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Time Magazine recently featured a story on Why Nokia isn’t dead yet (here)? And it instantly captured my attention. Two reasons:

1. Most of the people I know, including myself have made the switch to an iPhone or a Blackberry.

2. Function wise,  Nokia is clearly losing out in innovation and it’s coolness.

The verdict of the article was simple. Just because you, your friends and your dog use an iPhone or a Blackberry, it is easy to assume that  the whole world has embraced the much loved gadgets.

The simple fact that was overlooked  by most people was that iPhone is not for everybody. Time magazine repeatedly used the description, ‘myopic view’ of the Americans in coming to this conclusion. I contend that it’s also a catastrophic view of the fellow students of marketing (me included), who are seemingly obsessed with the two buzz words: Innovation & Technology.

According to the report, smart phone has only penetrated 5% of worldwide sales in the mobile phone industry. As impressive as iPhone sales was (over 100 million units sold since March 2011, according to Wikipedia), the number is still a minority, compared to the 7 billion people of the world’s population.

My grand mother uses a Nokia, so do my mum and dad, the maid in the house, and also my 55 year old auntie. Gather the whole family in a room, and my wife and I are actually in the minority.

Before opening my shoe shop in Australia, selling cheap Chinese shoes with no brands, no affiliations (those that I wouldn’t personally wear myself), I used to think that my business was destined to fail because I thought that people would only buy Nike, Birkenstock and Timberland. To my pleasant surprise, our business survived for 3 years, and many of the cheap shoes sold beyond my wildest expectations.

What’s my point?

Not everybody aspires for a Porsche, a Private Jet and an iPhone. Ok, may be they do. But not everyone could afford one.

Do not despair if you’re not selling Apples, there’s always room for Orange, Watermelon and Bananas.

And one more thing!

Only fools learn from their own mistakes

It could have saved me 3 years of worrying, had I learned about this long ago.