Apple: Turning Wants Into Needs

In a recent issue of Fortune—the March 22, 2010, issue, which is the first of a new redesign for the venerable publication, so if you’re interested in graphic design of objects that have ink on paper, check it out or, if that’s gone, any with the cover date past that—there is an interview with an investor.

 

While that is ordinarily the sort of thing that I usually skip right over as I have a portfolio about the size of a Baggie, the headline caught my eye: “Why Bob Turner Is Buying Apple Stock Again.” I have no idea who Bob Turner is. Turns out he is the chief investment officer of Turner Investments.

 

The interesting thing is that Tuner, who manages $17.5-billion, bought 100,000 shares of Apple in February, which means that his funds now own two million shares of Apple.

 

Clearly, guys like that have to justify what they’re doing with investors’ money. (Or at least that is an assumption that one might have had prior to the financial meltdown, when it seemed as if no one was talking to anyone about anything until it all went pear-shaped.) And Turner’s comments vis-à-vis the Apple purchase are interesting.

 

Here’s part of them:

 

“[Y]ou can go to our nearby mall on a Thursday evening, and when it looks as if there are maybe 20 people in the mall, you walk into the Apple store and it is packed. Everyone in my family has an iPhone except me, and my four kids and my wife all use Mac computers. You never really hear anybody say anything bad about Apple products. Their hardware is a must-have. I don’t use a Mac because our office is all PCs, but I am going to get an iPad. It might be fun for traveling.”

 

And if you have an Apple Store in a mall near you, you can probably get independent verification that the stores tend to be packed from opening to close. While he may not have heard anything bad about Apple, when the screen on my wife’s iMac broke in a seemingly bizarre manner, I didn’t have to go too deep on the Web to find that there are a whole lot of people who aren’t exactly exhilarated with all things Mac—although I suspect that they, too, get the fix and keep the Mac.

 

Here’s the thing: Turner is putting serious money into Apple because of its products. He said of the company, “it doesn’t meet demand—it creates a need with products that everyone wants.”

 

 

That is the secret of successful product development. The secret of products that do far better in the market than those that might have features and functions that eclipse them on spreadsheets.

 

You have to do something special. Something distinctive. Something that sets your product apart in a way that resonates with the market.

 

The magic of Apple is that they have managed to turn what is obviously a want (say the iPad) into a need.