Image via CrunchBase
At Comunicano, our master of the message, Bill Ryan hammers on regularly about why positioning is so important. He should know. Back in 90s his agency, NRW was brought in by the late Steve Jobs to help with the turnaround of Apple. Now, some 16 years later, you can still see the fingerprints of Bill and his colleagues who left their mark on one of the world's true iconic products companies.
All you have to do is read today's post on Business Insider and see the difference between Google and Apple as iOS vs. Android is the battleground of today.
To Apple product owners the experience that they have with Apple is one from top to bottom and at the end of the day, that is what really matters.
With Google and Android, it's not the same.
Sure you can get gift cards for iTunes or Play, but the fragmentation of Google Android vs. the single experience of Apple tells the whole story. Personally, the Play gift cards seem so me too, it feels like they are on store shelves only because Apple already was.
Don't get me wrong, Google is moving in the same direction as Apple–quickly, and my experience as a Google Apps user is only getting better, but I have that experience on Apple products as well as on Google's Android and Chromebook devices, but what I don't get from Google or Android is the Apple Store, the Geniuses or the support that Apple puts behind its products with anything other than the core apps of Google.
Apple owns their customers expereince end to end. That's where it breaks down for Google. If there's a problem with an Android device immediately it's the manufacturers problem, not Google's. Let's call that the second layer of fragmentation. And, there's more when you look at the two side by side, which is why at the end of the day, an Apple product and Google services is the REAL combination that is killing BlackBerry and Microsoft.
Net-Net–Apple positions better than Google but together they are an unbeatable combination which makes me wonder if the two companies really are rivals, or simply allies with common enemies, and really are working together on a far more strategic level than they let on.
