{"id":13446,"date":"2015-03-19T20:30:11","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T20:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/its-a-1-billion-gadget\/"},"modified":"2015-03-19T20:30:11","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T20:30:11","slug":"its-a-1-billion-gadget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/its-a-1-billion-gadget\/","title":{"rendered":"“It’s a $1 billion gadget…”"},"content":{"rendered":"

“It’s a $1 billion gadget…”<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

parislemon<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Cliff Kuang:<\/p>\n

A few years ago, the CEO of Vertu was showing me the company\u2019s newest $8,000 phone, bragging that the gadget was far more substantial and well-made that any $500 iPhone could hope to be. I stopped him short, pointing out that the iPhone isn\u2019t a $500 gadget. It\u2019s a $1 billion gadget. After all, how many billions has it cost in R&D, to develop all the gobsmacking manufacturing techniques, all the software tricks, the App Store, and all the battery tech inside? The reason it costs so much less than a Vertu isn\u2019t because it\u2019s less well made. It\u2019s because 700 million people have helped amortize Apple\u2019s investment in it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Apple now seems hell bent on finding new ways to flex that muscle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is exactly right. Luxury brands look at Apple and see a low sticker price. What they miss is the billions in R&D spending behind the sticker \u2014 and the hundreds of millions of units shipped that feed this machine and allow for the sticker price to remain so low.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t think Apple is a competitor because people pay more for luxury. For some people, that\u2019s sort of true \u2014 though it\u2019s more paying for a brand or lifestyle. But most people are content to pay for quality<\/i>. And Apple often tops the luxury brands in this regard. Which is problematic for them, to say the least.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“It’s a $1 billion gadget…” parislemon: Cliff Kuang: A few years ago, the CEO of Vertu was showing me the company\u2019s newest $8,000 phone, bragging that the gadget was far more substantial and well-made that any $500 iPhone could hope to be. I stopped him short, pointing out that the iPhone isn\u2019t a $500 gadget. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[488,361,489,487,486],"class_list":["post-13446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-words","tag-industrial-design","tag-luxury","tag-product-design","tag-quality","tag-utility","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-3uS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13446\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}