Case Description:
This case summarizes the Antennagate problem for the Apple iphone 4, during the year 2011. There is much speculation on this issue and the seriousness of the matter. When the phone is tightly gripped in your hand, depending on how you hold the phone, it eventually loses signal and drops calls. This only occurs when your hand is covering up a certain spot, the spot being the little gap between two external antennas on the outer edge of the new iPhone. The media stirred up a huge storm about the alleged signal-dropping error with the antenna and the press had a field day with the issue.
Steps Taken Before the Problem
When handling a products defect, one must carefully decide how to handle this situation to limit the negative publicity, and also to limit the number of potential customers lost. One thing that a company does not want to do is ignore the problem, which is exactly what Apple did at first word of the issue. The company was sharply criticized by the media for, not acting quickly enough to recall or aid their customer’s problems (Lane, 2010). Fingers were being pointed at service providers, Apple accused AT&T for having poor service coverage, saying they were the reason their customers were experiencing problems. Then Apple said all the other smart phone manufacturers’ products had similar problems and that this is an issue with all smart phones not just the iphone (Carr, 2010). This is surely true. The antenna reception issue is a physical problem. Human hands and bodies have a strong capacity of absorbing microwaves, including those waves that give us connectivity. This problem is true for Apple, for Nokia, for RIMM, for HTC, and for everyone else (Carr, 2010). Beside the fact that Nokia and RIMM both have argued about Steve Jobs’ decision of pulling them into the Antennagate tornado, Jobs did demonstrated that every smartphone has an