106 DELIVER THE EXPERIENCE
in your pocket opens up an entirely new way for you to enjoy
music.
Jobs dresses up numbers to make them more interesting.
Rolling Stone reporter Jeff Goodell once asked Jobs what he
thought about Apple’s market share’s being “stuck” at 5 percent
in the United States. (The interview took place in 2003. As of
this writing, Apple’s market share of the computer industry is 10
percent.) The average reader might consider a 5 percent market
share to be tiny. Jobs put the number in perspective when he
described it this way: “Our market share is greater than BMW or
Mercedes in the car industry. And yet, no one thinks BMW or
Mercedes are going away and no one thinks they’re at a tremen-
dous disadvantage because of their market share. As a matter
of fact, they’re both highly desirable products and brands.”^2 A
5 percent market share sounded low but became much more
interesting when Jobs put it into context using the automobile
analogy. Comparing Apple’s market share to that of two admired
brands told the story behind the numbers.Twice as Fast at Half the Price
Data transfers on the original iPhone were often painfully slow
on AT&T’s standard cellular network (EDGE). Apple solved the
problem with the launch of iPhone 3G on June 9, 2008. In the
presentation, Jobs said the new iPhone was 2.8 times faster than
EDGE, but he didn’t stop there. Jobs put the figure into a con-
text that normal Web surfers would understand and appreciate.
He showed two images back to back—a National Geographic
website loading on the EDGE network and also on the new 3G
high-speed network. The EDGE site took fifty-nine seconds to
fully load. The 3G site took only twenty-one seconds.^3 Further,
Apple offered customers a bonus by lowering the price.
According to Jobs, consumers would be getting a phone that
was twice as fast at half the price. Average presenters spew num-
bers with no context, assuming their audience will share their
excitement. Jobs knows that numbers might have meaning to
the most ardent fans but are largely meaningless to the majority