Kupe#WP
Well-known member
And with those "full circle" remarks, we find ourselves back at the point where Jobs is arrogant. A point I was trying to disprove (at least in the context of the price shift).It could very well be the case that Apple planned on setting a higher price for the early adopters and then dropping it so that they could then pick up more sales and hit their mark. It's very possible that Apple knew that there was no way they would sell 1M iPhones at the price they initially set and knew they would have to adjust it after they had collected the "early adopter tax." There is no rule that said Apple would sell 1M phone at the price they initially set.
Of course there's a planned price cut. There's a thing called Product Life Cycle and while there's no formula for how to apply it (well there is, but THAT formula doesn't have any real numbers in it), there are tried and true methods for managing product life cycle - methods Apple has re-proven time and again. It's what drives their meteoric stock price. They know how to introduce a product, they know how to keep that product viable for a good amount of time, and they generally know how to replace the product with a next-generation new product. They don't generally introduce a wholly new product with a planned 33% price cut in the first quarter of sales. That's too volatile for us stockholders.They could very well be on their projections. Why do you assume that they didn't factor in a price drop? They knew they would sell a certain number of phones at $600 and a certain number of additional units at a lower price.
An interesting viewpoint. I'm trying to decide which market would be most insulted by that kind of marketing plan, the subsidizers or the charity cases? While I agree a product's price will be forced to decrease over time (as it matures), especially in the tech industry, to plan the market shift the second month after introduction is unprecedented...and by unprecedented I mean it's never been done intentionally. Remember, these guys are trying to show quarterly results to a bunch of greedy, hi-expectation stockholders. Intentionally catering to two distinct markets inside of one quarter with a major price chop looks like a mistake and stock prices will likely reflect that.Don't look at it as a subset, though that is valid, look at it as a totally different market. Apple had the early adopter market who would pay $600 and another market who will jump on at $400. they're picking up both markets.