Sqeeqee.com Contest: Apple iPhones or Samsung Galaxy Prizes?

Our Sqeeqee.com team had a meeting to discuss a contest we wanted to hold. Of course, the prizes for the winners came up, and we discussed awesome, cool, tech-type gadgets as the prizes for the first-, second-, and third-place winners. The majority of our team members chose the iPhone 5, of course, since it is rumored to be released around September 21. Then there were the rest of our team members who are anti-iPhone no matter what, for whatever reason. Their product of choice? Samsung products like the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, which is also rumored to be released around the same time as the iPhone 5.

Then we went digging around only to find that Apple has quite a strict rule concerning using its products for promotional purposes. “Oops” to a majority of our team, and “Yea” to the minority stake. Apple only allows certain products to be used for promotional prizes. The iPhones and iPads are on its restricted list. Darn!!

That leads us to the next topic of discussion. Would it be too out of line to call Apple a “control freak”? Not only does it monopolize all of its products, as it controls everything down to its resellers. True. Apple is 100% about image, but who isn't? But to the point of controlling whether a third party can give away an Apple product that it bought as a promotional item?

Then again, Apple must be doing something right because just recently it claimed the thrown

as the world’s largest company with nearly $624 billion in market capitalization. The late Steve Jobs would have been so proud. Apple was his baby, his life, and probably his soul. Congratulations to Mr. Tim Cook for a job well done so far. Your journey has only begun!

Mr. Mark Zuckerberg, take it as a lesson learned. Exclusivity is a form of monopoly, but it rings in the financial bottom line. If you do it right, you too can claim the throne. The two biggest failures we believe Facebook has are not having its own “internal search” and not tapping into social commerce the correct way. The only way is through the 1 billion users that Facebook has graciously attracted globally. As Ronald E. Osborn once said, “Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow." Great advice.