When IT consultant, author and developer Isseki Nagae titled an October 11, 2011, post on his blog “Why Japanese manufacturers keep losing to Apple, in the words of Steve Jobs” [jp], he probably knew he would draw some flak for it. Many of those who came to the post through Hatena, where it was bookmarked over two thousand times, no doubt expected to find some insights from the former Apple CEO on what is wrong with the Japanese electronics industry. With the iPhone finally making major inroads into the local mobile phone market, and Samsung stealing the spotlight from Japan's legendary gadget-makers, these insights are much in demand.
The post, though, wasn't exactly what its title seemed to imply. Instead of the words of Steve Jobs on the topic, the post was an opinion piece by Nagae, supported in part by things Steve Jobs had said in other contexts.
About five years ago, Japanese manufacturers — and particularly consumer electronics manufacturers — hit a point where they simply could no longer compete with overseas competitors. The only real exceptions to this are car makers such as Toyota and Honda. Companies like Sony in contrast, which dazzled the world with the Walkman, and others in the IT-related and consumer electronics sectors, face a dire situation today. While there are a lot of discussions about this online, I don’t think anyone would deny the extreme weakness of Japanese electronics manufacturers in marketing. Sharp’s Galapagos disaster [ref] is a good example of this.
The main reason for this is that these companies put way too much emphasis on the views of the average consumer. The views of consumers should not guide decision-making. But executives at Japanese manufacturers don’t know better themselves, so they won’t give the go-ahead on anything unless they’re sure of what consumers want. What happened to the days of Soichiro Honda [founder of the Honda Motor Company] and Akio Morita [co-founder of Sony]? Executives at Japanese manufacturers today are nothing but salarymen [ref] — every one of them got there by working their way up the corporate ladder.
Large advertising companies have long invested huge sums of money in conducting studies based on research, customer surveys and interviews. I myself have participated in such studies. At the big advertising agencies they round up users and market to them as reps from the manufacturing companies watch, sometimes through one-way mirrors. I’ve heard of some companies that go so far as to base their product planning on the opinions of schoolgirls. Will this type of planning seriously result in a hit product? I don't think so, and (not to put myself in the same category as a god, but) neither did Steve Jobs. I’ve actually been to many of these marketing focus groups, and I can tell you that no great ideas come of them.
Nagae then cites two well-known quotes from Steve Jobs. In the first, Jobs responds to a question about market research for the iPad (of which there was none):
It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.
The second, from a 1998 article in BusinessWeek, echoes the same sentiment. Jobs explains:
It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.
Exactly. You can try all you want to research what consumers want, make exactly what they (think they) want, and they will go and buy something completely different. That’s what’s happening with Japanese consumer electronics today. Try asking these consumers what kind of mobile phone they want.
They’ll say they want emoji [ref], they want to write email with one hand, they absolutely must have 1seg [ref], oh and the device must be waterproof, and work as a digital wallet, and they'll ask for all kinds of other neat functions… and what you get is another forgettable Galapagos gadget that the world will just ignore.
Consumers who said they wanted these things then flood to buy their own iPhone, which doesn't have 1seg, doesn't work as a digital wallet, and doesn't allow easy data input. It's a complete waste of time to listen to consumers and produce exactly what they want. If you want to make something that sells, you have to come up with something that the average person could never even conceive of.
The only people who are really capable of product planning are those with the insight needed to imagine new concepts that the average user would never even think of. It’s the same whether it’s a ramen [noodle] shop, a cake shop or a PC manufacturer. Nissan made its comeback when Carlos Ghosn redeveloped the Fairlady Z — a car which had been discontinued because people said it wouldn’t sell. Facebook would never have dominated the world the way it did without the features that Mark Zuckerberg crammed into it. This may sound extreme, but there’s really no need to ask the user for their thoughts at all. If at the end they say it’s amazing, then that’s all that’s important.
What nonsense. Do products reflect the opinion of average consumers? Did anyone actually say they wanted the 1seg? These discussions aren't related to why Apple is winning. They're winning because they've managed to produce loads of people who will gleefully recite the “gospel of Steve Jobs”.
Look, it's not just Japanese manufacturers, it's all manufacturers that are losing to Apple. I'm getting sick of these Japanese who love nothing more than to put their country down.
Way back then, there were cars with Sony stickers on them. Today, there are cars with Apple stickers on them. But try finding a car with a Sony or Toshiba sticker today — only company cars driven by sales people have them. Can your company inspire people to proudly proclaim themselves a fan of your products? When you think about it that way, it's pretty clear that Apple is wiping the floor with these companies today.