“It’s finally here. After months of speculation, Apple last week unveiled the second-generation iPhone — and it’s a marvel,” Alexander Eule reports for Barron’s.
“One of the few disappointments in last week’s iPhone news was that Apple won’t start selling the phone until July 11. But the company is likely to sell gazillions once they go on sale,” Eule reports. “I say that in part because of Apple’s aggressive new pricing strategy: The entry-level iPhone 3G, with 8 GB of storage, will cost just $199 — half the price of the 2.5G phone it replaces. You can get a phone with 16 GB for $299.”
“The results should be dramatic: The iPhone 3G, as the company refers to it, should sell in far higher volume than its predecessor. Apple said last week that it has sold six million of the original iPhones since they were unveiled about a year ago. The company has continued to stick by a previous projection that it would sell at least 10 million phones in calendar 2008. Barring a complete meltdown of the company’s supply chain, or some other calamity, Apple should blow past its goal,” Eule reports.
“My view is that Apple’s price cut, combined with its steps to make the phone more acceptable to corporate information-technology departments, fundamentally changes the landscape for the device. It goes from high-end luxury good to middle-of-the-road crowd pleaser. My suspicion is that the Street will ratchet up its expectations for the phone as the pre-launch hype machine gets rolling,” Eule reports.
“Apple’s aggressive pricing puts it on a collision course with phones from a host of other players. This seems like very bad news for weaker hands like Motorola and RIM’s Blackberry. The enterprise software support, combined with a more reasonable price, is almost certain to pressure IT departments that had shunned the phone into allowing it onto the list of approved devices. And that could hurt RIMM,” Eule reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Fred Mertz" for the heads up.]
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