Cook, Ive, and Federighi on the New IPhone and Apple’s Once and Future Strategy – Businessweek: “To Cook, the mobile industry doesn’t race to the bottom, it splits. One part does indeed go cheap, with commoditized products that compete on little more than price. ‘There’s always a large junk part of the market,’ he says. ‘We’re not in the junk business.’ The upper end of the industry justifies its higher prices with greater value. ‘There’s a segment of the market that really wants a product that does a lot for them, and I want to compete like crazy for those customers,’ he says. ‘I’m not going to lose sleep over that other market, because it’s just not who we are. Fortunately, both of these markets are so big, and there’s so many people that care and want a great experience from their phone or their tablet, that Apple can have a really good business.’”
(via. Business Insider)
This quote from Cook describes our philosophy at Bombing Brain to a T. This is why we don’t care about top paid charts, going freemium, or getting more “installs.” We charge a relatively high but fair price for a product that appeals to the second of Cook’s “segments”. People who want to solve a specific problem and are willing to pay to have that problem solved.
I completely understand and respect those in software who want to attack that first segment. There’s a lot more money and potential to strike it rich over there, I’m quite sure. But there’s also a much better chance as a small indie that you’ll get crushed by the billion-dollar venture-backed companies that are dominating that space as well. Mostly, though, it’s just not a business in which I’m interested. I’d rather sell to customers who are more like me, because I understand their motivations and I know how to make them happy.
The dumbest thing you can do in life is assume that there’s one way to succeed at anything. Living your life via stats, following whatever “most” people are doing is a surefire way to die a mediocrity.
