LEADING ANDROID TABLET DEVICE VENDOR CHANGES ITS ENTRY STRATEGY INTO NORTH AMERICA, BASE ON IEMR's RESEARCH
THE PROBLEM
Our client – part of a global conglomerate – was seeing lackluster sales for its new Android tablet in the crucial US market. Even two years after Apple's iPad launch in 2010, product development teams at our customer where struggling to differentiate themselves from the market leader (Apple) and other vendors that had already come to market with their devices, including Motorola, HP, Research In Motion (RIM), among others.
Our client's product management teams were focused on differentiation of their product by adding additional device features such as 4G compatibility, adding USB, HDMI, and SD card slots, etc. However, this did not differentiate them from what every other vendor in the industry was doing.
IEMR'S SOLUTION
We undertook a comprehensive survey and focus groups of our client's customer base to understand the key features and functionality required by US consumers to test the question: "How does our client achieve true differentiation?"
Our research for our client showed that marketing their product on hardware capability alone was not going to work with US consumers and would not take away market share from Apple. We found that over 30% of our survey respondents wanted seamless compatibility with other devices they owned from our client. We also found that the 7-inch form factor was not a hit with US consumers, who wanted to see a device that was at least as large as the 10-inch iPad, at a lower price point.
IEMR'S IMPACT
While our client's product management teams were thinking of various options to improve on their product's features and functionalities, our research clearly showed that form factor and price were going to be important elements of a successful entry into the hyper-competitive US market. In addition, marketing the "lifestyle" rather than the product features and functionality was going to be an important component of success.
As a result of just-in-time product development and marketing execution by our client, and in part because of IEMR's recommendations, our client now has a major share of the North American Tablet market. More importantly, it is now poised to take advantage of our recommendation to bundle its tablet, smartphones, smart TVs, and in-home IoT devices to ensure it maintains its market share across various device categories.
