Behold, the power of this blog! As has been witnessed before by my loyal readers, this is apparently a powerful magic wishing blog.
Today, I had my wish granted for an iPhod. You can see the details on Apple’s website. The "iPod Touch" is basically an iPhone without a camera or a phone. And it’s $100 bucks cheaper than the newly discounted iPhone.
Now I’m not one for conspiracy theories. I’m more of an Occam’s Razor kind of guy. But this smells funny to me. The main reason I didn’t think we’d see an iPhod is because of what it would do to iPhone sales. If I were a conspiracy theorist kind of guy, I’d be rolling my eyes at the history here.
First of all, Apple, legendary customer-driven company partners with AT&T, legendary treat-customers-like-crap company (my personal opinion, but I don’t think I’m alone). They release the iPhone at a premium price to much applause, with Apple making all kinds of money off AT&T’s back (yay Apple). Apple signs a ridiculously long exclusive with AT&T (we’re talking geologic timeframes in the tech world) and gets an obscene hype-ride and a nice bump in stock price too.
But then in less than 3 months, Apple (a) announces the iPhod and (b) drops the iPhone price by $200.
That has to be one of the fastest product cannibalization and price drop two-steps in history! Announcing the iPhod answers the prayers of all those who would choose death before signing a contract with AT&T, and all those that really didn’t want the phone part anyway (like me). All those of you wanting an unlocked iPhone so you had a nice media player can now save yourselves the trouble and go iPhod. But on top of that, they go and smack all the early adopters with a $200 "you should have waited" penalty.
Now if Apple were struggling, or if the iPhone was a turkey with awful sales (Zune, anyone?), I could understand this. But that’s not the case at all here. And while Apple may have some history of odd decisions, that’s not really the path they’ve been on lately.
So I’m left wondering… What are they up to??? Inquiring minds want to know.
P.s. To our investors and potential investors: our expenses just increased by $399 per employee…
Categories: News
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