MotoRazr & A380: The Stark Similarities

Two of the greatest and the most recognized products of our generation come from Motorola and Airbus. They are the world famous MotoRazr and Airbus A380. Both completely different yet having many strange similarities.

MotoRazr completely changed Motorola’s fortunes giving the mobile phones manufacturer a huge advantage over its arch rival Nokia which dominated the market for years. Although Nokia still dominates the market but Motorola completely made the Finnish giant to panic. Motorola, by launching MotoRazr, took the world by storm. The phone is about to achieve the 10 million mark in sales.

No other manufacturer has been able to challenge the Razr; not the other mobile phone companies but the Razr itself ate the Motorola Company. Motorola completely and wholly committed itself to the development & marketing of the Razr.

Motorola made millions of phones and from them made billions, doubled its profits while its Nokia’s profits halved. But now Motorola has no successor to continue the Razr’s legacy. At the time when the mobile users are asking for high speed connectivity like 3G, Motorola emphasized on design. End result, Motorola now has nothing to offer as far high speed connectivity or multimedia packed phones are concerned.

Motorola’s profits turned into losses forcing the company to cut 7,500 jobs. After giving the world the most successful mobile handset ever Motorola has just nothing to offer which could excite the customer.

Now Airbus A380. This ‘bird’ attracted the whole world, camera persons scrambled on airports’ roofs to get a glimpse of this super jumbo. Airbus dubbed it as the solution to the rapidly increasing passenger pressure on the airport terminals. The European giant presented it as a fitting replacement of the aging fleet of Boeing 747s worldwide.

The first double decker passenger aircraft is truly the first luxury aircraft. Virgin Atlantic and the Emirates have planned spas, swimming pools & lavish bars onboard. But the company has completely failed to deliver on time.

Delivery is late by 18 months, two of the major buyers (UPS & FedEx) have backed out and the Airbus is struggling to break even. A380 became the priority and the company neglected the other products betting only on the super jumbo. Production and up gradation of aircrafts like A350 was put on the back burner which meant that Airbus lost on every front.

With the production went down the two CEOs and the company continues to lose money. There’s very little chance that the company would end up in profits with this aircraft; they need to sell 250 crafts just to break even and that figure remains elusive, at least for now.

That’s the tale of two products which completely changed the world and, unfortunately, also their companies.

Marketing Strategy: Nokia Still Not Learning

Nokia maybe the world leader in the mobile phones arena but it seems as if it has completely lost its way as far as the marketing strategies are concerned. No doubt that that the products from the Finnish company are some of the very best in the world, but the company still hasn’t found a profitable way to market its goods. The very reason that other mobile phone companies are fast eating up Nokia’s market share is their superior (yet simple) marketing practices.

Motorola and Samsung must now be in the FUW list (frequently used words) in Nokia’s Board meetings. These companies have made Nokia pay dearly for its rudiment approach towards marketing its phones. The aggressive marketing practices followed by Motorola have hit Nokia very hard in that it’s losing very crucial global market share every month to its American competitor.

Nokia, quite alarmed by the dropping sales of its phones, is now putting all its weight behind the N-Series range. The N-Series is packed with multimedia features and Nokia believes that these phones might woo the costumers back to the big daddy of the mobile phone world. But Espoo we have a problem!! (Nokia is headquartered at Espoo, Finland).

While Motorola (quite intelligently) gives a dashy-flashy name to every phone it brings to the market, Nokia tends to do the exact opposite. Nokia from the very start has relied on numbers rather than names. This strategy worked very well but only because there wasn’t much competition back then. But times have changed; every month sees at least a dozen new handsets from an equal numbers of manufacturers. Consumers now have more than they can choose.

Consumers are more attracted towards names because that way they can easily relate to the features of the phone. This is evident from the success of the MotoRazr, MotoSlvr, MotoRizr and MotoKrzr. These phones are not packed with heavy multimedia features like N-Series but they still are selling like hot chocolate cakes. Just by reading the name of the handset one gets a broad idea about what the phone looks like or what are its features.

Nokia advertises more than Motorola does but still its market share is dropping. Motorola does not need to spend much money for the promotion of its products, it doesn’t have to worry about the marketing of these phones; it just simplifies its job by naming its products right. Take the example of Apple, didn’t have to do much to promote its iPhone. Thanks to the leaked photos & technical specs, it became the most anticipated gadget of all time.

It’s high time that Nokia starts applying some sense to its marketing strategies. It doesn’t have to do anything great, just name its phones. A few months ago, a highly placed Nokia official told Reuters that his company would soon go the Motorola way and would start using names for its new phones. It’s in Nokia’s best interest that it takes to that path as early as possible otherwise the once market leader might see its market share plummeting to even lower depths.

iPhone Puts LG, Samsung In Panic Mode

The exhibition of the Prada at the 3GSM World Congress by LG Electronics is a valiant and desperate attempt by the company to get close to what has been described as the most anticipated electronic gadget in years, the iPhone. Samsung Electronics too showcased the F520 which it believes would give competition to Apple’s iPhone. These moves by the two consumer electronics giants show that Apple’s new star has become a threat to their sales & profits even before it is released.

Everybody knew that Apple was developing a revolutionary gadget for sometime now, but there was no news at all suggesting that LG, Samsung or any other handset maker was also developing something of the sort. LG and Samsung quite hastily stepped up with these phones which they believe would be able to compete with the iPhone. But they might be wrong.

The handset makers would find it tough to compete with the iPhone as did the music player giants with the iPod. It’s true that iPod is not the best music player in the market and the consumers have much better choices, but it was the first of its kind. iPod is easy to use, no hassles involved and no heavy software to slow it down. Likewise, the iPhone too, is the first of its kind. A large multi-touch screen, Wi-Fi enabled, a nice camera, embedded with Google Maps, in-build widgets, a one-button navigational key and on top of that it doubles as an iPod. The design it’s quite new and never thought or seen before.

It’s true that we’ll be seeing a phone much superior and better than the iPhone but it has features which make it exceptional from even the very best of the smartphones. Majority of the smartphones run on the Windows Mobile Edition or the Symbian OS. Now even the people who have never had a PC know that the Windows is the most vulnerable among all the operating systems which power the world’s computers. Every other day we get to hear about a new flaw in the Windows OS. The recently launched and ever growing N-Series range too is facing similar problems. The Symbian which runs it is highly prone to viruses. The OS is quite heavy too and makes the phones to hang frequently.

Well no problem with the iPhone though. Runs on OS X. The Apple’s this star product is attracting more and more new customers. Even its arch rivals (Microsoft) have also tried to replicate it in their new products (Vista). Not too heavy and requiring a modest hardware configuration, OS X is becoming increasingly popular even with the oldest of the Windows devotees. iPhone will prove to be the point of attraction to the large number of Windows users worldwide who want to get the taste of the Apple’s operating system.

Just like the iPod, iPhone too might help Steve Jobs to scale the heights of success that neither he nor anybody else has seen yet.

iPhone: Call It The "Nokia-Killer"

With the entry of the new Apple phone in the market, it is almost certain that the market share of Nokia will slide further. The much-awaited Apple phone is packed with features that Nokia couldn’t provide even in its high-end multimedia packed N-Series. And with analysts forecasting that more & more users will switch to the Mac OS in 2007, it seems that Steve Jobs is ready to make history again as he did with the iPod.

The phone has awesome features. A large screen, Wi-Fi connectivity, a 2-megapixel camera, direct calling through Google Earth, a Safari mobile web browser, sizeable internal memory and it’s also an iPod. The market leader, Nokia, could not give the consumers these features. Although Nokia has been on the top for such a long time, it still hasn’t produced a ‘complete phone’. Apple, on the other hand, has hit the nail in first go.

Nokia released a battery of phones in its N-Series segment but it simply failed in efficient marketing and promotion of their product. Apple’s new phone gained popularity merely on the basis of rumors and false images of the phone which flooded the internet, the employees of the marketing & promotions departments at Apple didn’t have much of a job to do.

Apple’s phone is arguably the world’s most awaited techno product as it even left behind last years superhits, Play Station 3 and Nintendo Wii. Nokia, which is still trying to work out a way to match the amazing MotoRazr, will now be completely overwhelmed by Apple’s new jewel. Now that’s called a “Nokia-Killer”.