Apple Simplicity, Dell Stupidity

Some people say Steve Jobs can see the future and others say he is an amazing marketer. I would agree with the later and it really hit home this past weekend as I was reading a magazine and saw an ad from Dell. Last week Dell launched it’s iPhone killer called the Streak and partnered with Tata-DOCOMO for the 3G launch. It was a full page magazine ad and a paper cut-out of the actual size phone that was attached to the magazine via a string. I will give the Dell marketing team kudo’s for the cut-out so I could compare the Streak to my current phone, but the full page ad in Forbes Magazine was complete techno-speak and I’m sure the target audience just glazed over it.

The list of features on the full page ad were:

• 5″ multi-touch LCD display with Corning Gorilla Glass
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz Processor
• 3G, Wi-Fi
• 5MP cameras
• 1530mAH battery
• 512MB ROM + 512MB RAM + 2GB non-user accessible MicroSD
• 16GB MicroSD card included
• Free upgrade to Android 2.1 post availability

Let me dissect each feature:

• Does anyone really care about Corning Gorilla Glass? Does the glass break easily or not is the question.
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz Processor. 1GHz means nothing to me and most people, is it fast or not.
• 3G, Wi-Fi. Good.
• 5MP cameras – why not spell out megapixel?
• 1530mAH battery – this just made me explode, I really have no context of what this means. Does the battery last a long time or not.
• 512MB ROM + 512MB RAM + 2GB non-user accessible MicroSD. Non-user accessible? then why even tell me
• 16GB MicroSD card included. Good
• Free upgrade to Android 2.1 post availability – I have no idea what 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 means. And a true Android geek would call these releases by their code names such as Eclair (2.0/2.1), Froyo (2.2), Gingerbread (2.3), Honeycomb (3.0), etc…

I can partly understand where the Dell marketing team is coming from, they have always had to compete on technical computer specs.  But, when it comes to the phone they need to have a marketing team that understands that selling a phone is not the same as selling a computer. Which is something that Apple gets whether they are selling a computer, iPhone or iPad.