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As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. – Albert Einstein

We recently read that contrary to recent Android claims/statistics, the iPhone was way ahead of Android smartphones. According to the author – editor-in-chief of MacNewsWorld – it was obvious that the latest reports were over-spun, over-hyped, slanted. Who’da guessed?

Even though we’re rotten at math, there’s nothing wrong with the “complaint” or probably the statistics the Android team used. Take a few statistics we grabbed recently by industry experts:
– digital sales for single-track downloads were flat in the U.S. market… overall digital music sales were up over 5 percent in the U.S.
– 29% of all tweets produced a reaction – a reply or a retweet
– Blu-ray household penetration tops 17%
– 12% of mobile consumers prefer paying a fixed amount for mobile data quota
– 75% of all U.S. consumers did not connect to or download multimedia content including games, music, video, or eBooks

As Gregg Easterbrook said, “Torture numbers and they’ll confess to anything.” Don’t believe it? We recently received the following from an Aussie friend… They say that 20% of all accidents are caused by drunken drivers, Therefore 80% involve sober drivers. Can sober drivers get off the road so that we (drinkers) can get home safely? Thank you. This message has been sent in the interests of safe driving. The statistics, the numbers, are correct but… That’s the way the PC/CE/communications industry – including you and us — works. We jump from one hot, sexy product/category to another before folks have really gotten into understanding and using the product. We hand-pick the numbers that work for the point we’re trying to make…we already know the conclusion, we just need to figure out how to get there. As Mark Twain said, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Don’t believe him or us? Check the CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) chart below.

Do you think many industry analysts, editors, reporters, bloggers got excited about any of the products after the category had achieved 25% + market penetration? Hardly! Heck, we’ll bet even the Twits went quiet… We get bored long before that and want to know what’s new, what’s exciting, what’s around the corner. We – the thought leaders, experts – want to know what’s going to happen as the next big thing, the next important turn in the road. Geoffrey Moore pinned a name and some graphics to the issue back in the early 1990s when he wrote a book – Crossing the Chasm – and formed his company to help companies take their products beyond the 10-15% of consumer acceptance.

The challenge for every company, every product idea, is to leap from the early market segment to the mainstream markets. An even bigger challenge is to keep company management “interested” enough to focus marketing/sales attention on promoting the products as aggressively as possible to move products as quickly as possible from the early majority to the late majority. Everyone is hot about grabbing the early markets. They’ll throw bodies and money at the effort to get these people reviewing, talking about, extolling, blogging, tweeting about the giant leap forward. “Everyone” is talking about it. “Everyone” is buying/using it. “Everyone” knows a winner when they see one and…this is it!

When – if – the groundswell of enthusiasm/excitement is achieved, marketers deem their work a success. The problem is, it’s on the left side of the chasm where companies are able to ramp up manufacturing, reduce the cost of production, achieve realistic profits. Getting the team interested in taking the product to the next level is a tough sell for folks because management will tell you:
– Everyone knows about XYZ
– It’s old technology
– It’s 2+/- years old no one wants the old stuff anymore
– It’s time to kill the old product and get people to upgrade to the next generation of product/service

The truth is:
– the industry experts and companies are tired of talking about the product/service
– you’re tired of hearing about it taking over the marketplace…soon
– the other guy’s new product, service looks fantastic compared to the stuff you are offering/promoting

So, management (and engineers/designers) wants to move on to something new, fun, exciting.

About a year ago, The Gartner Group refined the issue, combining pieces of Moore’s work and Chris Anderson’s Long Tail concept with their development/refinement of The Technology Hype Cycle. The products that strike a chord with the innovators and then with the early adopters get all of the positive hype. When a product doesn’t immediately leap over the chasm and enjoy strong sales in the mainstream markets, they start getting the negative coverage. They weren’t “bad,” just not good enough to stay at the peak of the hype wave. Acceptance/understanding/usage never caught up with our over-inflated idea of the greatness the product/service could/should achieve. Some managers ignore the negative stuff and just keep plugging along – tweaking, tuning the product/service, their messages. In many instances, some of these products, services, programs do survive and enjoy decent/profitable sales for a long time, but with little or no follow-on hype. Most, however, wither and die under the weight of the negative coverage; or worse yet, complete neglect. Pity!

The problem is , there’s not much glory attached to the job of getting your product/service over the chasm and producing mainstream market success. As Moore has pointed out; it is frankly, a heckofa’ lot of work…hard work. The challenge for a company is to keep just the right balance between working on bleeding edge products/technology and moving the more mature products further along the adoption cycle. You have to remind yourself – constantly – that the more people you get to understand, buy and use mature products/services; the more you have to invest in the technology leaps – and stumbles – of tomorrow. The thing that you have to remember is that just because you eat, sleep, dream technology/industry statistics; it may be healthy but it just isn’t “normal.” After all, as an unknown author said, “98% of all statistics are made up.” Even Albert understood that statistics don’t buy products, services, things…people do. It takes time for them to catch up with your statistics.