For the last month or so Apple has dedicated its home page to its iPhone software roadmap. This struck me as a bold and left-field marketing move. After all, the Apple home page is a massive online asset - according to Comscore, Apple’s web properties had 140M unique visitors in February - so anything that goes on that page needs to be decided quite deliberately!

Why turn over Apple’s prime online real estate to a message that is principally not B2C, nor even B2B, but A2D - i.e. Apple to Developers? The language used on the page, e.g. ’software roadmap’ is clearly oriented towards a tech industry audience and the eye tracks directly to the acronym ‘SDK’.  For a consumer brand that has built its success on making technology simple, easy to use and understandable this is puzzling at first glance.

On reflection, Apple’s home page take over is a bold statement by the company that reveals not only its appetite to take a real marketing risk, but also the seriousness and confidence in driving forward its strategy to turn the iPhone into the company’s next big platform play. Apple knows to do that it needs to market itself to developers. What better way to open that engagement than by demonstrating how serious it is by dedicating its hugely-trafficked home page to the task?

Many companies are rolling out their own APIs and SDKs for third party developers to build services upon - for example BT has a great SDK for communications services. However, to date Apple appears alone in realising that its core corporate marketing vehicles are tools to be used to engage third party developers to support key growth areas.

Apple has clearly ‘thought different’ about how to use online marketing to support business strategy.