One of the most interesting findings of the 17th annual 2013 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index® (CLEI) released last week was that Apple had lost the top spot in the smartphone (to Samsung) and in the tablet (to Amazon) categories.
Apple had help onto the smartphone title ever since it category was created, Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys, told Loyalty 360. No other company had so dominated a category. Though Apple had led the tablet category, the category itself debuted before Apple launched its first tablet product.
“Apple fell behind in being able to personalize the technology. Samsung and Amazon moved ahead of Apple in terms of being able to offer technology that keeps people engaged,” Passikoff said. Samsung did an excellent job in playing up the touch technology (for sharing) feature offered by the latest version of the Galaxy phone around the time of the iPhone 5 launch with television commercials showing Galaxy owners using the technology while Apple users were waiting in line for the newest iPhone.
“In those areas of personal and emotional engagement, it’s fair to say that Apple has slowed down,” Passikoff added. “There’s no substitute for emotional engagement. If technology is what matters, you can lose your emotional edge when you lose your technology edge. But being second on our list is not a bad thing.”
Yet if Apple or any other brand in any other category doesn’t establish an emotional edge with consumers – Apple still has it with a large number of Apple devotees – then the brand just becomes a “category placeholder” that is easily displaced by another brand, according to Passikoff.
Though Apple is still an excellent brand in the minds of its devoted customers, much of the shine has come off the brand since the death of company founder Steve Jobs 18 months ago, said Atlanta, Ga.-based telecom analyst Jeff Kagan.
The problem, according to Kagan, is that Apple is no longer as innovative as it was under Jobs. The iPhone 5 and the iPad mini, the company’s last two products, aren’t selling nearly as well as earlier Apple products at the same stage after introduction.
“They’re not what they once were [in the eyes of consumers],” Kagan said. “They have cooled off.”
That’s not to say that Apple can’t overtake the top spot, though Kagan also points out that Blackberry (the recently renamed RIM) was the smartphone leader years ago and another company could take a similar dominant position in the next few years.
Passikoff said that well publicized rumors Monday that Apple was working on a “Dick Tracy-like” wrist device shows that Apple may not be far from renewing its innovation curve, which could put it back on top of the smartphone category. However, Amazon might be difficult to dislodge from the lead of the tablet category.