Just 24 hours after cutting the cost of the iPhone by $200, Apple have offered $100 store credit and an apology to those who had bought the device at a higher price. One consumer has described this as ‘a pay-off for being a sucker’, a statement I would readily agree with.
Everyone knows not to buy a first version of a brand new device; I personally always wait until the chinks have been ironed out of a gadget before buying it. And Steve Jobs, Apple’s Chief Executive seemed to have about as much sympathy as I do for all the consumers who had bought the device 2 months before at a higher price. In an interiew with USA Today on September 5th, Jobs simply said:
“Well, this is life in the technology lane.”
However the following day he acknowledged that Apple disappointed some of its customers by cutting the price of the iPhone’s 8-gigabyte model in the US and sounded a little more understanding, when in an open letter to iPhone customers he wrote:
“I have received hundreds of e-mails from iPhone customers who are upset about Apple dropping the price of iPhone by $200 two months after it went on sale… We need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.”
One reason for the sudden price slash could be that consumers bought more than 270,000 iPhones in the first two days of sales after it was released earlier this year on June 29th. Since then, according to a technology analyst with Gartner Inc, said that Apple has likely sold only has likely sold about 500,000 more. The lower price should lure more iPhone buyers during the crucial holiday season, a time where consumers love to go wild with the spending and which has always been good for iPod sales. On Wednesday, Jobs said Apple expects to sell its one millionth iPhone this quarter.
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