AirPower
Failure: What Apple Got Wrong
The
folks from Cupertino pulled the plug on a wireless charger, although not before
promising the world. But when marketers looked out and saw what else was coming
into the market, they made a tough decision.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
One of the earliest rules of the natural
sciences is that nature abhors a vacuum -- at least on planets, like Earth,
that have an atmosphere. The rest of the universe -- not so much. Nothing in
nature ever stands still -- it constantly evolves and adapts to new and changed
conditions and circumstances. There's a continual process of creative
destruction, renewal, and then new birth.
This process should sound painfully
familiar to any entrepreneur because we live with it every day. In our world,
even if you're on the right track, you'll still get run over if you just sit
there. Competitors are running right behind you and they're ready to
quickly copy everything you're doing except your mistakes. The only
constant today is constant change.
Another elemental rule is that next to
nothing in nature ultimately goes to waste - Mother Nature strives to
efficiently reduce waste production and she's the ultimate recycler. It was
mankind that created both material abundance and egregious waste and we've
suffered for our excesses ever since. In the entrepreneur's world, scarcity and
resource constraints are a given. Wastes of time, talent, or cash are cardinal
sins for startups -- luxuries that no smart operator can afford. Squeezing the
last drop out of everything and "making do" is the way the best
businesses are bootstrapped and built.
Every time we hear another story of
excessive spending and grandiose gestures by some unicorn, we know that it's
just a matter of time before the other shoe drops along with that particular
company's prospects for survival. And the outright scams just make the story
even worse. You have to wonder how many more Fyre Festivals and Theranoses it's
going to take before the suckers on both sides (consumers and investors)
finally figure out that there's no
light at the end of those tunnels.
In the real world, the best
entrepreneurs incorporate both of these fundamental ideas -- no persistent
vacuums and no avoidable waste -- into the development of their businesses.
They often do this in an almost unconscious fashion, because these intrinsic
ideas are essential to the process of creating any new enterprise.
Vacuums in the startup world are viewed
as unmet needs, unfulfilled demand, and very attractive opportunities - plain
and simple. Some vacuums are discovered while others are created. But the key
is that no one can afford to sit on the sidelines and watch and wait because,
in today's hyper-competitive world, things are simply moving too quickly. And,
as often as not, it's not the big guys who are jumping on these opportunities,
it's the fast and agile startups who are taking advantage of the growing gaps.
A recent case in point is the vacuum
created by Apple's abandonment (after more than a year of hype and promises) of
a project to bring a multi-device wireless charger to market. The AirPower
wireless charging pad was not to be. The alleged reason is that Apple couldn't
make a product that met its exceptionally high standards and one which would
satisfy the expectations and desires of the company's very choosy customers.
Maybe the big tech companies can afford to promote vaporware and phantom
products for substantial periods of time and then just call it a day, but
nobody else can. And, in fairness, I guess we should give them the
benefit of the doubt. Not every product makes it successfully out the door no
matter how hard you're trying or how sincere your efforts are.
But the more likely reason for the
decision to dump the charging pad was that the marketing team at Apple saw the
handwriting on the wall and decided that belatedly making and launching another
stand-alone device in a world where wireless
charging was rapidly being built into everything -
from cars to card tables and into phones as well - was a bad plan.
So, they bagged the AirPower project and
created a vacuum for the traditional after-market and accessory players like
Belkin as well as an opening for new entrants. Killing a long-promised product
is a tough call for any company, but clearly this was the right decision for
Apple. Reminds me of the old admonition: no matter how far you've gone down the
wrong road, it's never too late to turn back. Time today has a nasty way of
turning your assets into liabilities and they were simply too late to the
party.
Half a bad idea is still a bad idea and,
if you can't commit fully and enthusiastically to a new product launch, the
smarter path is to
forget the whole thing rather than to try
to do something halfway. And, just as
you'd expect, the customers won't be left in the lurch for long because the
slack was quickly taken up by others in the market rushing to fill the vacuum.
My favorite is
the Power Cube, a new product offering by a company called MiPOW, which has developed an inexpensive and elegant
wireless charging unit. And, MiPOW has trumped Apple by combining the
charger with a nestable portable battery (also wireless) that fits easily into
your pocket so you will never run out of power on the road.
One of the
things that I found most appealing about Power Cube is how well-done and clean
the packaging is and how Apple-like (albeit all in black rather than white) the
whole internal kit seemed to be. Just another semi-compliment and
semi-threat to the folks in Cupertino. Slick design alone offers less and less
protection these days and whatever edge it confers lasts for shorter and
shorter periods of time -- even for Apple.
If you're as
much about status, style and fashion as you are about trying to sell new
technology, which Apple clearly is, you're going to have to compete in the same
type of fast-cycle world that is speeding up the pace of the consumer
electronics industry. Fast fashion is no longer just a gamechanger in the
garment district. You can't sit back in any market in the face of growing
demand and expect the rest of the world (or your customers) to wait for you.
Consumers don't care about your constraints and they're only likely to be loyal
until something better comes along.