“Apple today announced pre-orders of its iPhone 5 topped two million in just 24 hours, more than double the previous record of one million held by iPhone 4S”

That’s a quote from Apple’s announcement yesterday about how excited they were with customers’ reaction to the launch of the iPhone 5 following a mixed reaction from the media (something we analysed with our new Lissted application last week).

2m in 24 hours sounds very impressive, and it is in absolute terms.

But all things are relative and when you put this number in context it loses its shine a little. To do this we need some data and a couple of assumptions.

Data

The table at the bottom of this post shows quarterly sales volumes of iPhones since the product was launched. These have been extracted from Apple’s quarterly results from Q/E 30/6/2007 – Q/E 30/6/2012 (hat-tip to @latestgadgetsuk for pointing me in the right direction). These show that total iPhone sales in this 5 year period have been 244.16m.

Assumptions

1. That on average iPhone owners upgrade their phones every 18 months. In reality it will probably be a mix of die hards changing every new model and less ardent fans perhaps changing every two models, with some in-between.

2. That it is only existing iPhone owners who have pre-ordered the iPhone 5. This won’t be the case, there’s bound to be some new converts in there, but if so this would only make my conclusion stronger.

iPhone 5 pre order analysis

On this basis then on average people who bought their iPhone 18 months ago would be looking to upgrade about now. Looking at the table below that means the Q/E 26/3/2011. Apple sold 18.65m phones in this quarter. That’s approx. 200,000 per day.

Given Apple effectively announced the iPhone 5 on the 4th September by their invite I seriously doubt many people went out and upgraded their iPhone 4 to a 4S in this period. In which case by the time pre orders opened on 14th September there would be (on average) 10 days of pent up demand for upgrades. 10 days @ 200,000 per day = 2m.

In other words the number of pre orders is equal to the number of upgrades you would have expected given the number of iPhone owners, likely upgrade cycle and the 10 day fallow sales period that the invite probably caused.

iPhone 4S pre order analysis

And what about the comparison to the iPhone 4S previous record of 1m that it “shattered”. In this case we need to look at the Q/E 27/3/2010 to find the likely upgraders.

Apple sold 8.75m phones in that quarter. That’s approx. 100,000 per day. Invites to the launch went out on the 27th September 2011 and pre orders started on 7th October 2011 – 10 days again. 10 x 100,000 is……you guessed it 1m.

So the level and growth in pre orders arguably represents nothing more than existing customers upgrading at expected levels and the growth in the iPhone ownership base since the 4S was launched.

So watch out whenever the iPhone 6 comes out. If Apple wants to “shatter” the pre-order record again you might just see those invites going out a week earlier!

The three words that kept coming to my mind were authenticity, humanity and community. In the order of their occurrence in the film these were some bits that stuck out for me.

1. Open and honest with people – refers to his own background and life on a number of occasions including referring to himself as still almost normal and sharing the pain of the loss of his grandmother.
2. Generous when giving credit – when talking to his campaign manager for Senator it is she who he credits for success not himself.
3. Calm – in both positive and disappointing situations like losing the New Hampshire primary after winning Iowa and the knock backs in Ohio and Texas.
4. Empathises – even with a nine year old over the act of shaking hands.
5. Relaxed – his body movement is so natural it’s frightening and he’s not bad on a basketball court either!
6. Community organiser – always talking about a grassroots movement for change.
7. Clarity – Looks for simple, clear messages e.g. when talking about fuel and emissions standards when he highlights the simple win-win and of course Change. Yes We Can.
8. Inspires all ages – even a nine year old volunteers to make calls for him and an older voter is out on the street campaigning for the first time since Bobby Kennedy.
9. Personal –  asks everyone their name when meeting people on the street, recognising that names are one of the most personal things to everyone.
10. Nothing is impossible – Hillary Clinton’s 30 point lead in the national polls doesn’t deflect him.
11. Treats his opponents with respect – congratulates Clinton on Ohio and Texas, though sometimes uses light hearted humour to have a dig e.g. the “likeable” comment in connection with Clinton in the New Hampshire debate.
12. Truth – when he speaks his mind about race at the National Constitution Center even though he doesn’t know if it’s a good idea for the campaign.

And above all the process it is not about him. He is seeking an American victory and when successful in primaries the vote wasn’t about him it was about the people. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”.

Messrs Brown, Cameron and Clegg these are the qualities I want in a leader and I suspect many other people might too.

“due to adverse weather conditions we have decided that employee safety is paramount and we want our employees to get home safely so our offices are now closed.”

Whilst this is admirable and I *applaud* their concern for employee safety the fact that they hadn’t thought to put in place alternative arrangements to handle inbound communications amazes me in 2010. And this from an organisation whose strapline is “We CAN be bothered”. Well Simply Health apparently you can’t be bothered to make any arrangements to deal with members, some of whom could have urgent health matters. Couldn’t you have diverted your numbers to a mobile number? Couldn’t someone have rung in and got messages off voicemail and returned calls? Couldn’t you have manned an email address and then returned calls? Couldn’t a senior member of staff with appropriate transport have manned the phones? Ironic really when a recent press release stated:

“During difficult times such as these, companies need to be working harder than ever to attract and retain customers and it is disappointing that customers are finding this is not the case.”

“At Simplyhealth, we pride ourselves on always putting our customers first and doing the right thing, not the easy thing, which we believe is the way in which all customer facing companies should operate.”

I realise that the current weather conditions are adverse – I am in Newcastle which is pretty badily hit – but in this day and age of technology there is no excuse for not maintaining communications. If you are going to make a big thing out of your attitude being different you need to demonstrate it.

Update – I was contacted by Twitter shortly before finalising this post which was a good response and as I have said I don’t disagree with the sentiment about employee safety merely the lack of effort that would appear to have been made to “do the right thing not the easy thing”.

Update 6pm, 8/1/10 - Have received a call from the Corporate Sales and Marketing Director at Simply Health who was  in agreement that with hindsight more could have been done to maintain service levels. The “can be bothered” sentiment was expressed strongly with promises of actions to be taken and I will be updating this post as and when these occur. I hope to be able to report my trust being restored in the brand over the next few days.

Update 9.30am 9/1/10 – Received a call from their customer services manager who had been alerted to my issue by their PR Manager. He apologised for the frustration caused, accepted the constructive nature of the criticism and promised action to resolve my issues first thing on Monday morning. Mark sounded very concerned to ensure that his customers were looked after. The response so far has been excellent, it would be interesting to know though what other customer experiences have been like.

Update 3pm 12/1/10 – This should be my final entry. Have now been contacted by customer services they have processed my referral and an appointment is about to be made. An excellent service in the end. Would be good to know if Simply Health are going to put in place different procedures in the event of any similar situations, but I have definitely experienced evidence that they can indeed be bothered.

Case closed.

I will be joining the Newcastle/Gateshead group who will be “sleeping” at the Baltic Centre. If anyone would like to sponsor me then please visit my Just Giving page. Any contributions gratefully received.

via Why, That’s Delightful!

These films were some of the best loved from my teenage years and as others have pointed out included some seminal 80’s music.

Here’s an appropriate example – RIP John.

This meant that the work that he would do on a business’s systems, though nothing in this case to do with their identity or communications, would still play a part in establishing that brand through the experiences people would have.

To help him visualise the concept I asked him what he thought of when he heard the name “Volkswagen“. He said all the things you would think – reliable, solid, well engineered etc. I then asked him what would be the first thing he would do if he sat in a VW car in a showroom. His answer was “I would touch the dashboard plastics to get the reassurance that the build quality was what I expected”. In other words how did the plastics feel.

But if the plastics didn’t pass this “touch test” would this effect his perception of the car and VW? Absolutely he replied. Enough to potentially leave the showroom? Absolutely.

So here is an intelligent, logical and technical individual saying that his perception of the VW brand would be materially effected by whether a piece of plastic that cost a few pounds was of sufficient quality to pass his “touch test” expectations.

A reminder that a brand is made up of a huge collection of, often, small experiences, all of which have to add up to that promise of performance and pass our own “touch tests” everyday.

Does your brand pass the touch test?

Following my post last week about Twitter being fan mail for the 21st century this got me thinking how much easier creating this playlist and sharing it was than when I was a teenager.

Creating mixer tapes was an art and one that took a lot of time and effort. Every track had to be recorded from source (records in the main for me!) to the tape. So creating a 20 track playlist like mine cost money (the tape) and took around three to four hours allowing time for selection and recording. Remember you had to work out the order first, no ability to just move things around on a screen. Oh and I also had to own all the music!

Whereas on Friday it took me about 10 minutes and cost me nothing and I had the entire Spotify catalogue to choose from. True a few of the tracks I thought of using weren’t there but given that new ones are being added all the time this will get better and better I suspect.

I once had to create a five hour series of tapes for an 18th birthday party for a friend of mine. Took me an entire day. Would have taken about an hour I reckon on Spotify!

I realise that this isn’t really new in that the ability to create playlists from digital content speeded up the process a long time ago and that if you aren’t too worried about the legal issues you don’t need to “own” all the content. However the key differences with Spotify are first of all it is legal and second it is the ability to share your playlists so easily and so widely.

However the slight downside of this is that making a tape back in the day was such an investment of time it was a way of demonstrating how you felt about that special someone Plus it couldn’t be shared very easily – yes you could copy it but it took time – so it was likely to remain personal to them. Post Spotify I suppose there is a danger that creating such playlists is now no different to a quick visit to the petrol station to buy a bunch of flowers when you’ve forgetten someone’s birthday!

Anyway it’s still bloomin’ great and though I haven’t been formally tagged in this meme I am going to be cheeky and join in so I tag Stephen, Mat and Shannon. Look forward to a lot of great tunes.

At webitpr we have been so busy with service and other developments that we haven’t had time to do anything quite as lengthy or creative. We have though made a commitment to send up to 10 releases for free each month next year for charities that our clients are involved in. As a treasurer of a local charity myself I think 2009 will be particularly challenging for these organisations and so we thought if people can’t help as easily with cash then perhaps we can give some time. Any client of ours who would like to take advantage of this offer just let us know.

Our other news for 2009 is that we will no longer be called webitpr. From the 2nd January 2009 we are changing the company name to Realwire Limited. Our service has gone by this name for nearly a year now and the company name change is being done in response to feedback from our clients to better reflect who we are and what we do – a real group of people helping them to get value from a wire service.

Nothing else is changing just our name – same owners, same team and same service.

I may find time to sneak away and write a few posts during the break, but in the meantime have a great festive period one and all.

Best Christmas song ever IMHO!

A search for “poverty” in Google finds 60 million results. Sounds a lot until you compare it to the following:

“money” – 950 million
“credit” – 723 million
“debt” – 149 million

Of course some of these references will be using the words in other contexts e.g. “it is to his credit”, but these results arguably still reflect the world’s priorities.

But perhaps there is some hope for us yet as a search for “greed” only finds 19 million results – so at least poverty has got that one beaten?

Since our very flukey meeting in April 2007 we have been through a lot together. We have debated and discussed many topics both work and non work related at length. He has been a fantastic provider of insight and guidance to me and the company at large in our embracing of the Social Media News Release, our blog outreach and our general Web2.0 awareness. Including a rather amusing day making a video. He has played a key part in our recent double award winning achievements which has seen us named North East Digital Innovator of the Year and Lincolnshire’s Most Innovative Business.

We don’t see this as him leaving us though just changing the nature of our relationship. webitpr is very much a “family” and employment status is not a prerequisite for membership of that family and as his launch client, Stephen is most definitely still going to be part of it.

We wish him all the luck in the world. In a few years Stephen I am expecting the North East to be talking about you in the same breath as this guy!