“Me too” is Not Disrupting!
Last week Amazon introduced its tablet, the Kindle Fire. It was seen as a major move for Amazon, a possible threat to Netflix and an attractively priced alternative to the iPad. The media gushed. Jeff Bezos did his best Steve Jobs impression.
It won’t mean a thing. A year from now, the iPad will still rule the tablet world. Since Apple introduced it, numerous companies have jumped into the market with their own tablet offerings. HP has one. Samsung has the Galaxy. RIM came late to the party with its own sad tablet entry, the PlayBook. Lenovo has its IdeaPad. Motorola has the Xoom. Panasonic came out with the Viera. ViewSonic debuted the G Tablet. Have I missed any?
The market’s reaction to these tablets? A collective yawn followed by, “Cool. When is the iPad 3 coming out?” Not only is each tablet clearly a design clone of the iPad, but the media is already defining them as “iPad killers.” As I say in Provoke, if the market is already defining your brand in terms of your competitor, you’ve lost the war.
The iPad was not the first tablet, but Apple was the first company to get it right, and that’s what the market cares about. Their product was packed with innovations, and now consumers anticipate each new iPad like kids waiting for Santa at Christmas. Why? Because Apple doesn’t play it safe. The company takes risks and believes in its visions. It doesn’t focus group its ideas to death. It goes for it and doesn’t fear being ridiculed. Where are the folks now who were calling the iPad an oversized iPod?
What I don’t understand is why so many other good companies think that they can hop on the “me too” bandwagon and be seen as innovative. Do they think for one second that their customers see such moves as anything but desperate? You can see some freaked-out CEO shouting into his phone, “Jenkins, Apple has a tablet! We need one, too! Get me Engineering!”
It never works, because these companies are not innovating. They’re making bad copies. Example: In the PC world, we’ve seen many players try to mimic what Dell did so brilliantly. Dell’s innovations in inventory management, custom PC development and customer support made the company a legend. Michael Dell’s departure has cost the company in terms of the will to innovate, and time will tell whether that disruptive spirit remains. But so far, no one has stepped up to out-innovate Dell in that space.
Unless your new offerings in an established space introduce startlingly new and creative ideas that advance the product category, you’ll be seen as a me-too. With Amazon, which already disrupted and changed online retailing, distribution and then cloud infrastructure, I would have said, “Why bother with an iPad clone? Why not take the Kindle in a completely different direction?”Amazon’s ability to disrupt is massive, and Bezos’s ability to execute is exceptional, so why go after the tablet? What is the plan?
Me-too strategies, either done organically or by acquisition, no longer impress consumers. We are too savvy. If you want to own your market, you need to think originally, take risks and disrupt, and delight the market!
Related articles
- Can Kindle Fire match the iPad? (guardian.co.uk)
- How the Kindle Fire could make 7-inch tablets huge (cnn.com)
The Kindle Fire is much more than just another tablet “me-too”. It is a purpose-built device made for purchasing and consuming content from Amazon’s vast digital catalog. It is hard wired to the Amazon ecosystem. From books to movies to music to apps, the Kindle Fire is a handheld manifestation of Amazon itself. Amazon began as an online bookstore, but it has evolved into a content powerhouse. Want a device that can seamlessly access the entire Kindle bookstore? Done. A device that can stream the entire Prime video library? Done. A device that can directly access digital music for less than the cost of the same music on iTumes? Done. It is this tight integration with Amazon content that makes the Kindle Fire different.
As an avid user of Apple devices, I appreciate the ease and simplicity of having all my content in one easy to access place. I never felt compelled to purchase an Android based tablet because none of them offer tight integration with a content ecosystem. Until now. The Kindle Fire is the first device that has even made me consider anything but an iPad. Sure, you could say it’s an iPad “me-too,” but it has done something that no other tablet since the iPad has been able to do. It makes the consumption of digital content easy, painless, and even fun. And at $199, it is a killer deal. It’s no wonder it quickly became Amazon’s top selling product.
The way I see it, there are many people who want to own an iPad but can’t justify the price. The Kindle Fire is a perfect alternative for the budget conscious consumer who wants a full featured tablet with an entire ecosystem built in. It fills a gap that no one else had filled and does it beautifully. Maybe it isn’t a truly innovative device, but it does exactly what people want at a price they can actually afford. The Kindle Fire is here to stay.
Many of the tablet products we’ve seen on the market after the iPad have been “me-too” products. But consumers are just beginning to understand all the use cases for these devices – and they need choices to match those use cases. Though the iPad is a great device, some consumers prefer not to be in the closed Apple ecosystem and place a higher value features such as a more open OS, USB and media slots and Flash playback. More power to them, and to the likes of Samsung and Acer, who have come out with some great options – competition and choice is good for the consumer, especially in this rapidly-evolving product space.
The Amazon Fire has several things going for it though. First of all, the price point. At $199 it’s playing in a different sandbox than the iPad, which starts at $499. If there is one thing we learned from the $99 HP Touchpad fire-sale, it is that there is an enormous market for a lower priced tablet device. The market can easily support different price-points – there’s plenty of space for more competition.
More importantly, Amazon is going for a longer-term play with the Kindle Fire. We know that Amazon is taking a loss on every Kindle Fire they sell (Industry estimates are that it costs $201.70 to manufacture, and it sells at $199) Clearly, Amazon is taking a Customer Lifetime Value approach and expects to profit from the media it sells on the Kindle Fire – books, music and video. Apple also sells music and video – but one competitive advantage Amazon has is the enormous amounts of customer preference and purchase data it can mine to make recommendations and suggestions to consumers.
So I don’t see the Kindle Fire as a me-too device – I see it playing in a slightly different sandbox with some powerful competitive advantages as compared to the iPad. Consumers may choose one or the other – and some will even choose both.
Blog response for BBUS 525
Sadly this happens in a lot of industries. When Boeing announced the revolutionary 787, Airbus quickly followed with their A350 copy. The 787 is still out selling the A350 2 to 1. It was very disappointing to me when Boeing followed Airbus A320neo with its 737Max. It seems that this is a cycle that that repeats itself with the same companies over and over again.
It is not at all uncommon to see products from different companies especially in the high-tech industry that do something marginally better than its competitors. Every company, (even Apple) has done this in the past and I think that is very healthy for the market in general to come up with products that leapfrog the current state of the art. Ultimately, its all about building the right product for the right customer at the right time.
While the IPad definitely created a new category of devices, a lot of the ideas behind the tablet form factor were based on earlier products like the Newton PDA, tablet PC and other less well-known devices. So, if the only revolutionary idea in the original IPad was its touch capability, does that make it a “me too” as well. It’s interesting that no one talks about IPad predecessors that belonged to the tablet segment. Perhaps there is a social norm of some sort that causes people to perceive themselves as uncool or outdated if they are not apple fans.
PS.: I’m a life-long admirer of Steve Jobs but I like to question my own personal biases
Of course other companies are going to develop tablets of their own. Why would you let Apple have 100% of the market for tablets- or any other product for that matter? Just because this copy cat product isn’t organically innovative doesn’t mean you can’t make money off of it. More companies will start selling tablets, these tablets will become better and more similar to the ipad, and then ipads will start dropping in price. This is similar to what happened with the iphone. They were somewhere around $800 when they were first released. Now you can buy one for $100.
Amazon is a content driven company and the Kindle Fire provides the consumer with another opportunity to consume titles from Amazon. The Fire is not necessarily a direct competitor the iPad. The media has placed Apple on a pedestal and assumes all gadgets must be compared to the closest Apple device. The long range strategy for the Kindle will create repeat customers coming back for additional titles and thus in the long be a huge success for Amazon.
Competition is key or else there is no reason to innovate. I don’t believe that copycats shouldn’t engage unless they want to be a serious player–think the $99 Android tablets found at Macy’s, Walgreens, etc during the holidays–who buys those?
True players with competitive advantages like LG and Samsung should play. They provide the guts of the iPad and in certain ways have improved features (see Samsung’s Super AMOLED displays–they’re beautiful). They provide variety, options and choices. Is it disruptive, maybe not, but it is relevant to their business model and a logical extension to their product portfolio. The challenge is how it is executed and the future vision of the products. Let’s look at Apple and iBooks. Is iBooks disruptive? Kindle books have been out for years and has done a phenomenal job. Apple is trying to play and gain market share here. If they can create a platform to rival digital textbooks, then they are challenging the incumbent.
I think the Kindle line of products are brilliant and disruptive. As Dave mentioned in great detail, the Kindle Fire is in fact a great stand-alone product that delivers incredible value and service through Amazon’s cloud platform. What makes the Kindle line of products so interesting is how Amazon is using a familiar hardware format to sell their core business: content and retail services. That is true disruption. The beauty of it is that most people are fooled by the Kindle’s seemingly “me, too” façade. In reality, Amazon is completely disrupting how content providers and retailers convince people to buy their goods. For the record, Sony has been trying to do this for years in music and movies… Amazon’s just doing it much better, now, across the retail spectrum.
I agree with Duncan in that while the “me too” approach is not necessarily disrupting, it doesn’t mean that it cannot be. Is the innovation in the tablet product or the Apple’s strategy of delivering a portal to an entire ecosystem? The funny thing is that the Fire was NOT described in terms of the iPad, it was described as a hybrid between the Kindle and other tablet offerings. It didn’t come from nowhere like other tablets, it evolved from an existing disruptive product. Amazon is not just putting out another “me too” product offering with the Fire. It’s exciting consumers who are expecting further disruption through this product.
Perhaps this is a case of disruption that is not obvious. According to the Provoke book, which states that, embracing opportunity and disrupting the established market hinges on one‘s ability to think beyond what is obvious, practical, and proven and means embracing the new for its own sake and being willing to be thought foolish. This could be what Amazon is doing with the Kindle Fire.