What Happens When Apple Is No Longer Cool?

Why do we buy Apple’s products? From Mac to iPod, from iPhone to iPad, Apple’s products are big sellers, best of breed, the ones envied and copied. Do we buy because the products are cool, chic, must-have gadgets? Or, do we buy because the products really are that good? What happens when Apple and the product line is no longer cool?

Hot? Or, Just Cool?

I read an inflammatory article in GeekWire about the American head of HTC; on HTC phones, Windows Phone 7, patent wars, and why iPhones aren’t cool anymore. HTC is an iPhone competitor and involved in a number of patent lawsuits with Apple.

Martin Fichter of HTC:

The problem we are having as an industry, from a very broad perspective, is that energy that should go into developing new technologies and new user experiences goes into fighting off patent wars. So, think about it. A lot of time, money and energy is just wasted based on these patent wars.

How much innovation did HTC deliver to the marketplace by stealing from Apple?

Fichter on Windows Phone 7:

I think Windows Phone 7 is probably a bit hampered by the whole energy in the industry right now for 4G. All the carriers are pushing their 4G networks and with Windows Phone 7 not yet supporting that … there is a shortcoming there that is not so much a problem for the end-consumer, but it is a problem for the consumer not being pushed towards Windows because another phone might be more attractive to cell phone carriers.

Uh huh. Of course, the iPhone sells like hot cakes and it’s not 4G LTE, either.

Fichter on the cloud:

We all talk a lot about the cloud…. If we change the way we behave and have all of our music — not on our phones anymore but only in the cloud — I can tell you that networks will have problems.

Music in the cloud is a brain dead idea.

Fichter on the iPhone 5:

I brought my daughter back to college — she’s down in Portland at Reed — and I talked to a few of the kids on her floor. And none of them has an iPhone because they told me: ‘My dad has an iPhone.’ There’s an interesting thing that’s going on in the market. The iPhone becomes a little less cool than it was. They were carrying HTCs. They were carrying Samsungs. They were even carrying some Chinese manufacture’s devices. If you look at a college campus, Mac Book Airs are cool. iPhones are not that cool anymore. We here are using iPhones, but our kids don’t find them that cool anymore.

Has anyone ever stood in a long line waiting for an HTC phone? Or a Droid of any kind? How much do you wanna bet there’ll a very long line at every store on launch day that carries iPhone 5?

Fichter’s credibility gets lost in the intense desire to compete with words, rather than with innovative products.

If you want to do the same thing as iPhone in exactly the same way, why don’t you send your people to the Apple store and have them buy an iPhone? We want to do something different. We want to appeal to different end users who have different values. And, if you look at the segmentation and the demographics of what we are doing, we are selling phones to different people. So, I don’t like the term iPhone killer. I think we do something different.

And if what HTC has is so different, then why does Apple sue? Because HTC’s Android phones are mere clones of the iPhone.

Are Apple’s products popular only because they’re cool? If so, what’s the essence of cool? Logo? Aluminum? Colorful icons? Are Apple’s products mere status symbols? Then why do not copies (Samsung, I’m looking at you) of Apple products gain the same fame and notoriety?

Apple’s products are cool. Cool is such that some have and some don’t. But someone must always have cool. When Apple loses cool, someone else must have cool, carry the torch, so to speak. What will happen when some other manufacturer’s products are more cool than my Mac, iPod, iPhone, or iPad? I’ll buy something else. Why? Because I buy cool stuff that I like to use.