iPod: The Brand Is Stronger Than The Hardware

22Feb06

In a post to my other blog yesterday I talked about how I thought there might be a sneaky iPod Nano recall going on. It got me thinking about the power of the Apple brand and in particular the iPod.

The problems that people have been having with iPods are well documented and anecdotally a large number seem to be going back for repair¹. It might just be down to the sheer volume that they sell² which results in a greater number of duds but there are some obvious general problems with them (e.g. battery reliability). So why do people persist on buying iPods when everyone knows about or has experienced problems with one? I know one guy who got so frustrated with his U2 iPod constantly wiping itself that he smashed it up. He then went out and bought a new one. Admittedly the first one was a freebie from a record company but why didn’t he buy a different player given his extreme frustration?

I think there are two things going on here.

First off is Apple itself and its brand. I’m not talking about the zealotry of extreme Mac fanatics (although I will some other time) but just the general brand image that Apple has. Apple is cool. They make nice, pretty things. Hell, even the box and packaging the Nano comes in is so nice you feel like you shouldn’t throw it out. Having the iTunes store tied to the player has undoubtedly helped but there is a definite cachet associated with all Apple products that’s hard to get away from. Everyone wants an iPod and it’s becoming synonymous with digital music players.

I think there’s something else going on though and that is that Apple’s competitors have yet to come up with a viable and attractive alternative. The iRiver and other competing products just don’t seem to have it on the design side and there’s also the issue of OS support with some only really working on Windows machines.

Clearly with their history in portable audio Sony should have owned this space and it’s not hard to see that they really missed the boat. Their early players used a proprietary format (ATRAC) that no-one wanted and consequently they didn’t sell. Even quite recently a friend of mine, someone who definitely doesn’t buy based on image, returned his newly bought Sony player back to the store because despite liking the form factor³ he found that it was converting MP3s to the Sony format on the fly. The result was that copying music over to the player took an age, even over USB2. He bought an iPod instead.

I think that Sony do have one possible comeback though: the PSP. I don’t own one myself. My days of being an innovator or early adopter disappeared with the m&m⁴ and now I’m more of a late majority or laggard⁵. Anyone I know who owns a PSP loves it. It’s versatile, plays games, movies and has a browser. It also plays MP3s and it’s memory is expandable. It also has that shiny black cool design and in terms of cachet it comes close to the iPod. The one problem I’ve heard mentioned is that you can’t lock the buttons to stop them from doing stuff while it’s in a coat pocket. It’s not perfect but it does at least begin to fit the bill for a complete portable entertainment device.

While I love my iPod Nano (and since having it replaced I’m now on my second one) I really don’t think that Apple are going to have it their own way forever. Someone, someday soon is going to come up with a device that will kill the iPod. Who knows, it’ll probably also be made by Apple and come in a really cool box.

– Fintan [listening to David Kitt]

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1 – The delivery guys for both the iPods I’ve sent back have said that they’ve handled “hundreds… thousands” going back for repair.
2 – Although do the numbers of iPods shipped exclude those shipped as replacements?
3 – A term he would never use.
4 – Marriage & Mortgage.
5 – My wife just thinks I’m a procrastinator.

Filed under: Apple, Devices, Marketing, iPod   |  Leave a Comment