I spy with my BrandsEye: Apple and the Eucalyptus iPhone application

Apple is known and loved for being at the forefront of innovation and for being trendy and youthful. But we have spied Apple making a terrible decision, which seems to go against everything they stand for. Apple subsequently found themselves up against some disgruntled iPhone users.

Apple recently turned down the Eucalyptus iPhone application, a well thought out and handy eBook reader, as it allowed access to the ancient book of the Kama Sutra. They deemed the content of the Kama Sutra in a nutshell, pornography. When the developer of the application, James Montgomerie, received news that it has been rejected he naturally blogged about it.  iPhone users where infuriated and amazingly got Apple to reverse their decision. While the story seems to end there, we thought it would be interesting to track Apple along with the Eucalyptus application to see what the after effects of this terrible decision were.

Volumes of mentions for this week have been quite low, with only 300 mentions coming through. But what the mentions are saying is surprisingly interesting. Let’s have a look at where the mentions are coming from and what the sentiment of these mentions is.

The origin and sentiment of the mentions:

The mentions seem to be coming from a fairly equal source of origins with 22.22% from Press related sources, 37.04% from Enterprise sites and 40.74% from Consumer Generated Media.

The Press mentions are not coming from regular press sites, but rather from electronic news sites such as “Slashdot, news for nerds” and Super Tech News. Interestingly these sites tend to be a lot less objective than regular news sites, generally displaying a negative sentiment towards Apple in light of the application rejection. In fact 50% of the press rated mentions had a negative sentiment including this -2 Concern: “Apple go find a mirror and take a long hard look at yourself in it. Have a think about your 'reasonable judgement'. What are you becoming Apple?”  A Slashdot article sarcastically says:” I wonder how good the now-cheap Nokia 810 is as an e-book reader is.”

The Enterprise related sites are also coming from electronic enterprise sites such as Lucrative Investing. 50% of the Enterprise related mentions had a +1 listing sentiment, in which Apple is mentioned in no clear positive or negative context. Weirdly the enterprise sites seem to be taking on the role of the news sites and reporting on the issue in an unbiased way. I’m not sure that they shouldn’t be transparent about their views and take a real stance on the issue. Their readers might prefer a more controversial conversation, than a neutral news-like title like this one: “Apple changes posture on Kama Sutra.”

The majority of the mentions are coming from Consumer Generated Media. These mentions are mainly coming from blogs centred on electronic themes. 46% of the mentions carried a negative sentiment towards Apple. One blog post accuses Apple of censorship, a harsh and not entirely unfounded accusation. “It's amazing to think that in 2009 a phone manufacturer wants to dictate which literature its customers should be allowed to download and read on their devices.”

Apple’s subsequent reputation state:

This graph shows Apple’s reputation over the last week. It is Important to note that this is not Apple’s overall reputation, but rather Apple’s reputation in conjunction with the Eucalyptus rejection. It shows that that the number of mentions decreased towards the end of the week showing that the topic seems to be cooling down. As the mentions cool down, Apple’s reputation starts to rise and fewer negative mentions come in. Apple’s very negative reputation score of -0.8 at the beginning of the week increased to a still negative -0.36 at the end of the week. 

What can I say, I think it is incredibly interesting to see some opposition to Apple coming from their usually hard core and loyal fan base. It’s great to see consumer’s questioning decisions made by such a massive corporation as Apple. While it seems that the topic will cool, and Apple will regain their usual sparkling reputation, will this fauxpas still stick in some users minds? And if so, as Slashdot mentioned, when it comes to buying a new smart phone, will one opt for the cheaper Nokia with none of this censorship baggage?