So Apple are in a quandary – the designer, Jonathan Ive, of most of the products which has redefined the gadget landscape for the last 10 years wants to perhaps to call time.
Apple have no doubt redefined the look and feel of technology but dig deeper and I discover that they have INMHO just hashed the innovations of a one Dieter Rams and modernised it for todays market. Perhaps that is what design is all about – take something add to it and rebrand it. What do you think?
I do think though that these principles of design are true in any medium:
This passion for “simplicity” and “honest design” that is always declared by Ive whenever he’s interviewed or appears in a promo video, is at the core of Dieter Rams’ 10 principles for good design:
Good design is innovative. Good design makes a product useful. Good design is aesthetic. Good design helps us to understand a product. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design is honest. Good design is durable. Good design is consequent to the last detail. Good design is concerned with the environment. Good design is as little design as possible.
However, design aside lets talk about what Apple are good at, marketing. Here is the IPAD broken down and why it will beat the competition.
The three areas in which Sacconaghi believes Apple builds its price advantage, he said, are component sourcing; its own base of retail stores, through which Sacconaghi believes about one-third of all iPads are sold without other retail partners taking their cut; and the fact that Apple designs its own chips for the iPad, while rivals must buy their chips from designers such as Nvidia (NVDA) and Qualcomm (QCOM).
Comparing the iPad to the iPhone, Sacconaghi argued that Apple has effectively created a “pricing umbrella” on the popular smartphone, with margins estimated to be in the 50%-to-60% range.
This allowed competing devices running on Google’s (GOOG) Android platform to undercut the iPhone on price and build market share quickly. Some third-party reports estimate that Android as a platform now has a greater share of the smartphone market than Apple.
“It is unclear if Apple’s ostensible change in pricing policy on the iPad vs. iPhone was shaped by Android’s success in the smartphone market, but we do believe that aggressive penetration pricing makes sense in an increasing returns/platform-based market such as tablets,” Sacconaghi wrote.
