Apple Inc. , formerly Apple Computer, Inc. , which is a multinational corporation that creates consumer electronics, computer software, and commercial servers, and a digital distributor of media content. On 1 April 1976, Apple was established in Cupertino, California and incorporated on 3 January 1977. The founders are Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who started with a Apple’s computer company in the year 1976. Apple has expanded into a very complex company that specializes in much more than just computers in the last decade.
Due to the iPod product, Apple has successfully to break the barrier and ultimately becoming the dominant market leader of music players in the year 2001. In the year 2007, Apple started to join the phone industry. It’s widely successfully in the phone industry. In addition, Apple has named by the fortune magazine which is the most admired company in the world in the year 2008 until 2010. Apple has manufactured few products which are Mac line of computers, iPad tablet computer, iPod music player, iPhone smartphone, Apple TV and Software.
Based on our assignment, we are choosing Apple as our brand and specific to the iPhone 5 product which compare another brand’s product. Apple has manufactured 6 generations of iPhone product which is iPhone 1st, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 5. iPhone 5 is the latest smart phone that produced by Apple. On 12 September 2012,Apple was held an event to introduce the iPhone 5 to the market at San Francisco.
On 14 September 2012, Apple has begun taking pre-orders and it has received over two million orders within 24 hours and it was started to supply available at launch on 21 September 2012. Phone 5 has improved quality and design. It is comes with white and black colour. According to the Philip Schiller who is Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, iPhone 5 is the most beautiful consumer device that they are ever created and he also mentioned that they are packed an amazing amount of innovation and advanced technology into a thin and light, jewel-like device with a stunning 4-inch Retina display, blazing fast A6 chip, ultrafast wireless, even longer battery life; and they think customers are going to love it.
Nowadays, Apple has successfully with opened 394 retail stores in the 14 countries as well as the online Apple Store and iTunes Store. By market capitalization, Apple is the second-largest publicly traded corporation in the world with an estimated value of US$ 414 billion on January 2013. On 29 September 2012, the company had 72,800 permanent full-time employees and 3,300 temporary full-time employees in the worldwide. In the year 2012, Apple has earned annual revenue totaled $156 billion in the worldwide. SAMSUNG Samsung is a South Korean multinational conglomerate company and headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul.
In the year 1938, Samsung was founded by Lee Byung Chull. Samsung has diversified the group into area including food processing, textiles, insurance, securities and retail over the next three decades. Samsung has started to join the electronics industry in the late 1960s, while the construction and shipbuilding industries are in the late 1970s. After Lee’s death in the year 1987, Samsung was separated into four business group which is Samsung Group, Shinsegae Group, CJ Group and Hansol Group. Since 1990s, Samsung has increasingly globalised activities. Electronics, mobile phones and semiconductors has become source of income of Samsung.
In the other hand, Samsung is hiring talented and intelligent pupils. There have 25% of the employees who has PhD degree or equivalent. Besides, Samsung has own the private university in South Korea. Most of the graduates being employed by Samsung Group affiliates. Samsung’s employees are highly loyal to the company. They are willing to work with long hours per day at the company without any rest for weekends and holidays. Based on our assignment, we are choosing Samsung as our brand and specific to Samsung Galaxy S3 which compare with iPhone5. Samsung Galaxy S3 reveals a new concept of the smartphone.
It is totally different to compare with the previous Samsung smartphone. Samsung Galaxy S3 comes with pebble blue, marble white, garnet red and titanium grey colour. It was designed for humans and inspired by nature, the Galaxy S3 is a smartphone that recognizes people voice, understands intention, and it can share a moment instantly and easily. Following the development phase by eighteen month, Samsung Galaxy S3 has successfully to produce and launched it on May 2012 in London. There are more than 20 million of units Samsung Galaxy S3 was sold within the first 100 days of release.
Samsung Galaxy S3 has ranked it as the No. 1 handset from TechRadar and Stuff magazine. From the European Imaging and Sound Association, it also won the “European Mobile Phone of 2012–13”. Besides, Samsung has got the “Phone of the Year” award from T3 magazine for 2012. During the second quarter of 2012, Samsung has played a major role in boosting its record operating profit. Nowadays, Samsung is a very successfully company with comprises around 80 companies with highly diversified activities area such as mobile phone, electronics, construction, shipbuilding, financial services and medical services.
Samsung has a powerful influence on the country’s economic development, media, culture and politics which being a major force behind the ‘Micacle on the Han River. It has became the role model of many businesses today.
The concepts of brand mantras, points of parity and points of difference
A brand mantra is highly related to brand concept such as “brand essence” or “brand promise”. It is also known as an articulation of the “heart and soul” of the brand. Brand mantra is usually designed in three-to-five-word phrases to capture the irrefutable essence or spirit of the brand positioning.
The purpose of designing short phrases is allows consumers to remember easily. Moreover, with the meaning brought out by the phrase, it will register the brand into the mindset of consumers. Like every firm, Apple’s new launched smartphone, the Iphone5 has a brand mantra which is “Think Different”. They aimed to make things simple and take care of their customers very well. They wish to make everything as simple as possible yet produced high quality and high technology products, like Iphone5 so that there will be less mistake will be done.
Therefore, when their customers are satisfied with their product, they will gain confident towards Iphone5 and also will help Apple gain plenty of loyal customers. For Samsung, we will focus on their new launched smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S3. The Samsung Galaxy S3 has the brand mantra of “Design for human, inspired by nature”. The meaning that Samsung wanted to bring into Samsung Galaxy S3 is to reflect nature. They also wish to have stronger connection with their customer for both interface and product design. This samrtphone was designed for simple use and user friendly.
By the way, this smartphone also added with cutting edge technology. This will make the technology to fit naturally into user’s need rather than user to adapt it. However, there are points of parity between Iphone5 and Samsung Galaxy S3. The hardware of both smartphones are quite similar. They both support 4G, Wi-Fi, same resolution of camera and same video capability. Although they are quite similar to each other, there are still consumers who have brand loyalty to each of the brand. Some of the customer will choose Iphone5 because of its classic design.
The body of Iphone5 is produced by Aluminium which make the phone thinner and lighter, plus aluminium will normally brought out high-end feel. Trendy people might like this design. However, there will be customers who don’t like the way of the design. This is because they can’t adapt to the longer body of the phone compare to their previous models and there were no obvious improvement in terms of specification of the phone. In contrast, there will be customers who like Samsung Galaxy S3 too. This is because this phone is design in simple yet trendy which also may attract different kind of customers.
The body of the phone is made of plain-looking plastic shell which comes with more options of colours. Its curve on the phone which is specially designed will also make it feel thinner and better in handling. Besides that, the bigger screen size of the phone is also an advantage of the phone yet it also will become the reason for customers to dislike it. They might feel clumsy and more difficult to handle with the big screen. By the way, both of these phone shared another point of parity which is both of them support many applications to use.
Those applications can be downloaded from the apps store provided by the phones. Some of the applications are free but some of them required certain charges. With different kind of applications, users are able to enjoy more functions from their phone and also make their phone more interesting by customizing their phone such as theme, icons and others. However, some of the customers will choose Iphone5 because those applications are downloaded from iOS apps store. iOS has stable performance applications and their applications and games were also came in quality-priced.
However, some of the customers dislike using iOS apps store is because they have lesser choice of application to download and they also offer less free-of-charge applications. In the other hand, some customers will choose Samsung Galaxy S3 is because they are using Andriod apps store. In the bright side, Andriod apps store offer cheap applications and more choice of applications for their user. Besides that, they also offer some applications which are free of charge. This will attract more users who wanted to save more yet enjoy more on their phone’s applications.
In the dark side, customers might dislike Andriod apps store as some of their applications are less stable and there were plenty of junk applications found in the apps store. Every product must have their point of difference in order to persuade their customer to choose them same goes to the Iphone5. One of the points of difference is Iphone5 uses nano sim card. Nano sim card is much more smaller in size compared to a normal sim card. This made Iphone5 very unique because it is the only phone which uses a nano sim card. With a smaller sim card, it will leave more space for larger battery to implement into the device.
It will help to increase the battery life of the device. Moreover, nano sim also will save more space on the device so that the device can be designed in thinner and lighter. However, some of the customers dislike nano sim. This is because it requires extra work to create a nano sim. Besides that, when they made their sim card into nano sim, they can’t use their sim card in others phone. The Iphone5 also holds other points of difference which is their camera feature. Their camera had added a special feature which is the AE and AF lock. AE lock and AF lock stands will allow users to lock in auto exposure and auto focus settings.
This feature will help the users to have easier control over the camera. Besides that, Iphone5 can capture a sharper and nicer image because they installed a new sapphire-crystal lens. By now, it can take far clearer low-light picture. According to an article written by Joshua Goldman, the Iphone5 camera also contain other benefits such as no shuttle lag, fast shot-to-shot recovery, HDR feature and panaroma mode. With these features, their user now can experience better quality of photo shooting . In the other hand, the Samsung Galaxy S3 also has their own points of difference.
One of the point is the phone is implemented by their excusive invent display technology, the Super AMOLED screen. The Super AMOLED screen has brought a new era in Samsung’s display technology as it allows people to experience the content they like in glare-free screen and with brilliant images. It also contain higher resolution and more colour concentration which brings 20% brighter and 30% better colour reproduction compare to LCD screens. It also delivers sharper and clearer image. This will attract more gamer lovers or photographers to purchase Samsung Galaxy S3 as its Super AMOLED screen will bring better experience for them.
Another point of difference own by the Samsung Galaxy S3 is the way of transferring files. The Samsung Galaxy S3 used an exclusive technology which is NFC, aka near-field communication. So far, there were no other phones which own this feature. This feature allows users to transfer their file by simply tapping the phone back-to-back. It is very convenient to their user as it don’t require much procedure to send a file. However, due to the exclusive technology, this feature only works with another phone which has the same feature. Therefore, it will not sway too many customers to own a Samsung Galaxy S3 as this technology is not widely used yet.
Iphone5 and Galaxy S3 and their pros and cons
Nevertheless both of them are leaders in the smartphone market, there are also similarities between them. For example, one of the similarities is they both have navigation map service in their device. For Iphone5, they are using IOS Map which is exclusively design by Apple whereas the Samsung Galaxy S3 is using Google Map which is Android’s navigation map.
The implementation of navigation map helps their users to reduce their chances to get lost on the road. Moreover, with the navigation map, users are able to go anywhere they want although they have no idea how to reach the places. However, there are still pros and cons between these two different types of navigation system from different company. In Iphone5, they are using IOS Map. The benefits in the IOS Map are they have few feature such as turn-by-turn direction, traffic detection and avoidance and integration with Apple’s Siri voice recognition. According to an article written by Fred Zahradnik, the IOS Map is using vector-based graphics.
This latest technology allows faster image loading and detailed yet 3D flyover images on areas and landmarks. Besides that, users also can initiate and command IOS Map by using their spoken voice via Siri. For example, by using clear spoken voice, users can ask Siri for a location or direction. Siri will integrate the voice and open the turn-by-turn direction for their users. The voice recognition technology had brought great benefit to users. By using voice recognition, it can help to reduce accident happen on road as the drivers don’t have to press their phone and causes lack of concentration while driving.
In the other side, the IOS Map also have their shortcoming. The IOS Map had created many problems until the founder of IOS Map, Tim Cook apologized to the public for the deficiency of their iOS Map. The major complaint received by iOS Map was the lack of significant amount of detail and omit public transit directions. The Map will sometimes wildly mislead some major landmark or places. These problems had bring huge unsatisfactory to their users as they had experienced many mislead of places by the iOS Map. When it comes to Samsung Galaxy S3’s navigation map which is the Google Map, it encounters more positive comments than the negative one.
This is because Google Map is more stable, accurate traffic congestion data, up-to-date street and road layout. Their users may enjoy Google Map without paying a single cent. This may delight their users as they can save more cost while enjoying high performance navigation system. Moreover, it is very simple to use. Users are only required to keying in a place or building name. It also offers many types of view for their map including the amazing 3D satellite view and realistic street option. Since the Google Map in Samsung Galaxy S3 is quite stable, so it has lesser cons on the application.
The problem that made their user less satisfy is it require internet connection to run the application. Therefore, carrier charges might charged on their users. Due to the requirement of internet connection, Google Map may be malfunction if the user had lost their internet connection or fall into an internet black-spot. This issue is quite serious because when their users are lost in some remote area, they might not use Google Map to help them out. Besides that, battery usage of the Google Map also will bring huge headache for their users.
It is because this application will drain the phone battery very fast as their users have to activate GPS and internet data network in the same time. Another similarity between Iphone5 and Samsung Galaxy S3 is they both have digital voice assistance feature. This feature is an artificial intelligent personal assistant and knowledge navigator which use spoken words to answer questions, make recommendation and perform action requested by the user. Both of the applications obtain information from the WOLFRAM and ALPHA database. However, both of the phone have the same feature but by different manufacturer.
For Iphone5, their feature named as Siri whereas Samsung Galaxy S3 named theirs as S voice. For Iphone5, there are pros and cons on their Siri feature. On the side of advantage, Siri perform fast and get its answer for their user in seconds. This feature also brings much comfort to their user as it can help them to solve their hesitation. For example, we always face hesitation about where to take out meal. By using Siri, their users can find many restaurants suggested by Siri by giving command to it.
Besides that, Siri also can help them to read messages. This works on when their users are busying, driving r doing something else, they can command Siri to read their messages. While on the side of disadvantage, users must connect to internet in order to use Siri. This will cause some of the Iphoe5 users unable to enjoy this feature as not all of the users have internet data plan. They only can use if there is Wi-Fi service provided. Another disadvantage is the Siri feature in their navigation map only supports English. In order to get direction by using Siri, users are required to speak only English or else Siri couldn’t perform. In the another hand, Samsung Galaxy S3’s S voice also have its pros and cons.
The advantage of S voice is it will answer all the questions or perform on what the users command to it. It will provide a comprehensive answer for their users. Besides that, S voice also can perform several actions which can help their users very much such as taking notes, searching for stuffs, schedule meeting and also looking up for whether condition. Moreover, their user also can choose to turn on or off the audio response. This allows their users to have their personal preference whether to turn the audio response on or off. At the disadvantage side, the S voice is a bit slow performance.
It takes about an average of 6 to 8 second to perform their user’s command. Moreover, the S voice often interprets the command from their user wrongly. For example, it will misunderstand their user’s command and automatically perform other action which is out of their user’s expectation. Besides than similarities, both phones have their difference to differentiate themselves with each other. One of the differences between Iphone5 and Samsung Galaxy S3 is their operating system. Iphone5 is using their own operating system which is the iOS whereas Samsung Galaxy S3 is using Andriod operating system.
The differences of operating system indicate different way of performance between both of the phones. However, there were also advantages and disadvantages between both of the operating system. In the perspective of iOS, the advantages of it are simple, easy to use, and contain many funny emoticons and animations such as emoji. According to an article written by Fabrizio Bartolomucci, the iOS is user friendly because their users can alter the screen size by simply placing two fingers on the screen and drag them away from each other.
This will solve the problem for users who having visual impairment or allow them to see tiny things on the screen much more clearly. Besides that, iOS has higher and more stable performance. By using this unique operating system, their user can enjoy a special feature which only performed in an iOS which is Face Time over cellular networks. Face Time works as their users may able to chat face-to-face with each other by using iOS in anywhere and anytime as long as there were internet connection. There were no charges charged on this service.
Besides that, iOS also have their own exclusive feature such as maps and navigation, automated reply incoming calls and message system and others. On the disadvantage side of iOS, it is unable to run Flash or Shockwave videos. Since most of the video or website require Flash or Shockwave software like Youtube, their users will face difficulty while trying to access to the website. Moreover, the iOS do not support widgets and only support limited themes and personalization options. This will cause users for iOS couldn’t customize their phone as they want.
Therefore, all the iOS users will have similar theme and design in their device and they might get bored of it. In the perspective of Andriod operating system which is used by Samsung Galaxy S3, the advantage is multitasking is available. Multitasking allows their user to run two applications in a same time. For example, users can compose a message at the same time watching a video. This is a large breakthrough of technology in smartphones. Besides that, it supports widgets, many different types of theme and personalization options. Users can download many different types of widgets and themes from Andriod market.
This will satisfy their user as they can customise their phone as they want and make their phone more interesting. On the disadvantage side, users are often annoyed by the advertisement from their application. This is because application in Andriod phone can have free of charge of advertising. Therefore, many applications advertise hardly leading to many advertisements pop out in the middle, top or bottom of the screen causes their users to be annoyed. The another disadvantage is Andriod operating system waste a lot of battery. This is caused by many unwanted applications running on the background.
Users are required to kill the applications by themselves but those applications will run again automatically. So, the Samsung Galaxy S3 will drain battery quickly with its Andriod operating system. The another difference between Iphone5 and Samsung Galaxy is their design. Both of the phones have large difference in terms of design no matter in terms of size, materials and others. The way of designing of the phone could be critical for customers to choose whether which phone to buy. However, there are different customers with different taste. Therefore, both of the design will have their own advantage and disadvantage.
For Iphone5, it is 4. 87 inches long and 2. 31 inches width with the weight of 112 grams. Its body was manufactured by aluminium and its screen size of 4 inches was manufactured by gorilla glass 2. It is also longer than any of other phones. The advantage of the design of Iphone5 is scratch and shatters resistance on the body and screen. This will cause the Iphone5 to be more durable and maintain its beauty of appearance. Besides that, the Iphone5 also have a light weight which is only 112 gram and thin design. This will reduce the burden of their users as it is very light and thin.
However, the disadvantage of the design of Iphone5 is their screen was not big enough. Some users prefer a bigger screen so that they can see things clearer and more comfortable while using the phone. Besides that, the thin design of the phone made the phone become fragile. The thin design of the phone will not stand much force on it and it will result on cracking the phone. For Samsung Galaxy S3, the phone was designed for comfort for their user. The phone was designed in 5. 4 inches tall and 2. 8 inches width with a 4. 8 inches Super AMOLED screen.
The advantage of the design is the round edges and corners of the phone which able bring out smooth splines and trim pieces. This phone was manufactured with nicest plastic with many types of colours such as ceramic white, pebble blue and red shade. This will allow their users to have more choices and customisation on their phone. Despite that, this phone also contains a special design to increase the comfort level which is the placement of button. From the design of placing the power button and volume button on the side of the phone, users can easily press the both button to interact with the screen and reach any part in the device.
On the disadvantage side, the Samsung Galaxy S3 is easy to crack and scratched due to their plastic body. The plastic material is unable to withstand large force and it is not scratch resistance. Therefore, the users have to handle the phone gently in order to increase the durable of the phone. The another disadvantage is the size was quite big to handle. Due to the huge size of the phone, the users have to use both of their hands to operate their phone. Moreover, the phone is less portable as it is quite hard for the users to keep in their pocket.
Therefore, the huge design of the phone will bring some inconvenient to their users.
Packaging Design
The design of Samsung galaxy S3 is smooth and nonlinear lines, it is perfectly fit in hand. It is comfortable to grip, the gentle curves and organic structure helps bring a natural feel. Galaxy S3 may not impress with its body and design but its colour marble white, pebble blue, garnet red and titanium grey does. According to the article, Kendra Cherry had mentioned colour play a role in a product design; it will affect our feeling, mood and behavior.
White colour represents purity, peace and feeling of freedom; blue colour brings the feeling of cool, calm and comfortable; red colour associated with energy, power, passion and desire; grey colour represent cool, smart, formal and stylish. The phone is wrap in a plastic frame and it design is emphasize on slimness. The physical specification of S3 is that the dimension (height x width x depth) is 136. 6 x 70. 6 x 8. 6mm and the weight is 133g. It also has 4. 8 inch HD Super AMOLED display, a chipset of quad core application processor at 1. 4GHz and 1GB of RAM.
The operating system that used by S3 is Android 4. (Ice cream Sandwich ) and a new version of Samsung’s Touchwiz UX, the memory storage is 16GB and 32GB. Besides that, the capacity of battery is 2,100mAh it can last long up to 10hours for talk time and 500 hour for standby time. In addition, Galaxy S3 also has 8 megapixel main camera with LED flash and auto focus and 1. 9 megapixel front camera. Furthermore, Galaxy S3 also has a list of strong features component which included Smart Stay, S Voice, S Beam, All Share Play and Group Cast. Smart Stay is a function that the front camera will looks deep into your eyes and the screen will maintains a bright display as long as you’re looking at it.
S Voice is very innovative feature that allow the uses to tell the phone to send email, text message, take image, video shoot, answer call and voice dial. S Beam with the help of Wi-Fi Direct it can simplify the work of transferring and sharing documents, contacts, photo files and music. All Share play and Group cast are features that help in multimedia sharing using DLNA and Wi-Fi Direct protocols. The call quality of S3 also quite good, the calls which made by s3 were loud and clear, the sound of the speaker was audible and clear.
On the other hand, the design of Iphone 5 is thinner and lighter than S3, its body made by heavy glass on back with aluminum. The side frame of the phone is made by aluminum so that it looks like metallic and more stylish. Iphone5 has two colors which are back & slate and white & silver with the memory capacity of 16GB, 32GB and 64GB. The balck color version has combine black glass and off black aluminum, it look more elegant and one part of evil. The white and silver mode has a classy look that is much friendlier in appearance than the back one. The size of the Iphone5 is much taller and thinner, the dimension is (122. 8 height mm x 58. mm width x 7. 6 mm depth) and the weight is 112g. The display of Iphone5 is awesome which it is a retina display with 4 inch widescreen Multi-Touch and it allows displaying multiple languages and characters simultaneously. Iphone 5 is run by new A6 processor, it is speedier than A5 processor, which allow promptly loads apps and crunches data. Next, the battery capacity of Iphone 5 is 1440mAh, talk time able up 8 hours on 3G, standby time able up to 225 hours which all of these also less than Galaxy S3. Iphone 5 has 8 megapixel main camera and 1. 2 megapixel front camera which included panorama mode, auto focus, LED flash and geotagging.
Even though, S3 also has 8 megapixel main camera but Iphone 5’s camera is a bit sharper than S3. Apple also did away with the 30-pin jack for its new Lightning connector of Iphone5, which can be plugged-in without needing to fumble around to get it the right way up. Besides that, Apple use iOS 6 to run the Iphone5 operating system, it is simple, easy to use and full of fun animations while S3’s android interfaces may not be as brighter as iOS 6. There are some strong features that Iphone5 had and it helps to carry out excellent performances such as apple app store, iCloud, AirPlay and AirPrint.
Apple app store has provided over 700,000 quality-priced apps and most of them are free, it can make your iphone more capable and fun. iCould includes iTunes in the cloud, iTunes Match, Photo Stream, Find my iPhone and Documents. It allow users to access all of their iTunes contents, back up and syncs the data. AirPlay is a function that allows users wirelessly streams content from iphone to the Apple HDTV and whatever you do on your phone it will appear on the HDTV at the same time. AirPrint is using Wi-Fi to connect the printer and iphone, so that allow users to print whatever is on the screen. ,4. 1 Characteristics of the brand The characteristics of Apple’s iphone 5 are creativity, diversity and individuality which combined with well-designed products to captivate the consumers’ attention. Some functions of iphone 5 are very creative such as it supports custom vibration which allows the users to create new vibration and save it for their contact. Besides that, Apple added “Do Not Disturb” mode in iOS 6, which enabled users to set when and what calls and alerts get through while there are sleeping or otherwise preoccupied.
Do Not Disturb function helps to show differentiation between iphone 5 and other smart phones which it can be used to make our lives easier and address simple needs. Even though Apple always perceives as “younger”, but it products are not age-specific. The branding strategy that used by Apple is more focus on the emotions. Apple brand personality is about lifestyle, stylish, cool, casual, imagination, aspiration and power to the people through technology. The characteristic of Samsung’s galaxy S3 are elegant, intelligent and stylish. The Samsung Galaxy S3 has four colours which enable the customers to have more options.
These new colour variants make its products become more attractive and evoke the phone’s emotional. For example, some of customer may think marble white S3 brings out the feeling of elegant and garnet red brings out the feeling of stylist. S3 is an intelligent product which it has a strong list of features. One of the examples, S Voice is allows the user to command the phone to send email, text message, take image, video shoot, answer call and voice dial.
Pricing
The target market of Apple is high and middle income professionals and high school, college and graduate students. Apple try to price it iphone 5 depended on the memory capacity of the phone, 16GB sell at RM2,199 , 32 GB RM2499 and 64GB RM2799. The main reason Apple will use this different price level strategy because they try to fulfill customer’s wants and needs. Some of the customers will prefer buy 64GB instead of 32GB because they would like to have large memory spaces to sync more videos and movies into their phone. Apple rarely reduce their price to compete with the competitors because they want to focuses on premium pricing and prevent involve in prices war.
Meanwhile, the Samsung set the price of Samsung Galaxy S3 relatively lower than Iphone5 in order to compete with Apple. In Malaysia, S3 16GB is sells at the price range of RM1445- RM1999 and S3 32GB is sells at the price range of RM1785 – RM1999. In the Samsung’s website they didn’t show the price of S3 due to the other distributors sell the products at different prices. The chances for S3 to experience price depreciation are quite high, because many people expected Samsung Galaxy S4 is similar with S3. Since the demand of S3 start decreasing it caused the price of S3 decrease.
Distribution
In order for Apple to distribute their products they have chosen a hybrid distribution channel which involving its online store, physical outlets and mobile service provider. Besides that, Apple also partner with local mobile communication service providers to sell their products together with data plan services. For example Digi, Celcom, Hotlink, Maxis and U mobile sell their data plans together with Iphone5. The apple store and service provider outlet allows the customers to test driving the iphone and selecting the rate plan. After they decided to purchase the product they can collect the iphone right away.
As for Apple online store, the customers straight away can view the product catalog thorough their company website. After they purchased the iphone the company will deliver it to a preferred address. The distribution of Samsung Galaxy S3 is extensive across the countries which its distribution is more widely than apple. The distribution channel has involving its Samsung outlets, mobile service provider, retailer and dealer. The consumer can purchase S3 through some internet websites such as amazon. com and www. lazada. com. my then the product will be delivered to them.
Besides that, Samsung also partner with local mobile communication service providers to sell their products together with data plan services. As for retailers such as hypermarket- Jusco, electrical shop – Harvey Norman and SenQ also selling Samsung Galaxy S3.
Communication
The communication strategic that Apple applied to its business is the pull and push strategy. One was the company advertising, promoting the iphone5 by itself thorough marketing communication mix channels and the other is relying on the selected distributors to advertise the iphone.
This approach is able to help the company to differentiate themselves from the competitors and create added values to services. Apple used many different type of marketing communication mix channels to communicate with customers and promote their products such as email marketing, printed advertisement, social media advertisement, blogs and company’s website. In email marketing approach Apple will send message to every customer few weeks before launching their products. Furthermore, Samsung also used pull and strategy to its business.
The company used various type of marketing communication mix channels to advertise and promote S3. For example, tv advertisements, radio, printed advertisement, facebook , youtube, blog and Samsung’s website. Samsung also create a facebook page in order to communicate with their customer and allow them to provide feedbacks. Samsung also will organize road show and campaign in the shopping mall or University in order to promote their Galaxy S3 and create brand awareness.
Recommendation
As mention earlier, both brands have it similarities and its differences in term of their product which are smartphone. In order them to compete fiercely in this competitive environment and to gain better competitive advantage, both brand must keep improving themselves, here we provide couple of idea on how both brand can be implement to strive a competitive advantage.
Samsung
As stated above, Samsung has a couple of problem that encounter such as the unstable system of Android, S voice application and vulnerability of the product. To be more competitive, Samsung should alter the problem they face in which to satisfy the customer need and the customer expectation. In the Android system, Samsung should stabilize the system with Android to compete with other competitor such as Apple. They must keep improving themselves in term of stabilization, flexibility and efficiency to satisfy customer expectation, if they do so, they can enhance the company reputation and sale and eventually profit. S voice application had been complaint that, the use of S voice application would incur the error of connection or network.
To make solution on it, the same ways as the Android system is to fix it. Beside, benchmark could be an effective solution; Samsung had been critic that their product is easily crack and scratched due to plastic made. Samsung can learned from their competitor on how to produce a better product which using the aluminium instead of plastic or with both as to generate consumer choices.
Many of the customer had claims that Samsung had copy the idea from its competitor (Apple), where Apple had sue Samsung of the duplication of the patent. Due to these cases, it is advice that Samsung should take initiative to innovate and create unique product to the market. To be a first-mover rather than second-mover should be implements on the strategy of Samsung, Samsung should maintain it brand in the mean of innovative rather than a “Copy Cats”. Product should be create uniquely and launch as fast as possible as beat down the duplicate from competitor could be consider by Samsung as customer nowadays are seeking uniqueness and differences.
Internal factor such as marketing department and human resources department should be considers by Samsung. Samsung should advertise strongly in their brand by using persuasive advertising to persuade customer to buy their product, beside advertising other marketing tools can be used as well such as sponsorship, public relation and sale promotion to attract existing customer and steal from other competitor. Samsung must ensure that all the employees are known about Samsung and provide better services to their customer, term such as Total Quality Management (TQM) can be implementing, which mean all worker are responsible to the quality of the product and continuous improvement.
From its external view, Samsung should identify the desire and the demand of a product by Samsung. Research and Development (R&D) are inevitable to capture and satisfy customer want and need. Besides its customer, Samsung must understand their competitor in term of their current product, resources and future new launch product. By understanding of this, Samsung can make prepare of their strategy and marketing policy to compete with other and to gain competitive advantage.
Apple
Apple can design the Iphone 5 with a larger size of screen associated with improved HD display and wide range of color gamut. With bigger size and HD display of screen, Iphone 5 could be able to show a clearer video and photo review, screen monitoring and make users distinct to their eyes. Across the whole spectrum of colors on the iPhone 5 customers can expect accurate, well saturated colors that will look as accurate as they would on a reasonably calibrated desktop display. As mentioned above, the thin design of the phone made the phone become fragile. To overcome this kind of roblem, we suggest that Apple Company use the metal aluminum instead of steel and added the shockproof features at the edges of the phone to prevent the easy cracking. Steel is harder but is heavier, this will reduce the consumers markets as nowadays most of the phone users prefer lightweight modern phone. Whereas the aluminum is much lighter and provide slim looking that might successfully get the attraction of the phone users. The light metal casing with shockproof features added not only helps in strong protecting of the phone, but also would not make the Iphone 5 too heavy to carry and flexible.
In order to solve the connectivity of Siri (voice assistance feature), which must access with the internet, Iphone 5 can actually involve few features or application software that is free connected without internet access or Wi-Fi once users are downloaded it. Application software like Siri, WhatsApp and Maps which are high frequency usage by users can consider develop the ‘Wi-Fi free’ or more connections feature such as industry-standard microUSB port, with MHL compatibility in the Iphone 5 so that it will bring higher convenience as it quick and easy to use and it will become a more functionable phone to the consumers.
Besides that, the problem of Siri feature in their navigation map only supports English will lower down the satisfaction of the Iphone users because some other users are not using English as their main language and may be their pronunciation in English is not so accurate with their mother tongue. Therefore multi language should support in Iphone5 Siri application. Chinese, French, Japanese or Indonesian which are more common languages can make it to be detectable by Siri may be by putting a separate app in the store for each language. The iPhone 5 handles multiple languages with grace, and users only need to have a single app with all the various translations. The iPhone’s locale setting will direct user app as to which language to use.
iOS operating system in Iphone 5 unable to properly read the settings required to run the program such as Flash or Shockwave videos, thus new browser or latest and more versions of software files are recommend so that different kind of website can be access in order able to compete with the major competitiors.
Better color gamut with easier video playing access will increase the satisfaction of consumers as the good performance of Iphone 5 fulfill the needs and wants of them because most of the phone users using smartphone and different kind of application as their short-time entertainment. Moreover, Iphone 5 can provide more support widgets, themes and personalization options in order to increase their creativity in the Iphone. For example, daily memo or screen key button with the different design of background, themes or color enable make the users feel special and fresh when use it as they can choose or set their favorite design.
Special widgets such as face unlock, or respond to a call with a text can be added to the Iphone 5 to increase its value of uses. Face unlock is good as most of the times consumers will always forget their unlock password or some users concern about high confidentiality, so with this features, no one can easily access to their phone. Respond to a call with a text sometimes easy to ignore incoming calls without being rude if you’re too busy to answer, it is pretty convenience. 4. 0 Conclusion In this assignment, we had discussed the two brands which are Apple and Samsung and their product which are smartphone.
Apple a multinational corporation, founder of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and Samsung a multinational conglomerate company, founder of Lee Byung Chull are both a strong competitor with each other and their main business is in electronic industry. We also discussed the smartphone produce by both the company which Apple produce Iphone5 and Samsung product Samsung Galaxy S3. We also compare the two products by both companies in term of their product characteristic. In brand mantra, Iphone5 used “Think Difference” while Samsung brand mantra was “Design for human, inspired by nature”.
Both of the products consist of point-of-parity such as access to Wi-Fi and video capability and point-of-differences such as Apple Nano sim card and application used. Other than that, there are also similarities and differences of both of the product. Both products had the similarities function in term of map searching, and with different application uses. Besides both of the products consist of digital voice assistance features, where Apple it names as Siri and Samsung as S voice. However, there are a pro and cons of the function in both product as discussed earlier.
The differences between both of the products would be the operation system in the smartphone; iOS the operating system for Apple and Android for Samsung, both the operating are performing different function as why this could be differences. The design by both company toward their product is differences as well even a slightly differences. The packaging, characteristic, pricing, distribution and communication by both of product have it similar and differences. Apple has it creativity, diversity and individuality by the characteristic whereas Samsung provides elegant, intelligent and stylish.
The price of both product also different as well, but the prices of Samsung phone is much lower than Apple due to compete with Apple. In distributional channel, both companies have it similarities which they work out with local communication industry other than that, both companies had function their marketing such as advertising to communication to their customer. Lastly, we provide some recommendation to both brands Apple and Samsung to enhance their company as well as their brand, reputation, and profit.
