Phil Schiller Interview With WSJ

Ian Sherr and Jessica E. Lessin, writing for the WSJ (headline: “In Rare Move, Apple Goes on the Defensive Against Samsung”):

Apple Inc. is on the defensive.

In a rare interview a day before Samsung Electronics Co. announces a new flagship smartphone in New York, Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller on Wednesday played down the expected competition from the device and discussed how believes such products — which run Google Inc.’s Android software — are inferior to Apple’s iPhone.

He shared data on the iPhone’s popularity and said Apple’s own research shows that four times as many iPhone users switched from Android than to Android during the fourth quarter, according to company research.

Three observations:

  • It says more about the WSJ than Apple that they call Schiller’s interview and statements here “defensive” rather than “offensive”. I don’t know that either word quite applies, but I’d say his statements were more of an attack than a defense.

  • Those switching numbers are pretty striking. Take them with a grain of salt, given that they come from Apple’s own research, but, if true, it suggests the iPhone is still — dare I say it — winning.

  • It’s clearly no coincidence that Schiller granted this interview the day before the Galaxy S4 launch in New York, and it is an unusual thing for Apple to do. (Usually, when they want to deflate attention from a competitor’s announcement, they do it by releasing a minor update to an existing Apple product.) Perhaps that’s what the Journal deems “defensive”, but I’d say it’s more “taking the S4 seriously”.

★ Wednesday, 13 March 2013