Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

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> 2. Building a product in a category that is already owned by another brand without positioning themselves opposite it. > This is classic... Burger King will never take over Mcdonalds market share because they are trying to convince people that they are better. Since the category is owned already, they need to claim, "We are different"

For what it's worth, Apple's Jon Ive completely disagrees with you:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/sir-jona...

"...most of our competitors are interesting in doing something different, or want to appear new - I think those are completely the wrong goals. A product has to be genuinely better. This requires real discipline, and that’s what drives us - a sincere, genuine appetite to do something that is better. "

The entrenched winner in the late 90s right before Apple's resurgence was Wintel - cheap and everywhere. What does Apple do to compete? The name of the campaign was literally what the parent comment says a company needs to do - "Think Different" - backed by a line of products that were completely different than Windows: colorful vs beige, whole-stack vs licensed out to third-party manufacturers, premium vs commodity.

Now that Apple's winning, of course they want to try to convince you that different is bad, because different is the threat to their business. They don't want someone coming along and doing to them what they did to Microsoft and Dell.

But what Apple did to Microsoft and Dell is make a better product, which is exactly what Jony Ive is talking about.

Okay, so make a better product. Just don't market it as 'the same thing but better', market it as 'different and better'. That's the point.

Ive wasn't talking about promotion. He was just saying that "different" is not sufficient.

The whole point of this thread is that "better" isn't sufficient, either. If people are happy where they are, the only way "the same thing but better" wins is if it's so much better that it covers the perceived switching cost. There aren't a lot of markets where the current leader is so bad that that's something you can actually pursue as a strategy.

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