New Products All the Time
Apple has indeed been a very innovative company. Their iPod Touch now has a camera, their iPhone was recently updated with even better functionality, and the iPad didn’t get old before the iPad 2 came on the scene. Innovation is expensive, and the question is whether it’s always a good idea to introduce new products before original ones have really penetrated the market.
In my honest opinion you risk people waiting for the next version simply because they begin expecting this fast product renewal to continue. You lose sales that way.
On the other hand I also understand that staying ahead means you have to innovate to keep your market share. But there are many ways to do that. Apple should, if you ask me, concentrate more on telling about new functionality in their software updates rather than sending out new products as fast as they do. Jumping ahead so you only release version 1 and then version 3, but keep version 2 as a software update means people can get more from the hardware they have already bought – bringing prices up for second-hand equipment, thus ensuring people could still be happy buying an iPhone 3 years ahead. If they don’t need the specific functionality of the fourth version, why change? Keep the value high for existing products by remembering your original customers gives you a much broader user base for your products.
What are YOUR thoughts on this?