What to focus on

Most companies focus on beating the competition. Apple focuses on ... well, let's let Steve Jobs say it:

Is Apple’s goal to overtake the PC in market share? Jobs said, “Our goal is to make the best personal computers in the world and make products we are proud to sell and recommend to our family and friends. We want to do that at the lowest prices we can.

”But there’s some stuff in our industry that we wouldn’t be proud to ship. And we just can’t do it. We can’t ship junk,“ said Jobs. ”There are thresholds we can’t cross because of who we are. And we think that there’s a very significant slice of the [market] that wants that too. You’ll find that our products are not premium priced. You price out our competitors’ products, and add features that actually make them useful, and they’re the same or actually more expensive. We don’t offer stripped-down, lousy products.“

This isn't a lot different than the official statements from many companies. The difference is that Jobs means it and lives it.

As quoted in MacWorld today. He was announcing the new ILife and IWork 08 suites.

George Silverman
Word-of-Mouth Marketing Speaker and Consultant
Author, The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
main website: www.mnav.com    blog: wordofmouth.typepad.com