Technological products and the abyss of the market

When we have the enormous responsibility of introducing a new product to the market, and if this product is disruptive or of incremental technology, the considerations of the case have their particularities, since the way to follow does not necessarily have a pre-established route that guarantees a Acceptable percentage of successful results, and omitting this feature in the product and wanting to work with the commercial introduction strategies avoiding the reality can end up being a crazy strategy with a high cost that is likely to discourage the entrepreneurial effort.

However, in the research process focused on the design of an action plan for the product, you come across very valuable information that helps you establish all those activities that will allow you to move in a more consistent direction.

It is well known that research leads you to dust off the past, and to evaluate what others have done in similar scenarios, for this we start by knowing a bit of history and taking a product as the center of research. for this case it will be smart phones.

When we talk about Smartphone, perhaps for some the first thing that comes to mind is the BlackBerry brand founded in 1999, and it turns out that this story begins in 1992 at the hands of the once giant of the computer industry IBM, when it comes out market in that year with the first smart phone that is identified with the little-known name "Angler" that would later be changed to "Simon Personal Communicator" would cost about $ 1,100, and what were the functional characteristics of the team; Make and receive cell phone calls, send emails, take notes, calendar, integrated calendar, downloadable apps, its own predictive text system, was connectable to the fax or computer, touch screen and digital pen. With all this universe of goodness. What was the scope of the product ?, In the US it only reached a figure close to 50,000 units, acquired mainly by entrepreneurs and executives, closing its marketing in 1996 with harsh criticism for the low duration of its battery (1 hour in use) and what high of its introductory price.

How is it possible that a one-of-a-kind product, which comes onto the market under the wing of such a powerful brand, achieves such meager results? What unknown market conditions did the product face?

If this is not enough, let's look at this other case: in 1996 Nokia comes with a more complete proposal, Nokia 9000 "Communicator", which is presented in a shell format with a double screen (non-touch). Introductory price of $ 800, profiled for the business world, QWERTY keyboard, Infrared port, Internet access, Email, Fax, Calendar, Calendar and a battery with a duration of 3 hours in conversation, (more than double that of the IBM Simon) however Despite being a device that had the most exposure in the market, where it appeared in films such as "The Saint" starring Val Kilmer, even TV commercials, Arriving to a later evolution of up to 10 models ranging from the Nokia 9000 to the Nokia 9500. The result is that the Finnish company did not achieve enough success with this product to massify its sale. What a strange coincidence that two innovative and advanced products, at the end had the same fate.

As if that were not enough, in the year 2000 the Swedish company Ericsson, despite the results of its predecessors, is also betting on this market with its Ericsson R380, which entered the corporate sector, attracting attention for its small size, an advantage Compared to the two models already mentioned, 3.5-inch Touch Screen, Phonebook, 950-contact book, Battery with autonomy of up to 4 hours of conversation, infrared port and virtual on-screen keyboard and physical keyboard, Speaker, voice command, Digital pen, SMS, Email, Calendar, Wap Browser, Calculator, Notepad, Clock and Games. It was actually the perfect fusion between a PDA and a mobile phone with Symbian system, with an entry price of $ 700 dollars.

And what was the achievement of this powerful product superior to that of its predecessors ?: the same result of IBM and Nokia, did not reach the massive sale. They did not come out of the so-called "Early Market" and therefore did not capture the attention of the Main Market, and this is where the analysis becomes interesting, because at first glance the 3 devices had all the attributes to be a success: A recognized brand, They count With Budget, The product is innovative, The offer is widely differentiated, in short we can bring together all the compelling reasons that led me to see it as a logical choice to go to market with these products to which over time some would attribute failure to the downside Internet browsing capacity and the incompatibility of email message systems.

But there is a detail a year before Ericsson, in Japan in 1999, launched the NTT Docomo as the first smartphone massively nationalized, aimed at the young population, with the i-mode operating system that gave their devices faster navigation and access to a large amount of content that allowed them to add the enviable figure of 40 million subscribers for 2001. Could this be the reason that led Ericsson to rush without realizing that the focus on the corporate client market was perhaps not the best one?

But what does the death certificate say about the failed models? What is the forensic analysis carried out on the products? Was there any information still in force that could alert the commercial disaster? Well, actually, "YES", long ago 1962 , an Ohio State University professor named Everett Rogers appeared, with a theory in his doctoral thesis called "The Theory of Diffusion of Innovations" that proposes a categorization and quantitative distribution for those who adopt an innovation or idea.

His treatise begins with the Innovators, a small and important group to which he assigns a weight of 2.5% and describes them as: The first to open up to experiment with innovations and because of their propensity to risk are the first to introduce An innovation to the rest of the groups, this being so, it is very likely that this segment of the population was the one that their NTT Docomo effort headed in Japan. After these, he introduces us to the Initial Adopters, to whom 13.5% are assigned, he sees them as a small group, who are identified by their communities as visionaries and their opinion is highly respected in their environment, they are attributed the great responsibility of getting a product to cross that imaginary gap between the early market and the main market, causing a trend to fill a gap in the market.

The third group is called by Rogers: Early Majority with a weight of 34%, which differentiates them from the previous ones as more analytical in their decision-making, they act based on the reference of those who have already tried the product, always seeking to invest in something that represents a real benefit. After this group we find the Late Majority, these are given the same weight as the previous group of 34%, they are considered resistant to change, they only invest in the product if there is sufficient proof of its safety and usefulness and thus we reach the population that in this theory is called the Laggards with a 16% weight are seen as the most resistant to change in all this categorization, they act when the product is already part of the tradition or has been clearly adopted, and may even not accept never the new product.

These 5 groups require a different treatment when connecting with the product and in the introduction strategies used by IBM, Nokia and Ericsson, with the exception of the Japanese company, it is identified that they ignored what was proposed by Rogers, which denotes that they never They found those first ambassadors of the product that served to connect with the rest of the consumers, these ambassadors evangelists to the purest example of Jessica Zollman on Instagram who could be classified as Innovators or Initial Adopters, but who are the bridge that allows them to cross the early market towards main market, and stimulate the adoption rate, these individuals who are not necessarily Millennials, but who are a group open to exploration and experimentation willing to make a new technological product known more for its practical benefits than for its weaknesses , these risky people are extremely important and will be invisibly your first to involved in the hard process of introducing a technological product loaded with innovation.

Certainly the lesson has been costly for all the giants I have mentioned in this article and we cannot hold the directors of these companies responsible only for the lack of focus on the introductory segment, but it is clear that: Not because the product is differentiated, be innovative and come with a brand of international prestige, success is automatically guaranteed, since it must also be understood that in the cases mentioned at that time, the mobile phone industry did not present a robust email and web service, aspects that if I observe the company Canadian RIM, which I take as part of its spearhead for its BlackBerry products and the rest is history.