“After offering at least $200 for an iPad, Microsoft is now looking to buy iPhones for the same price or more,” Tom Warren reports for The Verge.
“The company’s latest promotion at its Microsoft Stores, which was previously rumored, will run until November 3rd and allow visitors to trade-in an iPhone 4S or iPhone 5 for a minimum of $200,” Warren reports. “Microsoft will supply a gift card that can be used in its brick-and-mortar stores to buy Windows Phones or other items.”
Warren reports, “This latest deal marks the first time it has offered to buy iPhones, alongside the similar iPad deal.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote regarding desperate Microsoft’s inneffectual-but-humorous “iPads for Surface tablets” promotion:
“In related news, the local sewage plant is offering at least $200 for anyone willing to trade in their bottles of Dom Pérignon.”
Related article:
Desperate Microsoft wants to pay you at least $200 to trade in your iPad for a Surface tablet – Septmeber 13, 2013
I hope Microsoft’s phones are as environmentally friendly as iPhones cause a lot of them are heading for the recycle bin, 200$ trade-in not withstanding.
I think it’s the employees’ way of getting their hands on a cheap iPhone.
Micro$oft is D E S P E R A T E ! ! ! !
Money can’t buy you love – Monkey Boy
You know, if Microsoft were to give out $200 for Android phones they would raise their cell phone market share by 5 to 6%.
Nothing like $200 to entice disgruntled iPhone users with the fake Windows Phone 8 copycat iOS 7 GUI. They’ll transition smoothly to the WP8 experience after the bad taste left by the awful flat (flat like flat beer) iOS 7 icons makes them nauseous. After you puke up on your iPhone screen, you’ll be gagging for a WP8 phone.
Can you take the truth, Apple devotees.
“(flat like flat beer)”
you’re overly redundant.
You can say that again.
heh.
Irony can be tricky to get right…
You got one thing right when talking about Microsoft, Ballmer 200… It usually involves a lot of “gagging”!
Hey, dipshit, if you stopped jacking off to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and actually got out of your mom’s basement once in a while, you’d be able to see that there’s zero similarity between iOS 7 and Windows Phone.
That’s zero, zip, zilch, nada, etc.
They’ll make more profit reselling the iPhones is the third world than on their own junk.
why trade with MisterSoftee when I can get $300 from Gazelle….
I just traded in a 4S when I bought my 5S, and the Apple store gave me $209 for it.
Same here.
Finally, MS is getting smart. Give $200 for iPhones and sell them on CL or ebay for more! One way to finally make some money!
Bought my 5S at AT&T on launch day. They bought my 4S for $210. Plus I signed up for the AT&T Next plan. In a year, I’ll be able to upgrade to the iPhone 6 and only pay sales tax.
So Apple is now in the business of trading used Apple devices.
Though it is fun to kick Microsoft, does that make AT&T or Apple desperate if they also offer to pay $200 for my old iPhone?
Not when it is your own stuff… AT&T is a reseller, gamestop does it all the time, Apple is just helping you upgrade, Microsoft is buying his competition.
The only way those douchebags will ever get my iPhone is from my cold bloody hands. I’d rather get a root canal without anesthesia. Hey Microsoft, good luck with that. Another brilliant idea from Monkey Boy.
Soon Steve Ballmer will be offering to pay you 50 dollars to give you a blowjob.
The new CEO will have a big job on his hands. It is difficult to see how MS can retrieve any credibility in the mobile space.
It seems to me that this marketplace remains poorly understood by almost everyone outside the inner circles at Apple. A long-term strategy was developed at Apple years before the iPhone launch. Apple continues to execute against this strategy, in a methodical, incremental and measured manner. This doesn’t resonate with pundits and analysts who are geared to the 90 day reporting cycle, and so they simply fail to see what Apple is doing. Microsoft can’t see it either.
The iPod taught Apple how to dominate a market. This strategy still applies to iPhone, though the patent issue has obscured the underlying strength of Apple’s position. Until recently, anyhow. Both Google and Samsung have now realised that their strategies to compete with Apple are fundamentally flawed, and both corporations are struggling to find alternatives. Android is beset with problems: patents, royalties, fragmentation, malware and lack of product differentiation are problems enough, but the biggest problem is that the IP theft which gave Android and Samsung a quick and easy entree into the new Apple-defined super smartphone market is now untenable in the face of Apple’s determination to use the courts around the world to seek redress. It is not so much whether Apple will win, but that further IP theft is just too risky, too expensive, and too detrimental to the brand.
Google is switching to Chrome. Samsung is looking to Tizen. Everyone else is out of the picture.
Only Apple’s strategy remains intact. When you look beyond the 90 day window, what you will see is a steady, careful, successful and powerful steamroller.
If you look at the Mac you will see the same steamroller – it is only the huge Windows presence which obscures the Mac steamroller in action. But there are clear signposts: Apple leveraged the move from desktops to portables, and now owns the high end notebook market with Macbook Pro and Macbook Air. Apple’s share in the personal desktop market is now significant, and iMac sets the standard here, if it is yet to dominate in marketshare terms.
All attention is on mobile. Except at Apple. The Mac is now in an interesting space at a time when the barriers to entry in the corporate user market are lessening. The fear of Mac has evaporated. The success of iPhone and iPad in the corporate space has changed the perception of Apple. This market is now open to the Mac like never before.
Steamrollers move slowly – sometimes almost imperceptibly. But they crush everything under their rollers. Only Apple knows how they intend to crush Windows in the commercial space. But they do. The slow pace of the steamroller allows time and space for strategies to accommodate change. Whatever kind of device empowers the corporate employee of the future, it will likely be a product of the Apple steamroller.
The next 2 years will see the remaining mobile players confronting the success, or failure, of their strategies in this space.
I like Apple’s strategy. I like it a lot.
Nicely outlined!
Exactly and very well put. All those so-called analysts should read your post and try to understand what Apple have been up to and why MS are failing.
MS had a chance when they started envelopment on Win8 to really begin again and think differently but all they have succeeded in doing is to try to emulate Apple but in ways that simply alienated their own users, making lots of mistakes and profound errors of judgement as they blundered ahead.
I wonder what the direction will be from here for MS – if they continue with Win8 in its present form it will only ever have limited appeal and will never attract the mainstream business user who really needs multiple visible windows open in a point & click interface; if they start to bring back the desktop capability they will be right back where they started with Win7, having wasted billions in the process. It makes no sense to see the desktop environment as an app since this neatly cleaves the interface in 2 right there and underlines the fact that Win8 is just a gimmick that doesn’t work.
As for Android, fragmentation and a multitude of versions will always be the limiting factor for them. It will always hinder progress since it will always be too time consuming to keep track of all the incompatibilities. If you keep trying to cater for legacy code you can never move forward – Apple understood this when they went from OS 9 to OS X. It was painful for some but entirely necessary.
Keep steaming on Apple, when they see the ground go dark around their feet it’ll be too late!
SunbeamRapier, your eloquent writing skills and expression with easy to understand and absorb made reading your explanation a Joy, thank you so much for making by day happier 🙂 Excellent piece
That was a beautiful read and expresses my feelings about Apple. It sure beats reading tons of the other junk that floats by and makes it worthwhile to come here and listen to those who really get it.
Steam on.
Here is my offer to Microsoft. Send me $150. I won’t buy your Windows phone, you won’t get my iPhone. But you’ll save $50, and I’ll be happy with my phone.
For $200, I’ll also say nice things about you for three days.
What do they do with the phones after they buy them? Selling them would be counter productive, so they must just be destroying them: burning over $200 in the process.
i can sell my iPhone 4S for a lot more in cash then the $200 Microshit voucher and with the cash i can do anything, not locked in to MS products that is the voucher. CRAP DEAL Microshit.
This is an EXCELLENT idea! For the six people who actually take advantage of it.
imagine msft conference room:
you have the msft ‘equivalents’ of Cook, Ive, Fedrighi, Mansfield, Schiller…
after hours of INTENSE discussions on the future, on innovation, on product pipeline, on how to stop the rot thats costing them billions (Ballmer jumps around throws a few chairs “I WANT THE BIG IDEA !!!! ” ) …
finally they come up with THE SOLUTION:
pay $200 for iPhones.
Again: Microsoft, not happy eating their own dog food, are attempting to buy Apple gear to use for dirt cheap off dire suckers. Shameful. 😉
Why would anyone sell gold to buy manure?
Since I got $325 from Gazelle for a 16GB iPhone5 ATT, that is not much of an offer.