If you have been following the new products announcements at the IFA and CES shows over the past years, you may have noticed the everlasting battle between the top brands in the high-tech industry to present the “World’s First… ” whatever new feature can be implemented in an electronic device. Lately it has been all about the world’s first bendable TV, the world’s first curved Smartphone, movie2uhd the world’s first connected washing machine, the world’s first 8K screen, UHD OLED screen, and so on. Most of them are technologies that won’t make it to the general market before several years.
You may be wondering why these brands choose to reveal to their competitors what their future moves will be, on a market where acting quick and giving the competition no time to adapt is key to keep the lead.
Remember what happened when Samsung launched its first Galaxy S Smartphone back in 2010? Many of those who had seen an iPhone before blamed them for making a replica and not having invented anything. Now with the iPhone 6 and Apple watch it is Apple’s turn to be criticized for following the other brands with larger screens and round edges. The thing is, animeyoko early adopters and opinion leaders don’t want high-tech brands to follow. They expect them to lead.
Appear as a pioneer brand and a technology expert
So here’s what the companies do. They show their target that they can remain ahead of the game thanks to technological achievements, by displaying cutting-edge products, patents and concepts before everyone else, even if it will take years to make them available on a large scale through mass-produced, saintgenieswholesale market-ready items. The desired result is to have the brand name associated with technological innovation, thus making customers and potential clients expect great things from that name in the future.
The effects of that strategy go even beyond creating high expectations for the future in the customers’ minds, it also makes them expect great things from the brand’s current products – that obviously do not feature the technologies displayed – because many assume that any product bearing the brand’s name is as good as the name itself. They assume each product lives up to the brand’s reputation, appmee especially the people who are not technology experts and want to rely on safe and simple reference points when making their purchase decision.
Gain massive media coverage
The web is crowded with hundreds of blogs and websites craving for hot information that will help them expand and retain their tech-savvy readers pool, and nothing is better at it than a breakthrough product with a science-fiction edge to pin at the top of their newsfeed. Give them a bendable tablet screen, a round-shaped Smartwatch or a wireless charging protocol – even if it is just ongoing research – and they will all jump on the occasion to spread the news to their readers – and to the similar blogs who all follow them as well. When the Moto 360 watch by Motorola was announced earlier this year, it headlined the Google News High-Tech section for days, Allthingschildcare even though it wasn’t expected to come out before 6 months and very little information had been unveiled, all thanks to the number of websites that shared the news.
New technologies that seem to offer a sneak-peak into the future are appropriate to generate buzz, which is hard to provoke and even harder to sustain and to monitor in terms of extent, target community and content. But when generated among the right communities, it makes the info spread faster and wider among the population through secondary channels – Social media, word of mouth, intra-community media – that increase the effect of traditional media.
Establish future standards
Finally, when a new technology challenges a wider industry of interconnected products, as the HD video format did with the screen and optical disk markets, just as the UHD screen is doing right now, manufacturers try as early as possible to convince other industry partners to follow their lead, factualfacts to establish future standards that will insure the widespread adoption of their technology.
Displaying cutting-edge technologies before everyone else is obviously not the only way to achieve commercial success in the high-tech world – Chinese company Xiaomi is doing extremely well with its low-cost Smartphones – and some choose to keep everything secret about their future products, but it has proved to be a helpful asset to sell high-tech products at tremendously high profit margins. The reason is that customers expect the best from the brands that manage to be re
