Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) products are not as closely connected to each other as could be seen in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google. Companies need to make people use more of their products so that usage of one leads to usage of more connected products. This can happen only if they connect their products, and this is being done well by Apple and Google in comparison with Microsoft.
Microsoft plans to adopt the same approach
This was the takeaway from the recent presentation by Microsoft’s top marketing executive, Chris Capossela at the Microsoft Convergence conference in Atlanta. The executive studied that Apple iPhone users are more likely to use the Safari browser than the ones not using an iPhone. Similarly, Gmail is more likely the preferred mailing service of Google Chrome users than the ones not using it. Microsoft Office users will be more into using Skype than the ones not using Office.
“But it also shows you that we don’t have nearly the connectivity between our products that Google has engineered and that Apple has engineered,” according to a Microsoft transcript.
According to Capossela, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) too wants to adopt the same approach. Capossela suggested few examples of integration for Microsoft such as a facility to use the Surface Pro 3 pen to open OneNote, connecting Bing and Microsoft’s Cortana digital assistant and more integration of Skype with Outlook.
Product integration better for marketing
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has a large number of big businesses that include Windows, IE, Office and so on. As per the executive unlike Google and Apple, there is no connectivity between the products engineered at Microsoft. Explaining it further, Capossela said that both Google and Apple are at an advantageous position in terms of marketing because of the strong connectivity between the products.
Giving an example, Capossela says that Apple’s entire TV advertising campaign, in the United States, focuses on the most popular products, iPhone and iPad. The Cupertino, California-based company has streamlined its advertising dollar focus on very few things as the other products have been engineered well to work together.
Explaining the differences, Capossela said that one major advantage of a well-planned integration is “you don’t have to market all of your products. You only market the locomotives. And then when someone uses your locomotive, it pulls along the cabooses.”
