of the iPhone 4 is that it suffers from a serious problem. Thanks to the David Letterman show in North America ("the iPhone 4 is not hooked up right ") and copious mainstream news features, any consumer who’s got half an interest in the iPhone is now aware that the phone has flaws. The ‘hold it differently’ message from Steve Jobs (whether he said it or not now) has entered the mainstream.

Our Phones Work Fine

Mobile executives from the old guard are now queueing up to point out that ‘you can hold our phone any way you wish.’ Although that statement is growing a little old, it’s — sadly — entirely valid and entirely relevant. All of a sudden, the glorious iPhone has a weakness. A killer weakness. It doesn’t work. It isn’t fit for purpose. That’s the mainstream message being beamed into the homes of billions by the mainstream TV and online news media across this last week.

Mea Culpa?

Can the company recover? Without a substantial mea culpa, I don’t think so. Giving free plastic bumpers to all iPhone 4 users won’t cut it either. It’s a fix. But it’s a clear statement that the actual phone design is awry. Doing a recall… expensive. Heavily expensive. That would certainly draw a line under the issue.

What about a software update? Well there’s one of those creeping across the internet right now that apparently fixes the display issue. How much confidence can we now have in a company who created a phone operating system with the silly basics not correct? Well. I don’t think Apple can recover from this. It’s really done huge damage to the brand and the reputation.

Part of the point of owning an expensive iPhone is for the status benefit. And when the chap on the street asks about your ‘dodgy phone’ that set you back 600 quid or 800 dollars, you’re not going to react very well to that. It’s like finding out your Bentley Continental GT is powered by the same engine as a Ford Fiesta. I don’t want to know that. But I certainly don’t want everyone else knowing that, or knowing that I’ve bought a dud.

So.

Let’s see how things go at 6pm London / 1pm EST.