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In the essay, the "social network" stands for the new initiative of customer gatherings & sessions at Apple Stores. What Apple dubs "Today at Apple". I'm hav

by jasode 8y ago

In the essay, the "social network" stands for the new initiative of customer gatherings & sessions at Apple Stores. What Apple dubs "Today at Apple". I'm having a hard time thinking of historical business examples where in-store "educational" events really moved the needle on sales. Maybe one example is Home Depot stores with their free demonstrations of various home improvement tasks. Do they actually change store visits or total sales? Or are they a loss leader? I have no idea. (Home Depot isn't an exact comparison to Apple because it doesn't require buying HomeDepot-branded tools to benefit from the demos.) Remember 20 years ago when some industry observers thought Amazon online bookstore couldn't compete with Barnes & Noble because the brick&mortar store had the sofas and lounge chairs to browse books, the cafe area, the children's area where people read aloud, etc. It turns out those in-store social experiences weren't as advantageous as people thought. Yes, there are other customer gathering experiences that happen such as video game e-sports leagues (or LAN parties) or Harley Davidson motorcycle meetups. But those social events seem organically created bottom-up by the customers rather than top-down by a hardware company. E.g. As far as I know, the e-sports league membership isn't tied to a hardware manufacturer like NVIDIA or ATI. (A particular hardware vendor may provide sponsorship but that's not the same as membership which is what Apple's "Today at Apple" is doing.) >, this explains CFO Luca Maestri reasoning on the earnings call for no longer reporting unit sales: [...] I just wish Apple would show it with its reporting. I think it's interesting that even if Apple wants to keep industry analysts in the dark, other entities like Amazon and Facebook can estimate iPhone unit sales by proxy statistics. E.g. Amazon can run data analytics on sales of iPhone accessories (how many the new iPhone Xs cases sold and how does it compare to previous iPhone 8 case sales at launch?) E.g. Facebook's popular iOS apps used by billions can send telemetry data on the particular iPhone models hitting their servers. (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26028918/how-to-determine-the-current-iphone-device-model https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26028918/how-to-determin...)

lbotos 8y ago
> As far as I know, the e-sports league isn't tied to a hardware manufacturer like NVIDIA or ATI. Yes, but most of the largest ones are put on/heavily funded by the manufacturer of the game: - CS:GO Majors - Overwatch League is put on by Blizzard - Riot Hiring for esports operations - https://www.riotgames.com/en/work-with-us/disciplines/esports-operations https://www.riotgames.com/en/work-with-us/disciplines/esport... ----- Apple is moving "down market" and the biggest win for them right now is for those to understand "what apple means." I've shifted 90% of my family to mac from whatever PC they were using before because of the reality of the physical store. Go there and get help. They know more than I do, and they will be helpful. For the most part, that's true, and I no longer do tech support for my family. Grandma wants to learn how to photo edit? Now apple gives her a class and a community of other learners. It may turn out to be a loss leader, but it's "more of the same" of what separates apple from any of the other Manufacturers. Google/Samsung/Dell can't do anything close. Microsoft _might_ be able to, but lets see.

by jasode 8y ago

lbotos 8y ago

> As far as I know, the e-sports league isn't tied to a hardware manufacturer like NVIDIA or ATI. Yes, but most of the largest ones are put on/heavily funded by the manufacturer of the game: - CS:GO Majors - Overwatch League is put on by Blizzard - Riot Hiring for esports operations - https://www.riotgames.com/en/work-with-us/disciplines/esports-operations https://www.riotgames.com/en/work-with-us/disciplines/esport... ----- Apple is moving "down market" and the biggest win for them right now is for those to understand "what apple means." I've shifted 90% of my family to mac from whatever PC they were using before because of the reality of the physical store. Go there and get help. They know more than I do, and they will be helpful. For the most part, that's true, and I no longer do tech support for my family. Grandma wants to learn how to photo edit? Now apple gives her a class and a community of other learners. It may turn out to be a loss leader, but it's "more of the same" of what separates apple from any of the other Manufacturers. Google/Samsung/Dell can't do anything close. Microsoft _might_ be able to, but lets see.