From Apple to Zadig & Voltaire / The Luxury Apple / Technological products have become a the sign of youth and of the belonging to the fashion planet, just like a purse, stilettos, or glasses. Like fashion did with the pop rock style, the Babys have played a decisive role in the battle that Apple is now winning against Microsoft, since Apple's entry point in 2001 was music. With the iPod, Apple conquered young people, who then brought in their wake the older generation. The brand knew how to capture them in its ecosystem thanks to products working in synergy: smartphones, computers, touchpads, and soon, television. These products are all the result of Steve Job's motto : “Think different”. It is a direct consequence of quantum physics, and lies on his believing that a bad thing can brig a good thing, you just need to know what you love and who you love, and seize the chances. Life is a resolution.
Luxury as a model / Just like fashion brands did, Apple has established a strong emotional relationship with its clients by communicating on its history and the one of its founders, nobody forgot about their beginnings in their parents' garage, and by presenting new products in hypermediatized big shows, expected all around the world. The brand also resorted to product placement in movies, and it associated an immediately recognizable design to a unique technological identity. Which Samsung is not capable of.
By manufacturing a very limited range of products in Asia, building a distribution network backed by its own concept store and e-commerce infrastructure and by setting a non intrusive and very subtle PR tone, the bourgeois-bohème brand preserved its double digits margins in spite of a cut-throat competition context.
Apple has invendted the electronic total look, just like fashion brands do in the luxury industry ;-)