Quality not Quantity: Taking a Bite out of Apple’s Iphone 6

Its that time of the year again, technology companies are releasing new products just in time for holiday season. Recently, Apple came out with a new phone in continuation with their Iphone line that consumers have been waiting for. The new Iphone comes in two sizes, one being a 4.7 inch screen then the 6 plus being a rather large 5.5 inch screen. The product has been receiving critical complaints, most being that the larger Iphone 6 plus bends in the pocket of many customers, leaving them with a bent cell phone incapable of working. In the YouTube video cited below, the customer tries to bend his phone, ultimately succeeding and creating a brand new product, the new flexible Iphone plus (jokes). In regards to the management course I am currently taking at DePaul, this real world issue is a perfect example of quality control we have discussed in class.

iphone bent

Quality control, as discussed in operations management, is the idea of producing a high quality product with little to no problems for the consumer. In class we did an exercise where we would build these paper puppets. The puppets would go through a series of building activities, each done by a member working on the assembly line. The completed product after the assembly line would then be passed along to quality control for inspections. As a group we made 20 or so puppets and over 60% of the goods we thought were made to extreme quality failed to pass quality inspection tests. If these products were ignored by quality control and instead approved and shipped off to be sold, then that company would be forced to do a recall, resulting in bad publicity which in turn can affect the share price of that publicly traded company.

Quality controls are very important for corporations. Without quality control, how would a company know whether they are selling defective products or not? Ignoring quality control specifications result in recalls that could potentially cost a company millions of dollars. For example, look at the recent recall of cars by Toyota. Due to a faulty suspension system, Toyota was forced to recall 690,000 vehicles. Sometimes when quality control fails to inspect a product properly it could result in serious harm for the customer. Imagine if every car company decided to cut costs and eliminate their quality control department. Car companies could become liable for an injury or in Toyotas case if a suspension failure with one of their cars that caused a huge accident where people died could possibly be the downfall of that company.

Proposed questions for my readers:

Have you ever had a product that you have purchased that was of very low quality? What were your feelings for that product before you bought it and after?

Would you purchase a product from a company that you previously had purchased a bad quality product from? Why or why not?

Sources Used:

WSJ Article “Apple Rebuts Complaints of Bending Iphone”: Found Here

Youtube video “Iphone 6 plus bend test”: Found Here

6 thoughts on “Quality not Quantity: Taking a Bite out of Apple’s Iphone 6

  1. Interesting post and quite indeed has a lot to do with operations. I believe that quality is directly corresponds to price. If I paid $700 for a new Iphone I do have certain expectations that it will last at least with the same rate as similarly priced phones. Thus quality is an important aspect of the business that wants to grow and increase its market share. With apple we have seen an interesting trend in brand loyalty where the consumer would go an extra mile paying additional money for a brand hat he or she likes even though there is nothing special about that product.

  2. As an Apple fan, I was very intrigued by your title! As with most new products, there are often flaws and product qualities that are not up to far that are quickly fixed. Personally, I usually wait a year to purchase the new iPhone as a way to field test to see if it’s even worth buying. To answer your question and address a different post that I previously commented on, more often than not I find myself buying low quality clothes at “fast fashion” retailers, such as Forever 21 or H&M. It’s very frustrating to purchase an item and have it tear or fall apart after only one or two uses, even if I paid a relatively low price for it. If a company has a history of producing low quality products, I would probably not be a company consumer, unless I was in an absolute pinch.

  3. Nice post, Craig. I feel that many products, especially highly anticipated ones, are rushed to the market so that they don’t miss out on their perceived optimal release date. Consequently, we see many problems with this seemingly “rushed” projects to the market. I’m positive that this happens fairly often in all organizations but is most evident with high profile companies like Apple. I’m sure that they could have done additional tests to check the physical quality of the phone but I agree with the sentiment that if you wait to make the product perfect, the product will never be done. I’m sure they will get this issues fixed and hopefully they offer some sort of solution to the unhappy iPhone 6 people.

  4. I am a committed Apple fan and am always one of the people to jump on the new products right when they come out. I do believe that every company has some product flaws, but that doesn’t make them ok. I did purchase the iPhone 6 the day it came out and was very pleased with the phone, but I did not have the plus so mine doesn’t have the bending problem. I see why there are problems with quality control but I haven’t followed this very much and don’t know the details behind it, however not every phone bends and you can’t test every phone for bending because if you bend a phone in half eventually it will break no matter what phone it is.

  5. Apple, like any other company, makes mistakes. Phones usually undergo drop, heat and water tests and I believe iPhone passed those with flying colors. No one could have really known it would bend, because it just have never happened before. However, the past three iOS update were a disaster, so they should definitely improve on quality there.

  6. Apple is definitely one of the company that uses only the best software as well as the hardware to make their product. Most of the smartphone company are trying to just invent smartphones with minimize software quality and hardware quality so that it could attract people when infact Apple is trying to introduce the people what quality actually means. It is trying to use as new invention and Discovery for the smartphone. Even most of the smartphone company are just copying the unique style Apple has for it’s phone.

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