Everyone wants to be number one, and often it's just a matter of phrasing to make sure that you are. Larry Garfield uncovers some of the secrets of the Evil Marketing Geniuses(tm).
This week saw the launch of the Orange SPV M2000, a frighteningly familiar form of communicator. Why so scary? Because it's almost identical to the T-Mobile MDA III, the Vodafone VPA II, the O2 XDA IIs, the Sprint PPC-6601, and others. All of these devices are based on the same reference design from Taiwanese company HTC with only slight changes between carriers, and sometimes no changes at all.
So why all the names and model numbers? Various reasons, but one important one is marketing. To anyone perusing a list of communicators on the market, it looks like there are a lot more Windows Mobile handhelds on the market than there really are. By simply naming a half-dozen nearly-identical devices wildly different names, they can artificially inflate the device-share of the platform! Whoever the Evil Marketing Genius(tm) is who came up with that devious plan, I hope he got a bonus for it.
Of course, it's not just a Windows Mobile thing. palmOne does exactly the opposite. The Treo 600 is available from a dozen carriers in different parts of the world, seven just in North America alone. Yet everywhere it is called the "Treo 600", even though the software package differs with the carrier, even when some are CDMA and some GSM. By every metric the "Treo 600" is the best selling smartphone or communicator on the market... but which one? The GSM one? The CDMA one? Are those even the same phone? Ah ha, says the Evil Marketing Genius(tm), if we unify the product name and call everything the same, it makes it look like it's even more successful! Brilliant!
So wait. Just what constitutes "the same" device? Just how many truely different products are there on the market? What is the best selling communicator in the world? What does that even mean, when the market can't even agree on what a "smartphone" or "communicator" is in the first place?
Ah, you're not supposed to know. The Evil Marketing Genius(tm) sees to that. It makes it easier to sell the product, information, market report, or whatever the Evil Marketing Genius(tm) is up to. Beware the Evil Marketing Genius(tm), for he is brilliant with names and numbers, and clouds the minds of shoppers.
Stupid Evil Marketing Genius(tm)...
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