CDOQ

This morning I finished reading Apple in China , a fascinating book about the interdependence between Apple and Chinese manufacturing. The book makes clear that the company might never have reached a $3T market cap without the contributions of Foxconn and support from the Chinese government. In turn, China might not have developed into a sophisticated manufacturing powerhouse without Apple’s training, investment, and partnership. Having worked with OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and ODMs (Original Design Manufacturers) in China, I found the book cast light on aspects of manufacturing I hadn’t fully appreciated. Apple Pyramid (Image credit: ChatGPT) Iconic products like the iPhone come to life at Apple through the push and pull of four teams. At the top, the Industrial Design (ID) team defines the look and feel. Next, the Product Design (PD) team ensures the product works as intended. The Manufacturing Design (MD) team then decides which components and assembly partners will br...

In-Settings Marketing :)

MacWorld 2008 is over and one of the innovations Apple unveiled is the movie rental service . The basic idea is that now you can rent movies without leaving your couch using you Apple TV remote. You can play the rental movies on your TV, on your computer with iTunes, and on Apple products-iPhone, iPod, etc. The rental cost is $2.99 or $3.99 or $4.99 per movie depending on format and movie. Also, rentals are valid for 24 hours after you hit play for the first time after the download and rental automatically expires in 30 days if you don't press play. Now, let's apply the innovation adoption principles , I wrote about more than a year ago, to explain why the movie rental service will not be adopted widely. It is ironic that I used an Apple innovation-iPod to explain the innovation adoption principles and now I am using the innovation principles to explain why another Apple innovation-digital movie rentals (AMR) will not be adopted. For our discussion, we will consider movies ...