“In light of the brouhaha that has emerged in the wake of Apple’s iPhone price cut, you can view Steve Jobs one of two ways. Either he’s a deer caught in the headlights of consumer outrage, or he’s a calculating, Machiavellian manipulator of his minions. Either he misjudged the ire of the early adopters, or he shrewdly cultivated the free publicity the price cut engendered as the holiday selling season approaches,” Rich Duprey writes for The Motley Fool.
“I tend to picture Jobs as the embodiment of the principles espoused in Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince. He simply cannot be naive enough to think such a swift, sudden price cut wouldn’t draw early buyers’ ire. He could not have misjudged the backlash such a move would create. Instead, I think it’s a cunning move crafted to keep the iPhone the market’s must-have product,” Duprey writes.
“While the early adopters helped drive the initial sales, speculation has suggested that those sales subsequently began to slow. (The company announced [yesterday] that it had sold 1 million iPhones in just 74 days.) Jobs says he didn’t need the price cut to meet the company’s iPhone sales projections, and frankly, I believe him,” Duprey writes.
“Bestowing $100 Apple Store gift cards upon previous buyers [is] a win-win situation for Apple,” Duprey writes.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Linux Guy And Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]