Let me get this straight from the get-go : I’m not expecting or desiring sympathy.
For those that haven’t yet heard, the iPhone got a $200 price reduction today. That means my iPhone I bought a week after it came out a smidgen under 2 months ago cost 50% more than if I’d bought it today. I admit it, I’ve been had by the mighty Steve.
Yes, I know this is what can happen when you’re an early adopter, and I don’t think there’s anything legally or morally wrong with what’s happened. Frankly, if I’m willing to shell out 600 greenbacks for a little gadget when there’s people in the world starving I don’t have a moral leg to stand on anyway. And besides, I’ve been ‘lucky’ – I’ve bought 5 or so pieces of Apple hardware now and this is the only one [1] where I’ve been caught by unfortunate-timing-of-apple-purchase-osis.
What is the point is that a friend of mine, who isn’t an apple fan-boy, and isn’t (that much of) a geek, and frankly has better things to do than watch every apple-event live blog like I do, and who bought their iPhone 3 weeks ago, just got quite royally rumbled. Will they, or a few hundred thousand other people here or there be a little bit sceptical when it comes to next buying new Apple hardware?
So a marketing blunder on Apple’s part? I think so, but they just made nearly $200 million bucks out of it, so quite a lucrative one.
[1] Oh, apart from when the gigabit-ethernet Apple Extreme came out a month after I got my 100Mb version, but that’s a minor quibble. My 2G iPod, G4 Mac Mini and 24″ iMac all had very healthy ‘still in the apple store at the same price’ shelf lives.
Update
OK, looks like Apple think this was a blunder too. At least they have the balls to acknowledge and do something about it.
Mike Roberts