I do not understand Microsoft and Nokia’s approach to marketing. While I don’t know the average consumer’s attention span for cool new devices is, but I would measure it in days, not weeks, and certainly not months. Why then do these companies insist on talking about the Lumia 920 and the Windows Slate months before they are available? All it does is get people excited for a few days to a few weeks at most, and there is still a couple months before it’s actually available for anyone to purchase. It also gives the competition plenty of time to announce their own cool new devices, and if they happen to be available sooner, you’ve lost a customer.
Apple has it figured out. If you were quick, you could buy a retina Macbook Pro the same day it was announced. You can buy the iPhone 5 less than two weeks after it was announced. There was no way anyone could have offered a competing device to the Retina MBP since it was available the same day. Samsung has been able to put together a commercial targeting the iPhone 5 before general availability, but I don’t know how many people it would convert. The point is, when you go from a two week delay after announcement to a three month delay, there are even more opportunities for other products to disrupt your launch.
Today I do not own a Lumia 900 or an Asus Transformer Prime. Both are products I was extremely excited about and I would have bought them both the same week I heard about them, except neither one was available for months. I still want a Lumia 920 and a Windows Slate, but there are going to be plenty of opportunities for me to find another product, that I can actually buy, before these two become available.
I can’t help but wonder how much money these companies are throwing away by wasting excitement and goodwill towards their products.