The Asymco Trilogy with Horace Dediu Part 2 - Apple in Asia & Luxury

The Asymco Trilogy with Horace Dediu Part 2 - Apple in Asia & Luxury
In the second part of the trilogy, Horace discussed how Apple has managed to navigate the Asian markets with a combination of building the best product and building strategic partnerships with patience.

Horace Dediu, current fellow of the Clayton Christensen Institute and founder of Asymco.com joined us for an epic and insightful discussion focusing on few key interesting topics: (a) new market disruption theories, (b) Apple in China and the luxury market and (c) the Japanese automotive industry and how it shapes up against disruption from Tesla, Uber and Apple. In the second part of the trilogy, Horace discussed how Apple has managed to navigate the Asian markets with a combination of building the best product and building strategic partnerships with patience and grow the market with the right timing of the correct localised product, for example, the iPhone 6 Plus. Horace also pushed against the notion that Apple is really entering the luxury market, by applying “Jobs to be Done” perspective (used by Bob Moesta in his interviews) to the issue.

Here are the interesting notes and links to the discussion:

  • Horace Dediu (@Asymco) and his main site: Asymco.com and do check out Horace’s two podcasts: The Critical Path and Asymcar which we highly recommend.
  • Apple in China and how it extends the footprint to Asia with respect to Japan and India.
    • Apple’s growth in Greater China in the Q4 2014 is about to exceed the growth in Europe and accelerating towards the US market, do you foresee that Apple’s growth will be very dependent in China in the next 5 years or there are still potential growth opportunities in the US market? References: Apple in China by Ben Bajarin from Techpinions (Requires subscription).
    • Horace Dediu’s articles in Asymco: iPhone, Killer, The Analyst’s guide to Apple Category entry, Calibrating launch performance for the iPhone in China.
    • Interesting observation on Apple in being patient with their business development and strategic partnerships from Horace: the largest mobile operators in China (China Mobile) and Japan (NTT Docomo) are the last to fall in line with the distribution of the iPhones, and once those partnerships are signed, Apple’s growth in those markets started soaring.
    • Apple’s first entry into India many years ago failed when the iPhone 3GS was launched. The reason is that India has no 3G infrastructure at that point.
    • Apple’s perception in China is more viewed as a luxury brand than a consumer electronics company, and in Q4 2014, based on sales in China, it has exceeded Samsung (which is declining) and also reaching Xiaomi, do you see Apple able to maintain the edge against the Chinese makers?
  • Is Apple really entering into the luxury market?
    • Applying the “Jobs to be Done” perspective from Bob Moesta to how Apple intersects with the luxury brands such as LVMH.
    • Horace Dediu’s articles in Asymco: Luxurious, The Watch.
    • The disruptor advantage as it can target and capture the market of the incumbent, but it is difficult for the incumbent to copy the disruptor to defend its market share. The interesting example of Apple Watch disrupting the Tag Heuer market and not the reverse even if Tag Heuer is adopting Android wear.

Do also listen to Part 1 of the series where he has discussed new market disruption with reference to Apple, Pixar, Sony, Microsoft & Google.

Podcast Information:

The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bleongcw) and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) and Linkcious (and check out their other product, Chiibi).

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