Case study Motorola’s European Nightmare
11 februari 2011 door Ivo Langbroek
What happens when you do not listen to your superpromoters?
Motorola has provided a text book example of what can happen when you ignore your enthusiastic customers. Learn from their mistakes by styding the Motorola Milestone case.
In November 2009 Motorola launched the Droid, the first android 2.0 full qwerty iphone killer. A huge advertisement campaign put focus on all the features the droid did have and the iphone was lacking at that time (i.e. front facing camera, multitasking, navigation, etc.). Analytics firm Flurry estimated that 250,000 Motorola Droid phones were sold in the United States during the phone's first week in stores. Flurry also estimated that 1.05 million Motorola Droids were sold in first 74 days of the launch. This number is greater than that of the original iPhone which sold one million units through day 74.
The launch of the Droid was the comeback for Motorola in the mobile space. After offering some very advanced smartphones in 2003 (linux based and GPS enabled touchscreen a780) and 2004(3G double camera smartphone a1000) things had become very quiet around Motorola.
Crossing the ocean
The success of the Droid was overwhelming and Motorola quickly launched a European version of the Droid, the quad-band GSM/UMTS Motorola Milestone, which came out December 10th in the UK. The Milestone however differed from the Droid on some minor (for example the Milestone did support multi-touch zoom in the browser which the Droid did not have due to Apple’s patent in the US) but also on two major features: the Milestone did not support Google Navigation at launch and the biggest difference, the Milestone has a so called Bootloader, which prevents the Milestone loading custom ROM images. These custom ROM’s enable Droid enthusiasts in the US to load their own applications (not signed by Motorola).
Europe is not the US
Why Motorola have disabled custom boot loaders is as of yet unclear, but this decision has had great implications for the first enthusiastic adopters of the Milestone in Europe. My guess is that Motorola have greatly underestimated the complexity of the European market. Whereas the US has a limited number of carriers, Europe with all its countries has a huge number of smaller often local players. Even KPN, market leader in the Netherlands with its local brands KPN, Hi and Telfort, is small on a European level. And all of these players have their own settings and requirements for handsets and operating systems.
Update me!
This might explain why Motorola has fallen far behind on updating the Google operation system android on the Milestone. While it was the first Android 2.0 handset, it was quickly overhauled by other handset manufacturers. And even compared to the Droid updates were made available much slower. The 2.0.1 Update, that fixed a camera Auto-focus bug, that appeared every 24.5 days, was finally released 2 months after the Motorola Droid received the update.
The Android 2.1 update rolled out in the beginning of May 2010, five months after the introduction of Android 2.1 and two months after the Droid had already received the update.
In august 2010 the Droid received the long awaited 2.2 (code name FroYo) update which added flash support. On Saturday, August 21, 2010, Motorola announced that they will also release an upgrade to Android 2.2 for the Motorola Milestone with an initial roll-out planned to begin at the end of 2010. This happened almost after a year since the announcement of the Motorola Milestone and world wide advertisement for Adobe Flash support.
Reaching out to your customers
As of yet the update has not been released. A couple of weeks ago Motorola posted a message on its Facebook ‘fan’ page that the update is delayed and now will have its release sometime this quarter. This has a lead to a storm of criticism. Within hours more than 700 people responded with unbelief and anger.
The initial enthusiasm for the Milestone has shifted to anger and disappointment. Superpromoters have turned into antipromoters who actively share their opinion on Motorola’s fan page and in their social context.
What can we learn from this case?
What has caused this shift from enthusiasm to anger and disappointment?
Not only the slow pace in which Motorola releases updates. But even more so ignoring the obvious solution: releasing the bootloader that is available for Droid users and letting the community develop the 2.2 update! Numerous developers amongst the Milestone owners have offered to help Motorola on its Facebook fanpage. A huge number of consumers offered to test beta versions. They understand that developing updates for the European market is complex but do not understand Motorola refusing their help. Motorola have not informed the community on why the update is taking so long. A lot of guessing has taken place in the discussions on Facebook and Motorola developers are ridiculed. People even pity the ‘one developer’ (why else would it take so long?) that is responsible for the development.
Furthermore, reaching out to you clients has backfired on Motorola. The Facebook page has turned into a pool of unhappy messages. People cheer each other when someone has sold their Milestone and bought a handset from a competitor and actively mention when their contract ends and they can finally buy a new phone.
Giving your superpromoters a platform to communicate, but not actually listening to your superpromoters, not accepting their help and not explaining why some things are going wrong have killed all enthusiasm and have destroyed Motorola’s reputation just as quickly as it rised out of its ashes.
And now what?
Last Friday the following message was posted on Facebook:
"Hi all. Some news. Our planned initial rollout of Android 2.2 (FroYo) for Milestone has been delayed - hence the change on our software upgrade website. We apologise for this delay which is due to necessary work that we need to do to ensure we deliver the best possible upgrade. We would like to reassure you that we are still on track to deliver FroYo for Milestone this quarter. We'll be sharing some news on features shortly and so please watch this space."
link
Please visit the site and read through the 408 (and counting) reactions since then and see for yourself what can happen when you disregard your superpromoters. Since then Motorola have tried to do some damage control by trying to shift the discussion from its front page to the forum section which is hidden behind a tab and posting messages on the front page about updates for other handsets.
"Hi all, we know that you're all very keen for an update on European FroYo plans for Milestone and so we'll be continuing to do so within the Discussions tab where we'll set up a new FroYo-specific discussion. This will be the place to discuss all FroYo-related topics and questions. Thanks!"
That won’t solve Motorola’s European problems. At CES 2011 in Las Vegas, Motorola announced the Atrix, world’s fastest dual core smartphone. And they are planning to launch the phone in the UK in Q2. Will Motorola have learned from the Milestone debacle by then…..i doubt it.