Huawei can boast about surpassing Apple in worldwide smartphone sales. It just shouldn’t try to one-up the iPhone X on design and interface points.
The Chinese tech giant got a lesson in marketing, user experience and the power of the Apple brand community last week when a presentation showing the notch on the Huawei P20 next to the one on the iPhone X backfired.
Huawei tried to sway an audience in England that the smaller notch on the P20 is more appealing than that of its Apple competitor because it allows additional screen space for more notifications.
Huawei notch: less is more not necessarily good
A designer and photographer tweeted a photo from the event with the message “lol” and set off a Twitter storm regarding the notch nonsense.
Several followers of Oliur Rahman laughed at the side-by-side photo, arguing the P20 screen looks more cluttered with additional icons and notifications. Plus, more notifications are annoying.
The notch on the iPhone X was immediately criticized during its rollout last year, but users have come to appreciate the notch especially for all the tech, like 3D facial recognition, behind the window. The notch will eventually get phased out, but for now, it serves a function as evidenced by all of the design knockoffs on current Android handsets.
Criticizing Apple as a strategy in marketing or advertising a rival product, only emboldens the Apple brand community, advertising experts agree.
Photo: Katharina/Twitter
Samsung, rather than tout the specs on its own smartphones, uses whole add campaigns dissing Apple in an attempt to convince customers to make the switch.
Apple recently became the first company in the world to reach a 1 trillion market value. Sure there are great technological innovations in its products, but the real selling is done with marketing products based on emotion and convincing users they are apart of the Apple story.
As for critiquing its competitors, Apple does so sparingly, leaving the heavy hitting to its legion of devoted fans, which is clear on Rahman’s Twitter thread.
“The opposite of elegant,” said David Klein. “The worst ad tactic I’ve ever seen,” said Batuhan Saka. “More like – Minimal Notch, More Distractions,” said Jameel Desai. “Is that an iPhone ad?” said @joordas.
Source: DesignTAXI
