What makes 'Apple' succeed

The question, 'Why Apple products are the benchmark that the industry keeps chasing?'; is one that many have tried to explain (I shall take my shot at it!). I think that there is just one thing that they do right and that is 'SEXING UP' their offering.

Now let us take the case of the iPod (since it is the most successful Apple product)...

The iPod is just a music/video player that can do a bunch of other things. Oh by the way, you cannot load music on it without iTunes and if you are on your friend's computer and the iTunes does not have all the songs that you have loaded onto your iPod already, it will pretty much delete everything on your iPod. Ok... moving on... It will not accept any video files other than mp4, so you have to convert all the videos prior to loading them onto the iPod. You also need to convert all audio files into mp3 files in order to load then onto the iPod. Oh, oh and it does not let you you take any song out of it either, just in case you wanted to transfer some songs onto your computer. All of these problems do not exist in any of the other mp3 players in the market but still they dont sell as much. So with all of these problems and shortcomings, how does a product zoom to become the hottest selling gadget in the world?

The secret behind Apple's success is rooted in the development of its products, in the same manner in which Warren Buffet invests.

According to Warren:

One must find a company that is undervalued or one where there is great potential to unlock value.
Once you have understood the company and have belief in the management, invest as much as possible in the company to ensure huge returns from the same

This is exactly the same policy that Apple pursues as far as its products are concerned. They introduced just one product called the iPod whose function was, simple and straight forward. They put all the technology and marketing effort behind that product. All their investment ran behind that one product and the concentrated effort resulted in their product being an instant success. The variants that were introduced later on were based on the needs that existed in the market and since that one single product, a brand and an aspiration for the same had been established; the variants (which were few) were easily established as well.

Even if we look at the iPhone...

They came out with just 2 models which differed primarily in terms of the storage capacity that they offered. They believed in the product that they had put together and they bundled all the features that they possibly could into that one product (making for a rich product offering) and provided all the might of their marketing to that one product, creating a huge buzz about the product despite all of its deficiencies (which they corrected in the 3G version).

The idea of diversification has been killing quite a few companies. The width of their product offering causes confusion in the minds of the consumer. Also, the offering made through their products as well as the marketing push is not focussed enough to cause the product to be a runaway success.

Does diversification always result in doom?