The other night, my friend Sarb and I chatted for few minutes about the recent US$200 price drop on the still brand “new” iPhone and Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ decision to give a $100 store-credit for customers who bought iPhone at the original higher price. (note: Sarb and I didn’t record this for our audio show)
I want to talk about the implications with this $200 price cut. Any way, before I had a chance to start writing, I found this Jeff Jarvis’ insightful piece that talks about many of the things I wanted to talk about and more. Here is an excerpt from the entry (emphasis mine),
So I find it interesting that when he dissed his most loyal customers, the fools who stood in line for that beautiful iPhone, by lowering his price for the masses (a good move, by the way), he wasted no time apologizing and giving them a $100 store-credit rebate ($200 would have been the purer gesture). I wonder whether Jobs would have done this five years ago. I wonder, too, how long it would have taken for Apple to realize that there was a problem, all the while their customers’ anger would have been festering.
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Tuesday, 9 October, 2007 at 7:13 AM
Kempton –
I would like to hear your thoughts about Steve Jobs’ obsession with protecting his “babies”. Although apologizing to his most loyal customers by giving them $100 store credit, Apple has now released a software update that makes bricks out of phones containing third party applications.
What do you think about this?
Tuesday, 9 October, 2007 at 9:13 AM
Hi Piotr J,
Thanks for your feedback. Jobs’ desire to protect his “babies” are not new (witness the exclusive nature of the Mac OS) but this exclusive iPhone deal with AT&T and the recent update that bricks the modified iPhone just went too far. I think it will unfortunately gets Apple’s most loyal customers angry even they are not the most adventurous ones that would go ahead and modify their phones. The tone set by apple was not right. I hope they and AT&T will come up with a different arrangement (although I am not optimistic that any agreement will be reached).
Regards,
Kempton