Those who read our Spillikins on a regular basis can be divided into
two camps: some of them are asking for more information about Nokia and
about how the company is dying, while others say it's all clear and the
death agony is of no interest. As for me, my interest in the Nokia story
is quite practical, for it presents a lot of scenarios of what and how a
company should never do. And this is crucial for companies that wish to
be successful. This week, Stephen Elop's lie about the good sales in
the USA and about Lumia 900 market acceptance got disclosed – the time
puts everything into place. We are about to see Nokia's quarterly
report, which will send the company's shares to another flight. Waiting
for those figures, some research companies are publishing their own
estimations of Nokia's sales. For example, Nielsen believes that
AT&T has sold not more than 300,000 Lumias 900 in Q2. No one speaks
of millions, as the global sales will hardly exceed 2.5 million. Anyway,
you will be able to read the details in the next Spillikins and in our
news next week. Nokia is going to have very bad Q2 results. And when I
say 'bad', it's even underestimated. Another word could be more
appropriate here, but it would be beyond the normal vocabulary. For a
starter, look at the diagram presented by Asymco: it shows the number of
smartphones used in the USA. The picture is quite nice and it speaks
for itself.
However, Nokia has some secret weapons, for instance, the Instagram client coming to the market in 2013.
But that's enough about the dying ones. Let's switch over to our
standard topics. I would like to thank everyone who has given a vote to
my book as I asked you to in the previous Spillikins. Thanks again! I'm
going to spend the entire next week in Vladivostok, so if there is
anyone who would like to meet me there, you can write on my Twitter, and
we'll select the time and place together.
Samsung Semiconductor advertising campaign: what memory do you use?
Samsung is starting to make use of their logical advantages that the company possesses as a manufacturer of hardware components for various kinds of electronic devices, being the leader in the memory chip production in particular. I guess every company, when it manages to occupy the lion's share of the market, will sooner or later start looking for ways to tell the customers about the advantages of its products. It appears much more difficult for hardware manufacturers, as the customers select and buy devices according to their features and prices, but no one chooses anything just because it has memory chips by Samsung, a CPU by NVIDIA, or a screen by Sharp. If such people still exist somewhere in the world, I might feel sympathy for them, as choosing every single product turns out to be an agonizing compromise. Besides, this kind of choice is defective from the start, as the best components never mean the ideal product in the end. Those components have to be properly harmonized with each other, which is actually a separate skill that we don't find too often in this world.
Every hardware component manufacturer always tries to grab the biggest piece of the pie. For example, Qualcomm is trying to convince the customers that it is very important what kind of CPU is installed in a smartphone or a tablet. NVIDIA is doing absolutely the same when giving detailed descriptions of the advantages provided by their solutions. Of course, the CPU produces great influence on the general performance of the system. But still, we make our choices basing on a lot of criteria, with the CPU being only one of the variables. Every manufacturer, when starting an advertising campaign, wants to make its brand more recognizable, but the point is to increase the importance of the variable (e. g. the CPU) when the customers make their final choice. But this game is played not only for the customers, as it also produces pressure on the device manufacturers. If the customers get interested in what CPU, what memory or what screen is inside their devices, the manufacturers will have to pay attention to this factor when selecting their suppliers. The situation is unique due to the fact that 99 per cent of the customers do not think too much about the hardware specifications, e. g. the CPU frequency, its chip structure or its peculiar features if compared to the competitors. They just do not! The majority only keeps some kind of binary logic in their minds: Manufacturer A is good and Manufacturer B is not. Hence, every company bends its efforts to strengthening its own name, while the specifications remain important to the partners that produce their devices basing on those specs.
Back in April I told you that Qualcomm was starting to actively position their CPU's for ordinary customers. The curious fact is that today Qualcomm is experiencing deficit for the Snapdragon S4 processors, so the company has even signed a contract for production of these chips using the Samsung capacities, with the 28-nm technology. And the most curious thing about it is that Samsung's own CPU's are made with the 32-nm technology, while the next leap they are planning to make should be switching to the 22-nm technological norm. Thus, we can conclude that in 2012 Samsung will produce CPU's based on a more advanced technology for its own partner and competitor. The world of electronics represents extremely curious cobwebs, and, on the one hand, the major part of the big companies are in a permanent life-and-death struggle with each other (Apple and Samsung with their smartphones and tablets), but on the other hand, they cooperate with each other quite successfully (almost half of the Apple iPad hardware is manufactured by Samsung). In such conditions, any advertising and promotion of components turns into a minefield. Making your brand more recognizable, you add points to your competitors at the same time. And you should think twice every time which side is going to win more: your own production or some other strong company.
In the context of promotion of the Snapdragon trademark, Qualcomm has launched a commercial video. It is pretty long, not too clear, but it is made in quite an American style: "Shoulda got a Snapdragon!"
What reminded me of it is the absolutely amazing Samsung Semiconductor advertising campaign dedicated to memory chips. There are three videos featuring three different characters: Loading Ball Larry, Fiona Freeze, and Battery Brutus. The first one is the loading ball that we see in various OS's when waiting for an application to start. The girl is responsible for the system freezing. And the third guy is the one who sucks the energy out of the batteries.
It's been a while I last saw such a brilliant advertising dealing with electronics problems in a humorous way. As you understand, the suggested way out is banal: use devices featuring memory by Samsung. But the videos themselves are made with a good share of humor and are really funny. Watch them – I'm sure you'll like them. This campaign reminded me of the one used when Nokia N95 was launched in 2007: Nokia invented jeans with huge pockets that could accommodate a bug number of various electronic gadgets. Our website is the only place where you can find those videos; the original website has been closed long ago, and there are only fragments of the campaign description.
So let's finally watch those videos by Samsung:
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