Daily Podcast: Willit Exist?

by Justin Berkowitz

Published: July 14th, 2008

The new 3G iPhone went on sale on July 11. So people lined up overnight. In the first three days, Apple moved one million iPhones worldwide (but none of them into my pocket, thank you). Meanwhile, the Blackberry folks have confirmed their next generation models: the Bold and Thunder. No release date's been set. No specs revealed. In fact, The Thunder might not even be called The Thunder. So I have my hands up in the air, waiting for RIM to let us know. It strikes me that GM's Volt is running along the lines of this second business model– even if phones are infinitely easier to develop than cars. What GM really ought to do is shut up about their plug-in electric – gas hybrid Volt until the automaker can tell us exactly what, how, and when. That said, I continue to believe the Volt per se will never be offered for mass consumption. GM will merely say the Volt was an excellent tech development platform, and maybe lease a few prototypes to celebs or government agencies. Its R&D and innovations will trickle into other vehicles. I'd be thrilled for them to prove me wrong. God knows they're working hard on it. But I'm having a really hard time paying attention.

Justin Berkowitz

Immensely bored law student. I've also got 3 dogs.

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4 of 9 comments

SunnyvaleCA on Jul 14, 2008
“Will it blend?” is truly a hallmark of American culture. It's also a brilliant marketing campaign. The makers of that blender are the ones who fund the Will It Blend antics. How many advertisements can you count where people on the web flock to see them? Anyway, the Blackberry/iPhone and Volt/[prius,civic,any decent mileage car] are both classic examples of a company that has no new product to sell so instead is stalling for time. RIMM and GM are both promising some sort of super-duper product "available sometime in the future" so that consumers don't just go right ahead and buy the competitor's product, which is available now. Equally true: just because a company says a future product will be superior to the competitor's current offering doesn't make it so.

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Yankinwaoz on Jul 14, 2008
... classic examples of a company that has no new product to sell so instead is stalling for time. RIMM and GM are both promising some sort of super-duper product “available sometime in the future” so that consumers don’t just go right ahead and buy the competitor’s product, which is available now. This is equally effective for strangling your own sales revenue, resulting in corporate suicide. This is called The Obsorne Effect, named after the late Osborne Company Company the killed itself using this marketing technique.

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N Number on Jul 14, 2008

Thanks for including Tom Dickson on this one. I'd love to have a beer with that guy and talk about blenders, but I think he might be Mormon.

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Blautens on Jul 16, 2008

"Will it blend" - One of the few advertising campaigns that ever did anything to persuade me. Never heard of the company before the Internet videos - next time I need a new blender, guess who gets the first look? The product still has to be a good one, but still, were it not for the creative ads, I would have never shopped them. Not sure who else I can say that about.

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