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Steve Jobs: PR ninja
By Sparky | September 6, 2007
Not only can he keynote like a rockstar, not only can he make the right technology and style choices to please consumers, and not only does he understand and connect with his customers but Steve Jobs knows how to make brilliant business moves. Yesterday he rocked the digital media ecosystem by releasing a whole new line of iPods for the holiday season, but he also dropped the price of the 8Gb iPhone by $200 and dropped the 4Gb iPhone entirely. This move will help move units and solidify Apple’s place in the cellphone marketplace early and strong.
Unfortunately a lot of early adopters were a little peeved to have paid a $200 ‘early adopter tax’, but again Steve managed to turn this around and make it into another business gem: in an open letter to iPhone customers he has promised a $100 store credit to all early adopter iPhone purchasers. This move not only appeases the early adopters, but will help capitalize on the iPod/iPhone halo effect (many Mac switchers introduction to the world of Apple has been an iPod) by encouraging more new-to-Apple consumers to spend a little more money. Yes it’s $100 that Apple won’t make in profits, but how much do you want to bet that a majority of these new customers are so impressed with their iPhones that they go the extra mile and put the $100 credit towards a new iMac, Mac Mini, or Macbook and give OS X a spin as well. Given the margins Apple makes on their computers a $100 hit cuts into profits in the short term, but will likely increase profits in the long terms as more and more consumers “join the Mac club” and help grow the Apple user base.
Bravo Steve, bravo!
Topics: Apple, Cellphones, Events, Gadgets, Technology, iPhone |
September 15th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
I agree that he is brilliant, and it all looks like it was one brilliant move after another, but it it still hurts a little. It’s nice that I can tell my friend, hey look, at least they are trying to make up for it and doing _something_. Microsoft would probably tell me to rot in hell and laugh all the way to the bank. When companies do stuff like that, people notice. But it goes both ways: I’m just as gunshy as someone else is impressed, just depends what side of the fence you were on when the iPhone came out…
And I guess we all know what side we sit on.
I’m spending mine on the next OS refresh, i hear there’s going to be new yummies for the precious.